Living, Getting the Paperwork Started (20 months)

[adinva]

Thanks T. I'd be a runner too if my feet would cooperate. I loved the race culture and the peace of competing quietly with myself.

S15 is in a pickle. He's at an age where he'd be trying stuff anyway and probably rebelling against the very strong authority my H has always represented. And now in the middle of it my H has completely lost the kid's respect, acted like a complete jerk, and shown no interest in knowing or understanding his boy. My greatest fear is that the damage comes back to S15 when he himself hits 40. My goal is to give him a different set of tools. I don't worry nearly as much about S12 because he's so different from his dad, he's been rebelling against his dad since he was a toddler. But S15 is as athletic, charismatic, and strong in personality as his dad and is going to someday wonder how much like his dad he really is, and how much like him he has to be.

I thought H was out of the woods because he overcame a bad father and seemed like he was really going to be different. Would be totally opposed to divorce, loyal to family no matter what, able to cope with life's challenges through humor, not overly concerned with all that romantic stuff that leads other people to go searching for greener pastures, just a solid, pragmatic, good guy. It's like his personality froze, turned brittle and started to crumble.

I really thought it unfair that this happened just when I'd have been leaning on H to help S15 become a man. I'm the one dealing with condom wrappers, drug use, truancy, academics, hopes and dreams. It's just like this past weekend. I'm on the lift line and it's going to move forward; I'm a mom and have no choice but to dig in and do what's needed, and it'll be fine even if it's not easy. I hoped to have a partner in this, but even if we weren't divorcing I knew my H wasn't on the same page with me for a very long time. He's been angry and frustrated with the kids since they stopped playing little soldier to his drill sergeant routine a long time ago. He's been unable to have rational conversations with me where we establish our joint values and united front, for a very long time. If we didn't agree he would either bulldoze and browbeat until I complied or else shut down and get resentful. This wasn't a good family to be in even if we had a nice house and good schools and money and stuff.