Hi Wonka, You're right, of course. My normal instincts in the way this family should function have just totally disappeared as of late. Myself, both D's and W ate dinner together and watched TV last night. My oldest and my W also baked a cake together as well. Doesn't sound like anything but what a normal family does but for my W it is huge. I try, with having two teenage girls, to use any time we spend together as an opportunity to talk and interact. Most of the time they are doing things alone (twitter, Facebook, etc.) or in their rooms so I figure it's something we're doing together and a chance to talk about anything they might want to. No matter what we're watching, about half the time is spent talking about other things that the girls bring up. My W can no longer grasp this concept it seems. She gets upset that the D's talking interferes with watching what's on.
The point was never the show. The point was doing something together. My W would never do things with the girls and I (last few years since MLC) so I would try and find ways to get everyone doing things together and this was one way. My W may have refused to go tubing or to the movies but couldn't say no to just watching some TV.
She gets upset that she can't hear or wants to argue with something one of the girls says. I just can't understand why she doesn't see what she is doing. Last night my W told us all that she is getting a second job! She is going to work PRN at another facility. She has talked about this before. A few of her closer (divorced) friends from where she works started doing this and told her that it's real good money and the people were nice and they could spend even more time together. My W is so stressed she has been losing weight like mad. She is always too busy to even pick up the kids from school as she had to work late every day and now she does this?
At this point it is none of my business except for this, how does she think she can do this and take care of our D at the same time? Does she really think she can leave her alone after school until 9:00 or later almost every night? When we asked how many hours she will be working, she said the guy who hired her wants her for 8 hours 5 days a week! We all looked at her and said that is crazy, she's already so stressed. How can she do that? She said she will "see" how it goes. If she does that, she will work at least until 11:00 every night! Really? All this tells me is that she just has no idea what she doing. I get she will need more money as she will need to buy new stuff for her new home but can't she see how this is going to effect her D?
I really can't just think of any of what is going on with my marriage ending as "normal" any more. As much as I agree that my D14 needs her mom in her life, even if she were to spend 50% of her time at her mothers new home, she will be alone most of that time anyway and this is why I lost so much of my outside the home life the last few years to begin with. I knew my W wouldn't be there until late every day and I didn't want my D's to be alone all day then in the evening as well and my W only worked one job. Last summer if she didn't work late, she would go out with her friends. Now she has another job as well? How can she not understand that she can't just be gone and have no one there for her D?
This has become just crazy. I now see that as much as I want to be "fair" with my W with custody, I really must think of what is best for our D. I can't understand how my W thinks that leaving her alone like this is at all OK. It just makes me see that my W can't think of anything but herself and what she wants and doesn't understand that being on her own comes with a price. Any support she may have to help her like her mom is going to be 20 miles away since she is moving so far away. She also is saying she is going to go to another city where her father is getting his chemo and stay there on weekends so what will she do then? Leave our D alone the whole weekend as well? She can't take her as the place he is staying is almost too small for her to stay (she told me the room is so small she will have to sleep on a cot that almost doesn't fit!).
D is hard even in normal circumstances. It will disrupt everyone's life and make things harder on everyone. Add to this my W's attitude that my D14 can not only "fend for herself" but can move to where she has no friends, go to public school for the first time ever, not even have her sister around AND not even see her mom except for a few min before bed time and that's to the point of crazy!
I am going to need to go for full custody if she can't see this. This is madness. Add to this that she also now has to get a formal permanent D not just separation and I really think she has lost any sense of what she is doing. I am not trying to understand why she is thinking like this, I'm just realizing I can't just think that she will be alright taking care of our D 50% of the time and act accordingly.
