Sage, it’s really their loss to miss out on all the wonderful times. In my boys’ school, we have parent group chats to keep up with school activities/volunteer work/important announcements for each grade and all the parents would join. Few weeks ago I sent exH an invite to the groups (3 kids, 3 groups!!) and he straight out ignored it. So much for wanting to “discuss important issues concerning the children on a regular basis” (his words when he drafted the d papers). Such hypocrisy.
He’s always railing at the kids about getting good grades, preparing for college (eldest is in 1st yr of middle school), how he knows so much about what they should be doing (e.g. creating an app, invent a robot) but I can count the times he’s helped them with school work with one hand.
When we were together, I really tried so hard to mother, care, tame, and rehabilitate this broken beast. I ended up overlooking so many things that were so obvious. It was all him. The hypocrisy, passive-aggressiveness, emotional outbursts....they were all part of who he really was. Maybe they stemmed from his past trauma, maybe they were also unwanted by him, but they were all him. But I didn’t see it that way then. I saw the goodness in him, and treated the other parts as some ephemeral thing that will eventually pass.
Of course all those things are still there. But not my circus, not my monkeys.
