The Divorce Whisperer
“Am I happier now?
Am I better off?”
Does the divorce of someone near us cause us to consider divorce as a viable option? Did my divorce encourage my ex’s best friend to leave her husband too? The green grass thing… Yeah. Not so much!
Here’s what I want you to know about divorce, especially when you have kids: IT SUCKS.
All this positivism I preach here. All this self-improvement, dating, love poem bullshit is really just my new part-time job since I have all this time on my hands. It might have been harder to write a love poem to my ex when we were still married, but I was trying. Love songs? Check. Love letters? Check. Love advances, requests, seductions, pleadings? Check.
There was a survey I found before our divorce process was in full swing, that showed a majority of divorced couples reported 3 and 5 years later, that they WERE NOT HAPPIER after their divorce. Hmm. Something is out of whack here.
Top Reasons Not To Get A Divorce
- The kids, the kids, the kids.
- Money gets even crazier. And even harder to talk about.
- Your best friend is still there, they are just scared and angry. Work through that and…
- The shared history is hard to come by and impossible to erase.
- Finding true-connected love is a long shot.
Maybe things have gotten hard. I mean really hard. Maybe sex happens once or twice a year. Maybe the loving feeling was lost and now you’ve got more of the tolerant roommate vibe going. Maybe you’re craving something to liven up your life, to wake your ass up.
All that shit is workable. You, waking your own ass up is all that is required.
Oh, wait… There is the other person too.
Top Reasons To Get A Divorce
- You are waiting, have been waiting, continue to wait, for the other person to change.
- Things have gotten abusive.
- The kids are suffering under the lack of joy and love in the house.
- Infidelity.
I remember having a friend come over for dinner with the ex and me, while we were deep in the discontentment part. And this loving guy, who’d just recently split from his live-together relationship of 17 years, was going on and on about this new younger woman he was dating. And the amazing chemistry (mostly about sex) that he was getting from being with someone “so new” and “so fresh” and “amazingly creative.”
I felt like a cuckold. My then-wife was in some sort of freeze-out period going on two months, and I sat at the table listening to my friend’s joy and enthusiasm, thinking, “I am in hell. This is what hell must feel like.”
See I still adored my wife at that time. But her attention, her passions, and her vibrancy had moved elsewhere. I could understand at that moment, why someone might choose to leave a marriage in search of greener bushes. But, even then and there, I knew in my heart that my friend’s joy was not where I wanted to go. I was still determined to work it out with my then-wife. I adored her. I needed her. I ached with the raw absence of affection that my friend’s descriptions pointed out, so clearly.
So, at that time, I dug in deeper. I began to express my dissatisfaction with our relationship. I started telling my then-wife that I needed things to change. “I need to be let out of the box of isolation.”
I’m not sure how differently men and women are wired, but I learned about Love Languages pretty late in the game. And my language (touch) was not the same as the ex-y’s (do something for me). And to be starved of touch, even the little touches, was unbearable. And I got more clear on that miss in my life, and I wanted to reinvent my relationship with my wife.
The problem was, I guess, she didn’t want to change. While I was feeling solid in my marriage enough to question the relationship, she was already thinking about leaving. She was seeing the answer outside the marriage. I was still trying to create and revive the marriage I wanted from the sad house we had created.
What I know from Al-anon, you cannot be waiting for the other person to change. The only change you can affect is your own. I had to work on myself and my commitment. I had to invest time in my happiness and not count on the other person to make me happy.
But without cuddling, hugging, and simple touch, I was starving to death, right there in bed, next to a woman I still considered my “match.”
Over the course of the next several months, I began to get more and more vocal about my dissatisfaction. And what I learned as we entered the end-game of our marriage: both partners have to want to continue. My ex-y’s heart had already been packed away for the next opportunity at love. There was very little I could do to get her to unpack and reinvest in loving me and keeping our marriage alive. I was no longer a priority for her. The priority was figuring out her options and making a decision about when and how to leave the marriage.
In my mind, I was coming from a place of confidence and commitment. I wanted this marriage. I wanted my family. I loved my house, my life, my wife. And I was confident that my joy and hard work would re-warm her heart, and we would see bright days again. I was wrong.
Today, looking back, three years later, I ask myself, “Am I happier now? Am I better off?”
Two hard questions. I’ll take the easy one first. Am I better off? HELL NO. The financial hell is partially a result of our divorce. Now we’re trying to afford two houses, cause we’re certainly not going to live together, and the economics are hurting us both. We are floundering. We will find higher ground, but at the moment, I haven’t been in a lower place financially. And still…
Am I happier now? This one is much harder to parse.
Emotionally, I am much happier than I had been in the last two years of my marriage. What changed that turned the whole enterprise sour, I don’t know exactly, but it had a lot to do with money. And when you are tossed into the void of alone time following divorce, you’ve either got to figure out that relationship with yourself again or rush to try and fill that void with another relationship, as my ex did. I have been thriving in the alone time. UM… After I got over being terribly depressed. But today, I’d say, in spite of the financial crisis that is looming, I am happier than I remember being for a long time. Ever? No. But I’m happy.
Happier as a parent? Sure. Now, my kids get a fully-focused dad. When they are with me, it’s a bit like vacation-dad, but that’s more about the imbalance of time, rather than my approach to being a dad. I am back to my joyous-self. And my kids see this. They tell me how happy I am, how they notice my joy, all the time. And I am rubbing off on them. I think their balance is pretty good. They are both a bit freaked out by any type of conflict (the ex and I didn’t really fight, so they don’t have very good examples) but good and smart kids, making their way in this new two-house reality.
But happier? As in happy? I don’t think so. I had the belief that the ex and I could regain our initial joy again. I still had glimpses of it. And I still desperately wanted to be with her. (Note: I don’t want to be with her anymore, but this is due mostly to the ongoing damage she continues to hurl in my direction.)
I believed until the day she revealed that she had already consulted a lawyer, that I was fighting to SAVE MY MARRIAGE. I didn’t know the other half of my marriage had already left.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
related posts:
- Waiting for the Other Person to Change
- Divorce is Not About What’s Fair, Let’s Get That Straight
- Getting Angry, Reaching Forgiveness, and Moving On After Divorce
- Zen and the Art of Love Making
- Easier To Be Quiet
resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
image used via creative commons: girls whispering
Tell Me Again, Why You Think This Is a Good Idea?
So you sued me. Um… For the last six months, you won’t talk to me, other than texts and emails. Okay. I think it’s a terrible idea, but okay.
Money has never been easy to talk about for me and the ex. And the awful realization, probably for both of us, is even in divorce we are strapped in the same financial boat together, for the duration of our kids’ young lives. Ack. It doesn’t have to be terrible, or adversarial, and it didn’t start out that way, until this summer.
The economy… Yadda yadda. My primary contract hit a snag in April, and my income was cut in half. And I have been working in a number of ways to replace that gap since even applying for full-time gigs and giving up my on-going business development. Everything is on the table. I’m scrambling.
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The reality was that our two household family unit, required even more money than when we were married.
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When we defined our agreement I was anticipating a quick-hire, buy a company that was “working up an offer” for approximately 80k per year. (great money if you can get it) The contract didn’t go through, but my divorce did, and I agreed to child support payments in the amount that would be in-line with that income level. The problem is, I have not yet achieved that income level since, at least not for more than 6 months at a time.
Okay, so, as things are getting REALLY tight, I let the ex know that I was going to get behind, but that I was going to keep her informed of my income and potential to pay as soon as I had the information. This did not go over well.
I understand.
She too has bills to pay, and her projections were based on counting on my support. I was apologetic, but I didn’t have an answer to her question. The question she began to hammer home week after week. “When” and “How much?”
So I was sliding, unwillingly, down the slippery slope towards becoming a deadbeat dad. The reality was that our two household family unit, required even more money than when we were married, and she was as dependant on my job as she had been when we were married. The fact that she was still living in the very nice house in the very nice neighborhood was a bit of a sore subject, but I wanted what was best for my kids. And uprooting them during the divorce, three+ years ago, was not an option that either the ex or I considered reasonable.
Today, however, the kids are older, well-adapted to the divorce routine, and she is sitting on a house that is nearly double what mine is worth, in today’s hot market. So she’s got that as an option. But let’s go back to early summer.
As the first month behind wore on my ex-y’s patience also began to fray. Her emails became more accusatory and demanding. I even started taking them into my talky therapist to see if he could help me parse out the anger from the request. With his help, I tried to craft week-after-week reasonable responses to her requests. The demand for payment or an exact payment schedule was not something I could produce. And I kept looking for work.
During the second month (again I am behind, it is my fault) she began to rattle a different saber at me. She started mentioning the Attorney General’s office. As in “maybe it would be best just to turn the whole thing over to the AG’s office and you can sort it out with them.”
My initial reaction was disbelief. I was not hiding anything from her. In fact, my talky therapist and I agreed that giving her a weekly update would alleviate some of her anxiety and stress. We were wrong. She wanted her money and now was prepared to turn me over to the state.
At this point, I took my first defensive posture of the entire process. I told her, “If you do this, I will want to go back and review what our decree said and how much I was agreeing to pay you and reset that amount based on what I actually made.” But I was asking her not to take such an adversarial position, I was trying to give her information and updates, but I could not agree to a timeline and budget that I had no idea how I could project or meet.
She presses on and says she’s going to file. I do a rough (and very conservative) review of what I had actually made in three years and that initial 80k per-year estimate that my child support was calculated on. I sent her my back-of-the-napkin calculations showing I had over-paid her 16k over three years. And again, asked her to reconsider filing against me with the state. I was happy to give her all the information I had.
She took my calculation and plea as a threat. Again, never once, did I dispute the amount she was owed, nor say that I was not going to pay all of it when I had the means. But at this point, I had missed a mortgage payment as well and was taking action to try to prevent losing my house.
In a seminal email in August, one day before my house was to be foreclosed on, she asked, “Any update on your house?” It seemed like a caring question. I reported back that Wells Fargo had given me another 30-days to provide additional proof of income. Five minutes later her reply came.
“I know this is bad timing for you, but I filed with the AG’s office, today.”
The story continues: Can Things Get Worse? Yes, Easy!
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
single dad
[from The Black Pages – poetry]
this is a love letter with a poison dart
but it’s only hurting me
i cannot help my sadness
abandonment
anger
i don’t want to help it
i reel in it
as i learn what i miss
what parts are taken or unspoken
a father alone
stands outside the circle of women
teachers, moms, educators, networks
are not comfortable with the angry dad
or sad, not doing so well, losing
it was not planned this way
the functions are all in place
but the numerator has been lost
the dividing line not clearly explained
we slog along with imperfect ideas
of how to say it right
to be gentle
to work out our issues elsewhere
but the blood is being spilled elsewhere
am i to be happy, to celebrate
as i am threatened with losing my home
my survival as dad is at risk
my survival
and i don’t doubt the sheriff
may be called at some point
but there is no more me
to go around
i am trying
i am hopeful and charging head-on
but the issue is different this time
i am the enemy
yet we are still a team
how does the tiger not eat the boat captain
yes
love is still all around
love is what moves us
and the implosion of love is something else
it is not hate, there is no black heart
yet the safety structures have been threatened
fucking maslow has dropped me to my knees
i am not dead
or dead-beat
i am beating my chest
still
to ask
what gives this time
where is the flexibility
how do we continue
there is no
win
10-24-13
How To Jack Your Ex-Partner’s Day
Was it passive aggressive? I don’t know. But the kids have been expressing their concerns this way, “She never picks up.” They are talking about their mom and her telephone manners. Today, it was a simple request for information. And unless there was some emergency, there’s no reason an answer could not have been generated within an hour or so, even giving the benefit of the doubt for sleeping late. It is a work day, however so that’s wouldn’t seem to apply.
Let the record show, that around 8:00 in the morning I wrote an email to my ex-y asking about the possible splitting of son and daughter duties after school. Both kids had after school activities, and my son was pretty sure his mom was coming to his cross-country meet. By 10:38 I was ready to either make other plans for the transportation of my son, but I still hadn’t heard from my ex.
Um, okay, I escalated to a text.
Her response came at 1:30. “Yes I’m going to the meet.”
That’s it. No acknowledgement that I’d been waiting for an answer for over five hours. And it’s not like she doesn’t check her phone. I’ve been around her enough to know she’s ALWAYS checking her phone and texting back.
So, in the end, we worked out a cooperative arrangement. And of course I didn’t blast her, because I still needed her help. It would be better for my son if he could catch a ride home with her, rather than waiting with the entire team for the bus back to the school.
What do you think? Was she jacking with me? Was I being unreasonable or pushy from my side?
My ex does not want to talk to me any more. While we were negotiating for our marriage, she also put in a request for me to quit emailing her my thoughts. She was done. In this case, I think she’s just ignoring me. She might even be ignoring the kids, which I see as more of a problem.
Sure, I like the power of silencing a call I don’t want to take, and often, if SHE’S calling there must be a problem. But a call from my kids, I have bypassed them once or twice, but called them back as soon as I was off the other line. (see: she is silenced in my back pocket – poem)
But when your ex begins taking over five hours to respond to a question about the kids…
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
related posts:
- Candy Crush in Co-Parenting: Here Comes Halloween
- Maybe My Unhappy Ex-Wife Is Simply Unhappy
- What You Took Away; What I Get To Remember
- Love and War; It’s all Here – Seeking Love and Peace
- Growing Pains: Accepting that She Doesn’t Want Reconciliation
resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
A Fool and His Money Soon Go Separate Ways
I’ve shied away from the big money post before. But on my “getting healthier” walk today I heard a song that made me sort of rethink: WTF?
Let me see if I’ve got this right.
When we met my ex-y was living in a rental house (really living with her boyfriend at the time, but I didn’t know this until later). She had a great job, and seemed to be making plenty of money. (Or should I say, money didn’t seem to be an issue in her life.)
At that same time, I was living in a pretty swanky condo downtown (thanks mostly to my father’s estate) and working full-time at my own consulting and marketing business. (Pretty much what I’m doing now.)
When we began talking mating and offspring we both agreed on a couple of things:
- Mom should get to spend more time in the early years with the babies
- Mom would probably have to work part-time, eventually, since we wanted to live in a really nice neighborhood
- Dad would work full-time and do whatever it takes to make #1 and #2 happen
- We were in this equally, equitably.
- We made a great team together.
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Maybe she was having a mid-life crisis at that moment. But in this very cash-starved moment in our history together, she was thinking about going into a new field. Okay. And she was casting around for what to do next. Fine.
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For the most part, we were growing our family to plan, when 9-11 happened and changed the world for all of us.
In our little universe, which consisted of a one-year-old son, we had some cushion. But the fall of so many of our norms was hard to recover from. (I guess I’ve also shied away from telling the longer story of my depression… Hmm.)
So here’s what happened to me, personally.
- My long-time client transitioned all of their business to a new company the August before 9-11.
- In my rebuilding plans I had scored several new clients, both real estate developers. The day after 9-11 all of my income, 100% of it, froze. My income went to zero.
- My mental wheels began to come off about nine months in, though I did manage to land a few new clients in the new post 9-11 era.
- Finally, with the upcoming birth of my daughter becoming more and more medically complicated, I snapped. Something broke inside of me, and I no longer assumed that things were going to be okay. I broke down.
This breakdown took the form of me turning down a very stressful, but lucrative opportunity that my then-wife had helped secure. And I didn’t back out very gracefully. I freaked out of it. “I can’t do it. I can’t give them the presentation.”
Over the course of the next several years, my emotional sobriety was mixed. I had good months, good runs at work, and then I would go pop and drop back into the pit of despair. The good news is my pre-marital condo sold for a very nice nest egg. The bad news is, while this was taking place, we were burning through that nest egg at a pretty alarming rate.
Here’s where things got a little weird. And here’s where the money part of my marriage really came into question for me.
While we had agreed that Mom would get to stay at home with the kiddos as much as possible, I began to see how dependant we had become on MY income. Rather than beginning the process of collaborative work search, WE had somehow both become overly focused on me and my ability to earn enough for our new family of four.
Now, I’m not blaming her for this perspective. But it got a little absurd. And the depth of it, with 20-20 reviewing capabilities, goes deeper than I realised while I was married.
Okay, so back to pre-marital imbalance. I’m a home owner with some money in the bank. She is not. No worries, we’re in this for the long haul.
The thing that really became obvious, wasn’t obvious until she decided she wanted a divorce.
About six months before the shit hit the fan, the financial shit was still hitting the fan. As we were struggling to make a couple of mortgage payments, I ended up selling 10k of my music equipment to make ends meet. We were stressed out to the max about money. And “I thought” both of us were working together to find work to support our family.
Maybe she was having a mid-life crisis at that moment. But in this very cash-starved moment in our history together, she was thinking about going into a new field. Okay. And she was casting around for what to do next. Fine.
Thankfully, the Thanksgiving before our divorce, I got an amazing job offer that started up immediately. We were saved. Kind of.
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The YEAR that we were struggling, the YEAR that I sold two guitars I’d owned for 15+ years to make our mortgage payment, the YEAR that she was mad at my about 90% of the time, was the YEAR that she lost money?
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As I began that path of “hi honey, I’m home” fatherhood again, and she was still “searching” something was different. The money was not enough. She was still extremely angry. And really seemed to be directing that anger at me. When the change happened from stress and anxiety to actual focused anger at me, as the problem, I don’t know. But it was palpable. She woke up angry.
Maybe she was mad that she was still having to look for a job at all. I don’t know. I tried asking, but it was fruitless. She was just angry. And when she got angry, she also closed off 100% of the intimacy. I guess that’s natural. You can’t really make love to someone if you’re angry with them. But months would go by, and I’d be the only one seemly noticing that we were not having sex. Like EVER.
So, she was mad. Woke up mad. Went to bed mad. Just mad.
Eventually this got me a bit angry back and I started looking at the dynamics of our relationship. Here I was working the “good job” again, providing the money and insurance for her to continue her search for meaning in work, and things were not getting any less stressful between us. What the fuck?
As we moved through the holidays and through January, my job continued to be stressful, and her work search continued to be fruitless. And while the idea of coming home to a happy family and a meal on the stove was kinda cliché, I was hoping for some of the fruits of my labor to be affection.
In February I began voicing my dissatisfaction with the status quo. And while I was primarily talking about our physical closeness and her obvious anger and angry outbursts at me, I was also talking about something more fundamental. In all this angry venting at me, I was beginning to get angry back. I started asking about her job prospects. I started asking about sex. I started asking about dinner when I got home.
And we were having to get our taxes together around this time. And I pushed the final hunting and gathering of the documents on her. I, after all, was working a job that was beginning to kick my ass more than I liked. But I was gung-ho, and we were doing soooo much better, financially.
Then a mini-crisis happened, just in this fragile time, as I’m beginning to stand up for what I needed. I got fired. A wrongful termination suit was brought against my former friend, because I was fired for someone else’s mistake, clear as day. But it broke the final ounce of trust and hope for my ex-y. SHE WAS DONE.
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Here I was working the “good job” again, providing the money and insurance for her to continue her search for meaning in work, and things were not getting any less stressful between us.
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I was not done, I was certain this break would provide a pivot point for us to get back on even footing. For us to finally broach in therapy what was happening in our sexual relationship. But I was the only willing party, at that point. She was finished.
Then two amazing things happened in rapid succession. 1. She found a job. (Like magic.) and 2. She showed me the tax return documents for the previous year, and she actually had a negative contribution to the family budget for the year.
BOOM.
The YEAR that we were struggling, the YEAR that I sold two guitars I’d owned for 15+ years to make our mortgage payment, the YEAR that she was mad at my about 90% of the time, was the YEAR that she lost money?
How amazing that the minute she decided she wanted a divorce, her motivation for finding work changed dramatically. Or maybe it was just the marketplace. You tell me.
Anyway, in the divorce, while I chose not to fight about any of the money, I think she came out pretty well. She’s got the house. She’s got the child support income. (When I get caught back up.) And she’s got the kids a large percentage of the time.
I wonder if she’s still mad at me. Or if, now, she’s found something else to be angry about.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
related posts:
- Losing Everything In Divorce; Learning to Carry On
- On the Turning Away: Fighting with Your Ex About Money
- The Close of Business Between Us
- Winning the Battle, Losing the War
resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
Happy Mom Chat About How I Got Here: What I Figured Out
I took lunch to my mom’s house today, just to stop by and say hi. We talked about this blog for a bit.
See my ex-y left some sort of message about something I was doing that was damaging my family. My mom wanted to know what it was. I showed her The Off Parent and explained how it was anonymous.
“But it’s on Facebook,” she said.
“Yes, but it’s not connected to me in any way. I don’t even LIKE my own page.”
She was happy with my explanation. And she said something next that brought the conversation to a different place.
“I’m glad to see you taking a different path than your father.”
She went on to tell me about how he once told her that she was the reason he drank. “So, I told him I wouldn’t be that reason any more.”
We talked about my dad and how he went on to marry another drinker and eventually drank himself and her to death. And I told her, that her survival after the divorce had colored a lot of my childhood, and probably formed a good portion of my personality. She was always quoted as saying, “I’m turning X’s into plusses.” And that’s kind of a maxim that I have learned to live by.
Even as things got hard for us, back in my elementary through high school years, she would keep us pointed at the good side of the situation. A lot of the time I thought it was bullshit. Just a way of escaping some of the pain of the moment. But eventually I heard myself using the exact same phrase when talking to myself about bad situations.
I told my mom about how this blog had given me a voice, a place to process the anger and frustration at the divorce. And how eventually those parts of the blog began to subside and a new part of the story began to emerge. As I transitioned out of anger, depression, and divorce mechanics, I started moving into how to turn this major X into a major WIN.
The divorce is the biggest thing that’s ever happened in my life, and I’m 50 years old. What ripped through my safety and joy has now become the fire that has burned away the bullshit and brought me down to WHAT’S IMPORTANT.
Here’s what I figured out about the positive side of this blog, and the positive part of the divorce, for me.
1. Self-care. Physical and mental health are a full-time process for me. While I’ve never had a substance problem, I have used the 12-step program for various parts of my recovery. What I am working on is EMOTIONAL SOBRIETY.
2. Kids First. There is nothing in my life more important than the love and support of my children. Keeping them safe from the bitterness and anger that could’ve erupted in my divorce was always part of my agreement with their mom.
3. 100% Positive. While there are plenty of times I’m angry with their mom, there is NEVER any reason to voice those complaints to my kids. I remember how horrible my dad was at speaking about my mom. And of course, she was doing only a little better at voicing the victim side of the horror. And it was pretty bad. Eventually, in high school my dad began taking it out on me, saying that the divorce was my fault and saying that I didn’t love him. These will never be words that my kids hear from me. And I believe the ex-y has the same intention.
4. Lead With Love. I may not be in love with their mother, but I will never stop loving her. It’s often that love that turns to bitterness and hate when it’s flipped around. But I won’t ever go there. She is gone. She is someone else’s. And I can do better each day remembering the relationship of the divorce is about my kids. And if she’s happier, they will benefit.
I don’t always get it right, but I keep trying to return to these principles. And as my ex-y has now turned me over to the Attorney General’s office I guess we will see what it’s like trying to abide by these principles while she is suing me. I imagine that she is doing the best she knows how. At least, I suppose, she will know with the bankruptcy that I’m filing, that I’m not secretly stashing money away, or trying to keep her from child support payments.
Even in cutting off most of the conversation between us, I think she must be doing that for some personal, self-preservational reasons, rather than hate at me. We’ve got these great kids. And we do everything we can to support and encourage them. If she no longer wants to sit face-to-face to map out some plans with me, that’s okay. I guess we go back to emailing each other. That worked some while we were married.
And I’ll keep mapping my own path along this journey here. Turning my ex into a plus.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
Separating Stories and Seeking Purpose After Divorce with Kids
It’s time to sort this story and pull apart the tasty bits, throw away the vitriol, and find the pure “off parent” story. Like pulling apart the colorful threads that are bound together in a rope, if you begin to separate the various issues you can focus and perhaps solve them independently. As a whole, the strength of the problem is overwhelming and seemingly unsolvable. But taken as smaller parts, with diligence, you can find your way into a solution, or at least resolution.
In looking back at the three years since my divorce, I see how this writing journey became an important part of my recovery of self. As I was able to articulate the pain/joy/struggle of finding myself alone again I gave voice to my own recovery. What started in anger and confusion, has risen through many ups and downs into something of an anthem to self-examination and (in my humble opinion) victory.
And all the parts of this expression have formed who I have become, as I walked, crawled, cried, and sang through my journey back to wholeness. As I reflect on the content now, I see some very distinct threads.
- Divorce Process, Mechanics, and Resolution
- Kids, Parenting, Single-parenting, Fathering
- Pure Anger and Bitterness
- Depression, Loss, and Recovery from Depression
- Dating, Desire, Sex, Relationship Journey
- Poetry of Desire, Loss, and Aspiration
Assessing the strength of this rope, I see one “voice” that needs to go away. (Not be deleted, but not be encouraged either.) The vitriol and black anger that has come out may have felt justified and righteous at the start of my fall from the family as it previously existed, it does nothing but feeds on itself and stir up more of itself. Time to acknowledge it and move on. Turn it over to a higher power, if you’d like a platitude. There is no growth or healing from bitter focus. It is a step you must pass through. The hope is you move through it with great passion and without much damage to yourself or (more importantly) others. Even your ex does not deserve the vile that is likely to come up. But get it up and out, you must. In my case, this blog was started with that bitter voice. Titty dancers, Fuck Yous, and “You really fucked up,” all formed some of the energy that got me started.
Next on the list of “maybe this should go somewhere else” are the aspirational love poems. While they too have given me great hope and insight into my dreams and desires, AND they are part of the divorce/recovery journey, perhaps their song should be published elsewhere. As part of a divorce story, they are tinted by the rest of the rope. But pulled away from the whole, perhaps those prayers, laments, and songs will gain a lightness. I believe they belong here, but I also know that I was probably publishing them here because of the audience that has developed.
And finally, the exciting part for me, the Single-parenting content. (Here’s a prime example: Just Being Dad Is Enough: A Hot Summer and a Ghost Horse) This thread runs brightly through the narrative as it unfolded, but the energy and focus were always mixed with the other “colors” of the writing. How could I be bitching and praising their mom in the same place, much less the same post?
The first vacation (alone) to the beach with my kids was an eye-opening experience. And the joy that emerged on that first journey was one of strength and hopefulness. And the idea for The Whole Father emerged. I wasn’t ready, at that time, to really begin imagining myself as a teacher or model father; I’m still not.
But, the awareness that was so exciting to me was this. In getting divorced we have to regain skills, chores, and parts of our whole selves that we had parsed off to the other parent. My ex was really great at the beach. She loved it. She loved shepherding the kids and giving me some hours to lounge, sleep, read, whatever… But without her, there would be no downtime. I had to up my game. I had to become more whole again and recapture and rework those parts of myself that had been languishing.
This was a wonderful insight. And today, I’m going to begin expanding that concept and giving voice to The Whole Father as a new blog for all the positive and negative aspects of becoming a single-dad and having to learn all over again how to be a parent. I had to fill myself back up enough to become whole again, and while I had the vision early on, it is only now that I feel competent enough to expand on that gift and road to discovery.
So I’m not leaving The Off Parent behind. But I do think there are other places for me to find joy and focus, and perhaps the weight of the “off-ness” is heavier than it needs to be for poetry or joyful single-parenting. That’s where I’m headed.
Here’s the first post: A Return to Wholeness After Divorce | The Whole Parent
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
Gone. A Pause at Summer’s End.
And out of the clear blue sky, it is gone, and I am sad.
It’s been a great summer. Through many challenges and growth opportunities, but we made it. And with the school drop off today, after a three-day weekend, I find myself struggling to maintain momentum. I’ve got plenty of work to do, so it’s not lack of requirements. It’s something else.
Little reminders of the loss of my children sometimes sneak up on me when I’m not paying attention. And the coffee doesn’t stave off the bummed out feelings. The nap that sounds like an escape is really just a temporary sedation.
In divorce you lose everything.
Maybe this is preparation for the empty nest that’s at least 5 years away. Or this is just part of being a single parent with less than half-time custody. But I’m not sure it’s about custody, or schedules, or even the divorce. I think it’s me. My sadness. My losses. The grip of my daughter’s hand as we walk into Starbucks for her lunch sandwich. Those things that we take for granted, the ever-present child, is stolen away by the changes required by divorce.
And as always, it is a growth opportunity to me. It is a moment to pause and reflect. Remember not to fall into soulful revery and sadness. And pickup with the work to be done. But the pause IS important.
This is what we’ve lost.
And with so much to gain from the newly available time, the nights and weekends “off,” the opportunities to find what makes us GO again, there are still these little pauses, setbacks, to remember our own pain. And to walk on into what’s next.
This is not about them. It’s not about her. It’s about me.
The journey is long. And, for the most part, we travel alone. And we have choices about how we move and grow with the changes, losses, and new wins in our lives.
Time for a walk in the sun. The work will get done. The days will grow shorter. And another chapter is waiting to be created.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
related posts:
- Of Course You’re Not Happy With Me, We’re Divorced
- Losing Touch in the Off Times
- On the Turning Away: Fighting with Your Ex About Money
- You Know They’re Watching You, Right?
- The Divorce Whisperer
resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
What You Took Away; What I Get To Remember
The privilege of walking into my daughter’s room just now and giving her a hug and a kiss, is something I never thought I would lose, in my lifetime. But divorce changes all that. Sure, the relationship had been deteriorating for years or months, even if I’m not the one who asked for the divorce, or consulted a lawyer. BUT… You took my kids from me, effective immediately, no discussion. The minute you walk out of the marital home, you’re life changes forever.
Three summers ago I stepped out of MY house for the last time. It became, “Your mom’s house,” from then on. And I knew that I would not be good in the house alone, so I left it without fighting. The kids needed some security in this amazingly unsecure world we were thrusting on them. There was a cover story, “That Dad was sick and taking some time off at Aunt A’s house.” But it was done. There was no returning or repair for that summer of despair.
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I don’t take a single moment with my kids for granted. I am transformed when they are around. I cook. I rouse. I wrestle.
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The happy thing I have to report is this Summer, while trying and destabilizing at times, has been the best Summer yet. The closest I came to being depressed was struggling with a sore throat that took over a week to heal. And I was kind of ready for the down time. I’d been running and jumping pretty fast all summer.
And in our routine, Summer means I get my kids on Thursdays AND Fridays every week. (It helps the ex-y with the child care bills, and gives me an extra day of kid time.
I was chatting with another dad the other morning. We were waiting for our daughters to get inside the gym where they were counselors at a gymnastics camp. He said, “It doesn’t matter if they are off playing games, something about knowing they are in the house, is comforting.”
One of the most spiritual moments in my life was the first couple times I stood in my newborn child’s room and watched them sleep. Something about those moments affirm why we are here, and why we as adults keep working so hard to provide a better life, even when things get really hard. In those earliest parenting bedside prayer and answer sessions I felt, somehow, that the life I would provide for my kids would be less traumatic than my own.
And today I understand it more than ever. I don’t take a single moment with my kids for granted. I am transformed when they are around. I cook. I rouse. I wrestle. I take them on errands, I walk down to the lake and swim. I listen to their stories. I tell a few of my own. And while their mom is missing, it feels nearly complete. It’s the closeness and the joy I take in holding hands, or putting a hand on my son’s shoulder while he shows me his latest computer game creation.
I am Dad.
When my father walked out of the family home (as my mom tells it, she had given him an ultimatum about his drinking, and he chose the booze over us.) everything went to shit. Christmases suddenly became very sparse and un-festive. And he really withdrew further into drinking and eventually married a woman, a much younger woman, who liked to drink as much as he did. But the end result was my happy/unhappy home was dumped out and crushed and my father vanished into his own dark pit.
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In the beginning moments of the divorce I did not know if is was possible to remain friendly. And even as we struggle a bit with money issues (now divorced) I know we are both doing the best we can.
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We had visits. I went to dinner at his house once a week. But he was bitter. And his bitterness inflamed his drinking. And my mom and I had to develop a communication system about how I could call her to come get me when my dad was too drunk to drive. I remember sitting on the floor of his living room, watching Ba Ba Black Sheep together. He was remarried and the Mexican house keeper made the most amazing chopped up french fries for dinner.
And we tried talking about stuff. But he was heading towards oblivion most of the nights, and since he didn’t have to cook, it was easy for him to slip into the comfort of his pouring and adoring wife.
The last time I recall spending a Thursday evening over there, I was in 8th grade. He came home a bit early so we all decided to swim in their pool. I was thrilled he was going into the pool. It almost never happened.
And in the horseplay that seemed so rare and exciting my father grabbed me and started holding me under water. I’m sure he was euphoric with both drink and exercise, but he didn’t let go. And in a final effort to free myself I kicked him in the balls and swam away from him as he released me. I called my mom and went home without having dinner.
And that touch is something I know will never happen with my kids. I’m not a bitter divorcé. In fact, I’m framing myself as a single parent for now. And I do occasionally wrestle and horseplay with my son who enters 7th grade in a few days. And the thing I know, even in my loneliness and feelings of separation when they are gone, is that I am a great father. And I will continue to be a positive and loving force in their lives as long as I live.
I can see the benefits of my divorce from time to time too. I have time to restart my live performances as a musician. I am rarely exhausted. I am learning to cook. But that moment, every so often, that comes up when they are not under my roof, that wish to return to the quiet newborn’s room and know that things are going to be okay, I don’t forget or ignore that moment either. I am grateful my ex-y and I have done such a good job at pulling our marriage apart while remaining good co-parents.
In the beginning moments of the divorce I did not know if is was possible to remain friendly. And even as we struggle a bit with money issues (now divorced) I know we are both doing the best we can. And our children together are thriving, even with two homes.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
related posts:
- Easier To Be Quiet
- The Divorce Whisperer
- Of Course You’re Not Happy With Me, We’re Divorced
- Love and War; It’s all Here – Seeking Love and Peace
resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
image: i love my father as the stars, yvette, creative commons usage
Last Good Moment Before the Storm: Rockstar Fantasy Camp
It may have been the last good day of my marriage. Though I can see from my weight that I was stressed beyond belief. And it was only a few months later that I sold the prized Strat I was playing, along with several thousand dollars worth of music gear, that seemed to be saying, GROW UP, get a real job, forget this hobby of yours.
We pulled up out of the debt crisis and I landed a job just before Christmas, that put us back in the black for a few short months.
This was the last time my band played live. And it was the first time in 4 or so years. Of course I had given up the rock star dream many years ago, but the dream-fragments linger long. And what I am learning now, is my passion to write, sing, and perform live music is a CORE piece of my happiness.
As I was struggling to understand my parents hateful divorce and my dad’s drift even further away from us kids, and further into alcoholism, I turned to Lou Reed and the Ramones to express my anger. But something else was happening in the basement room that became my “studio.” I was learning how powerful music could be in my life. I have never mentally left that tiny room-of-my-own where I played Lou Reed’s Vicious, over and over and over with various friends holding down whatever instrumental duties they could muster.
Ears ringing we would emerge dazed, but somewhat empowered, by our ability to make a cacophony of notes organize into the semblance of a song. The first SONG I wrote was just before I checked into a mental hospital for a bit of aberrant behavior in my teens. It became an anthem, even for my friends who supported and stood by me during this difficult period. It was called The Shoal Creek Blues. (The name of the kid’s ward was Shoal Creek.) The second song I wrote was a bit more direct.
You’re gonna die, you’re gonna die
Like an animal
While the first one captured the ennui I was experiencing the summer my life came apart, the first time. The second one captured the anger I felt at how things were not going according to any plan I was offered growing up.
I can almost recall the melody to the first one. And I can sing “Die Like An Animal” right now, though I’ve never recorded either of them.
As I was selling my musical instruments to make a couple mortgage payments, and the ex-y and I were looking at “options” I now know that her total contributed income that year, after deducting expenses, was LESS THAN ZERO.
So, can I infer from that, that the money stress that was killing our marriage, was MY FAULT? Or, now in hindsight, can I see that she was hammering me to get it together, and “looking for a job” herself, but the selling of my musical gear was… (I’ll leave that thought right there.)
So after the hardest economic period of my marriage (because we had burned through any money from the sale of my condo – owned before marriage) I finally landed a job with a company that seemed ready to finally fulfill some of my economic promise, and reward me for the hard work I had been doing trying to launch this social media consulting thing for three years. So after that…
I was in San Francisco the first week of my hire. I was amazed that things had happened so fast, but I’d gotten a competing offer from Dell and this new company snatched me up and whisked me off to CA to introduce me and get me oriented to my new team. It seemed like a win to me.
The ex-y was also relieved, but her response was very different. Within 24-hours of hitting San Francisco we were fighting about money. And she was hammering me about when the new insurance would kick in so we could stop paying COBRA (from my last job) on the insurance for the family.
No honeymoon. No celebration. Just “where’s the fucking money?” At least that’s how it felt. Of course she was in a more feral position. She was probably feeling backed into a corner with me, the now “sometimes reliable” breadwinner. And IF she had been looking for work, that had not turned out as easy as she imagined it would. She hadn’t submitted a resume since right after college.
Well, things at the new SF company were not as they had been presented. It was hard. Not only was my then-wife giving me hell, my new manager, the Creative Director of this “life saving” job, had indeed approved my HIRE, but he was not happy about it. Apparently I had been strong-armed onboard by the new CMO-CTO a former colleague at Dell.
He was uncooperative from the moment my plan was delayed in LA en-route to SF. And things went from hello to fuck you pretty quickly. Still, I felt, under the wing of my former colleague and the head of this company’s social media division, I would weather any asshole’s diabolical plan.
In the meantime, things at home did not lighten up. I recall a phone conversation I had with the ex-y a few days after I’d arrived in SF.
“You should come to San Francisco and meet everyone. We could have a second honeymoon. My mom said she’d take the kids.”
“We can’t afford it.”
“We can figure that out. We need some together time. We need some vacation.”
“It would not be a vacation to me. It would be insanity.”
There you go. Two very different approaches to life. On a collision course through marriage to hit the iceberg. Well, I did not see it. She was drawing maps to the lifeboats.
Still, that summer before I had demanded, again on the promise of a NEW CONTRACT GIG that was paying me well.
“I’d like to go play the California festival this summer. They’ve asked me.”
“We can’t really afford that.”
“And I’d like you and the kids to come with me.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I’m not sure if it was or was not a good idea, but my daughter still remembers seeing me live on stage doing my thing. And we swam and swam in the pool, and went to Legoland. For me, it was a lifetime achievement. I’m not sure what the ex-y was calculating or thinking about when she didn’t join us in the pool. But I’d have to say, it was the last great moment, even as she was disconnecting from me and my rocket ship of a dream, and occasional free fall when the experimental engines failed.
I believe, that’s part of life. Rocketing when you have reliable employment and fuel and momentum. Recovery and rebuilding when you don’t.
During the last refueling stop, after this trip to California, when she had “amazingly” still not found a job and the SURE THING CONTRACT company had actually fired the woman who got me the gig… Free fall.
But freefall with wonderful memories and family moments. Free fall with just a touch of rock star. Free fall with a family and woman I still loved madly.
When the ex-y made the decision that the escape pod was her best option, she got a job in a matter of weeks. She manufactured a job, created a position, and enabled her release from my capsule. Of course, I wasn’t really to figure any of this out until the SF job fell apart and she said she wanted a divorce in the same two weeks.
And really, it’s only with this writing that I’m putting the picture together with a bow around it. She was not happy with my dreams. She didn’t want to honeymoon in SF, even if “my mom said she’d take the kids and it’s only going to cost $550.” She was already on the “where is the emergency stop button” path.
I’m happy to say, I’m gearing up for my NEXT live gig in two months. The festival I played in California is now coming to my hometown. I accepted the offer to play. As they say in the Blue Brothers. “We’re getting the band back together.”
I am looking for a new co-pilot, however. (grin)
Here’s my band playing in 2009. The song was written during this rough period, about depression and acceptance. It’s “just another day.” Nothing to get too worked up about, or to down about. Just weather the storm and keep going. It was actually written after a comment the ex-y made about living with depression.
I’d prefer to live without it. (grin) But when it’s here, you just do the best you can, stay close (the part the ex-y could never handle) and know “that it always gets better.”
It DOES always get better. If you’re dealing with depression, post-divorce, pre-divorce, or not relationship related. Please seek help. You can get to the other side of the storm. It’s JUST ANOTHER DAY.
Sincerely
The Off Parent
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
The Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Giving Up On Me, and Why I Still Hate What You Did
The moment you are told your partner wants a divorce is not the beginning of the process. Likely the process has been festering on their side for quite some time, and the EVENT that causes the “divorce” talk is merely the reason given.
In my case, my ex rarely shared her “feelings” with me, unless they were angry and it was about some way that I had done her wrong, by not doing what she expected or wanted. By the time she said, “I’m not sure I still love you,” in couples therapy, the damage had already been done. But it was done by her NOT sharing her “feelings” with me. She chose to complain to another man in a form of emotional infidelity, she had been speaking with her counselor for years and was close to consulting a lawyer, but she still doesn’t turn to me and fight for what she wanted.
Rather she EXITED the relationship in many different ways. Withholding sex is a crucial way of punishing and isolating your mate, and it was not uncommon for my then-wife to go without sex or an expressed sexual desire for months. MONTHS! Of course, she would say anger was not conducive to feeling sexual or close. But her anger would also go on for MONTHS.
After the triggering event [your mate will probably be a trigger to your anger on a number of different issues] the anger should dissipate or be redirected at the core issue that is plaguing the individual who is angry. If her therapist was not working with her on HER anger, well… I didn’t have much respect for her therapist several times we met her together. She seemed too soft. The Rodgers “You are wonderful” kind of therapist. And if her client was so fucking angry, don’t you think they should’ve been working on THAT? Of course, it was ME that she was mad about. (That was sarcasm.)
So, I think back and discover that she had EXITED the relationship YEARS before she asked for the divorce. I tried to comply with low sexual activity, I tried to be a better husband, make more money, do more chores, but it never got better. And she never got UN-MAD.
I don’t harbor much anger towards my ex now, but… Occasionally… I regret not escalating my own dissatisfaction in couples therapy more often. It seemed that most of our sessions were about MY ISSUES, and how I was constantly disappointing or “lying” to her. [Is not telling your wife about a speeding ticket a major transgression?]
And when I think those thoughts I wonder what things might be like if we’d still been working together at this point. If we were collaboratively trying to figure out this money thing, rather than ME vs HER. Oh well. I contradict that regret when I remember her anger and unwillingness to crack open and share what was going on in her life. It was easy to focus on me. My depression. My employment. My lies. My problems. Rather than understand what was going on for her. So that’s where we devoted a lot of our therapy together. GROSS.
So today, I still remember that YOU EXITED the relationship with another man. And you EXITED by not sharing your feelings with me. And ultimately you EXITED the relationship by deciding NOT to work on the relationship but to consult a lawyer. So today, in this moment of reflection, I say fuck you. And then I let it go.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
related posts:
- Terms of Surrender: Our Divorce Papers
- No Divorce Expert: But If You Parent 50/50 You Should Divorce 50/50
- My Divorce: A Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory
- The 1st and 2nd Time I Knew My Marriage Was Finished
resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
Creative Parenting and the Gifts of Enthusiastic Participation
I used to get criticized by the ex for how much I liked to play with the kids as opposed to discipline and enforce rules with them. (I think this is a very common husband-wife issue.) She would want the family to do chores and I’d be out back chasing them around the yard, or playing tickle tag on the bed, completely messing the house up.
Maybe men and women have different styles. The dad is the one who’s supposed to rough-house. The mom is the one who’s supposed to offer comfort and tenderness. The dad is the one who’s supposed to play games, incite rule-breaking, and ignore curfews. The mom is the one who has to slog away in the kitchen until the dishes are done and the counters are all spotless.
BUT… I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to be this way. And I think my ex could have had a profound effect on the kids had she spent more time in high-energy play rather than angry-energy chore-master.
Let’s see how things have turned out so far.
My kids have never wondered about how much I loved them. I was usually there wrestling and hugging and soothing the bumps that come from falling off the bed the 15th time. We have a physical closeness that still draws them to jump in the “big bed” when they stay over at my house. WIN.
While my musical pursuits have never paid off financially, both my kids love music and they both play an instrument. My son, 12, even got a middle-school award for his orchestra enthusiasm. WIN.
Gaming and other flights of imagination. My son has become the ringleader of a small band of Minecraft kids from his school. Essentially they quest together, with my son playing the narrator role. (Like dungeon master in D n D.)
And while my kitchen sink is still often filled with dishes (how did I buy a house without a dishwasher again?) my kids are clean, happy, and on-time for school and other events. And there is ZERO nagging or complaining about chores or homework. It’s a very different place here at my house than the days when I was parenting with the ex.
And perhaps some of it comes down to core approach to relationships. In an early example, I recall my then-wife demanding of my 2nd-grade daughter, “If you don’t get your homework done, right now, there will be no TV.” My daughter burst into tears. As I joined the scene, I asked, “Hey honey, how’s your homework going? Is there anything I can help you with?”
One approach was authoritarian and matter of fact, but it lacked any compassion or connectivity with the child. My approach was to join with my daughter and see what she needed to get her work done.
My kids are continuing to thrive after the divorce. And I give credit to my ex for working hard to keep our friction out of our kid’s lives. But she treats me in the same way she commanded my daughter, “Where’s the money you owe me? How much can you pay? When can you pay it? Oh, and btw, I’m sorry you’re having trouble.” I guess it’s the way she was raised.
My kids have been raised to expect a warm and joining approach to school work, problems, and aspirations. I’m always on their side. And they have been given an example of a life filled with enthusiastic play and love of playing music. I think those are transferable skills that will continue to serve them throughout their lives. And I couldn’t be happier with that picture.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
@theoffparent
back to Single Parenting
related posts:
Better Off Divorced – 3 Years Later Celebrating My Independence
I have to say, I am flourishing with the creative and self-development time the divorce has afforded me. Now, looking back over the three years since it became official, I can say I’m better off divorced. For a long time, I was not sure I was ever going to be able to say that. But it’s true, today. It was not always true.
In the initial storm of divorce, your emotions will take over all negotiations and adversely affect your judgment. In my case, I was set on demanding 50-50 parenting schedule and joint custody. It seemed FAIR.
In the month or so of negotiation with the ex and a wonderful child psychologist who specializes in divorce, we came up with… guess what? … the Standard Possession Order. Even in my happy state, I’m not sure giving in to this demand, and advice, was the BEST option for me and the kids, but it is certainly what the ex wanted, and would likely get were we to enter the Texas court system. (80% of all divorces in Texas end up with the mother getting primary custody and enforcement of the SPO.)
On days when money is tight, I feel like I was ripped off. And occasionally I feel like I should FIGHT and enter the courts again, and go for 50-50 and reducing my financial obligation to my ex. BUT… I don’t. And here’s why.
Today I crave time with my kids. There is never enough time with them. SO, when we are together, I am 110% engaged. There is nothing more important than being an engaged father. Occasionally I am sad about not having them with me, but I’ve been on the UP side of creative for a year or so, and that makes my alone time quite productive rather than sad.
The ex has a very different situation. She craves time with her boyfriend. And occasionally offers the kids to me (mostly too late for me to actually accept) for an additional night or day. If I’m reading that right, from her self-centered approach to everything dealing with me, she is asking for time off from having the kids. Or more accurately, time with her boyfriend. That must be a strange pull. The desire to have time away. When I am on the exact opposite polarity, I crave time WITH THEM.
It’s neither good nor bad, but it’s very different.
And I can understand. During the school year, she does have the brunt of getting the kids to school on time and homework. BUT, that’s how she wanted it. That’s what she demanded in the therapist’s office, that “she was the more complete and responsible parent, that she had been providing the majority of their care.”
REALLY?
In the heat of that discussion, I was furious. But over time, the therapist showed me the reality of the situation, should I want to fight this PLAN. I objected, but I did not fight. And I gave in. “In the best interest of the kids.” At least, that’s the language they use when you’re negotiating.
So I ask you. Was it in their best interest? Perhaps. They got to stay in the marital home. They stayed mostly in their old bedrooms and got to school from Mom’s house in much the same way they did when we were married.
Of course, the reality was/is, I was the primary morning person that roused the entire house and got the kids ready and fed on the way to school. Often the ex would be much more focused on getting ready and pretty. And that’s okay. That’s just the way it was. I loved my mornings. I still get up at 6 am and do most of my creative stuff in that first few hours of the day, before I had to wake the wife and kids to start their day.
And so, she got exactly what she wanted. The house. The kids (on SPO and full custody). And full child support payments, including healthcare. Seems like a pretty good deal.
But I know it’s been HELL getting her routine organized to get up and get the kids ready and fed and off to school in a “happy” and unrushed way. The clocks that have appeared in every room of the house, sort of point out the fact that I was also the “happy time-keeper” saying “Okay kids, we’ve got 10 minutes before the car leaves the station, let’s go.”
The most satisfying moment, came in year two when my son said he’d advised his mom to do mornings “more like Dad.” And he described my typical morning routine with them, as the gold standard.
“Get us up early so we’re not rushed. Give us plenty of time. Make it fun and not so rushed.”
So my not-a-morning-person ex-wife now has most of the kids-to-school duties. (grin) AND she’s working an own-your-ass 9-to-6ish job, that has her working hard then she ever did when we were married.
That’s victory enough.
So she’s craving time with someone else, other than the kids. And I’m craving time with the kids, with no other priorities or relationships demanding my time and attention.
I think I got a fine deal. Hard on the pocket-book at the moment. But overall, I’m happier than I had been in the last 1.5 years with the ex when she got terminally mad.
And she’s still terminally mad. She likes to project this anger at me. But today I no longer have to take any of it. And I’m happy to be clear from that toxic situation.
Happy Independence Day!
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
NOTE: Image is not of my girlfriend. I don’t have a girlfriend. That is a “friend” from Facebook who lives 2,000 miles away. So there! But she’s an inspiration on many levels.
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
More Play Summer: Keeping Your Joy After Divorce
The concept that we learn most of our relationship patterns from our family of origin is fairly well documented. What we learn from Mom and Dad is either 1. what we want to do; or 2. what we don’t want to do. Often we are not clear on pulling the two different concepts apart. And more often, the connections are even more obscured by emotion or lifelong baggage.
Today, I had a moment of realization about my family of origin and the disastrous path my Dad and Mom took.
I walked down to the lake from my modest house. And the sign above reminded me, “Oh yeah, this needs to be a play more summer.” And I thought about my parents and our monstrous house on the lake. While my dad was successful in business, his relationship skills were limited and eventually destroyed by alcoholism. And what I missed, once my father moved out of the house (I was 5) was the time and space to play with and really get to know my Dad. Or, more importantly, know that he loved me. Somewhere deep in my heart, I’m still not sure of that one.
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Today, swimming in the lake, by myself I was noticing my life at this moment. Even as my kids are traveling on a summer vacation with my ex-y and her boyfriend, I am happy.
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My dad worked hard every day, and as part of his come down each night he would have a few toddies with the boys in the office next door. His success was limitless. His medical practice was thriving. He had just completed a stunning lake house and would drive his boat to the country club in the mornings and drive his car from there to work. It was a golden life. Well, you would think it should be.
But my dad was really mad about something. He was always mad. [Hmmm. This sounds a bit too familiar.] The anger of my father is legendary even among my friends. He was an ass all the time. And somehow he resented his own success because he had to keep working so hard to maintain it.
My mom said she made a proposition to my father one time early on, as the success was coming, but the stress was also growing with it. She offered to go with him, anywhere, take some time to enjoy the money he’d been making, get away from it all. He declined.
And in the real sense of the word, he declined from there, even as his financial success shot upward.
By the time my mom gave him the ultimatum, the drink or me and the kids, he was probably too far down his own destructive path to imagine that recovery was possible. And being a doctor, AA was out of the question. He insisted to me, years later, as I was a son pleading with him to get help for his drinking, “I don’t have a problem.”
Today, swimming in the lake, by myself I was noticing my life at this moment. While I’m struggling a bit financially, I’m sure that I will continue to pull up from the strained economy. And even as my kids are traveling on a summer vacation with my ex-y and her boyfriend, I am happy.
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My dad got on a trajectory of success and big money that would’ve been very hard to get off. My exit was easier, I was no longer willing to be shut out sexually from my wife.
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What I have, however, that is so different from my father, is a clear and loving relationship with both my daughter and my son. They KNOW how much I love them. They will never wonder if they are enough. I tell them all the time.
And I have made some choices to keep this clarity of purpose at the forefront of my life. I could work more. I could go back to Dell and slave it out at the corporate-level again. But in those two years, even as my life was following the life dream of many, I was unhappy.
It was “almost” enough to keep me there. I loved coming home to my wife and kids in the affluent neighborhood and knowing that I had provided for their well-being and support. But there was an imbalance.
My dad got on a trajectory of success and big money that would’ve been very hard to get off. My exit was easier, I was no longer willing to be shut out sexually from my wife, and I was also not willing to just jump into the next corporate job to make that fantasy picture come back together. It was a fantasy that was killing me, making me fat, separating me from time with my kids. I made a choice.
Today, swimming in a modest public park, I recognized the pressure my father must’ve been under and I said a little prayer that I learned from his early death, that possessions and wealth don’t bring you joy. And in the end, the pressure of those things may be what separates you from the most important things in your life, your family.
My father lost his family in his divorce. But he made choices to go down the alcoholic path. I have not made the same choices. And my hope is that my ex-wife will find some joy in life, some relief from the constant anger that seemed (sometime it still seems) to be aimed at me. I am certain I was not my father’s issue. In the same way I am certain I was not my ex-y’s anger problem either.
We each have to grow and evolve as individuals. We have no choice. I think I have evolved into a more caring and more dedicated father that my father could be. And today in the lake, I gave thanks to my health, love, and awareness.
More. Play. Summer.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
related posts:
- Evolving Single Dad: Failure to Hopefulness Again
- What I Need To Tell You: Take Heart. It Gets Better.
- Happy Mom Chat About How I Got Here: What I Figured Out
- Creative Parenting and the Gifts of Enthusiastic Participation
resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
A Son’s Sadness on Father’s Day
Poking his sister in the head and pulling her hair were natural acts for my 12-yo son. And today at my Father’s Day brunch, things were no different. Except when my mom asked each kid to tell one thing they liked about their dad. I was supposed to tell something I like about “being” their dad. And my mom was going to tell what she liked about watching me be a dad.
A simple father’s day request, over brunch. My mom set up the question, my daughter went first.
“I like how my dad is always positive and supportive of us. And that he’s not like our cousin’s dad.”
Ah yes, easy to be a great dad when contrasted with a devil dad.
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And with that, my son, who had taken extra time to come up with his appreciation, slumped into a tearful silence. He couldn’t go next.
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My mom went next. “I love seeing how you support and love your children in everything they do. And how much they know you love them.”
Okay. All good there.
So I went next, as we were going around the table like a card game.
“I really love how each of my kids are excelling in their creative pursuits, both musical and non-musical. I am amazed by how creative each of you are.”
And with that, my son, who had taken extra time to come up with his appreciation, slumped into a tearful silence. He couldn’t go next.
My mom got uncomfortable and tried to ease off him and change the subject. I asked that we just give him some time to recover. That it was okay for him to be feeling some emotion. My mom gave me a worried look. He was fine. I did wonder what he was feeling so deeply at that moment. Was it connected with something I said?
He took some time. And the rest of us moved on and talked about various things. But I came back to him when he seemed to have regained composure.
“Not to completely let you off the hook,” I said. “Surely you can think of one good thing to say about me.” We smiled at each other. He was back.
He spoke clearly, “I like it when you try to help, even on things that you can’t help on. You still try.”
I liked it. I added, “Anything specific, right now, that I’m not helping on?” I smiled big at him, letting him know I was open for anything, but also teasing a little about anything I might be missing on.
“No,” he said. “Nothing comes to mind.”
It’s hours later, and the kids are back at the ex-y’s and I’m still trying to decipher what he was saying. And of course my interpretation is only MINE. I will have to wait until Thursday, when they are back with me, to see if I can gain any insight into what he was trying to communicate.
As I was coming home several things came to mind that would’ve made me sad at his age. AGAIN, these are about ME and MY DAD, and MY PARENTS divorce, but I only have my own story to reference.
- Sad that he’s not able to be with me all the time, or that we are separated so much of the time.
- Expressing his understanding that the divorce was not my idea, and that I tried to keep it from happening.
- Sad that the rest of his life isn’t as positive when I’m not around.
I don’t know.
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My dad didn’t die until I was 20 years old, but he was unavailable to me the moment he walked out of the house when I was about six.
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My son is a bit on the quiet side, when it comes to talking about emotions. (Duh, he’s twelve.) But in tender moments I stay close and don’t exit or let him exit either. I want to dig into this moment with him and see if I can get at any of *his* sadness and help him make sense of it.
In my parent’s divorce my dad exited in a big way. He was an alcoholic and when the divorce happened he went even further into his disease and married another alcoholic. They drank themselves to death.
My dad was unable to show any emotional connections except when he would get sloppy drunk and morbidly sad about the divorce. I recall him crying to Charlie Prides, “The Most Beautiful Girl” more than once. But that’s what alcoholics do. They suffer the self-pity of their own self-destruction and then drink more to make it less painful, and thus make it worse.
When the cancer treatments forcibly sobered up my dad, and he was dying, I finally got a chance to say to him how much I loved him. And he was able to hear me.
A few months before his last trip to the hospital, he was living at a golf resort about an hour from town. I spent the weekend with him. We watched tv, played cards, and had a few meals together. Nothing much.
As I was leaving to go back to town on Sunday morning, he said, “We haven’t gotten to do too much of this. And I want to do it more.”
“Yes, Dad. I’d love to be with you as much as I can.”
His last entry into the hospital he lost consciousness pretty quickly. He hung on for a week, but it was merely time for us to sit beside the bed, cry, and hold his limp hand as the machines hissed and beeped.
I am present for my kids. The divorce did not take me away from them, but it does limit the amount of time we have together. And as I continue to heal and get distance from my divorce, I am aware of how important my close and solid connection is with them. It’s the most important thing I do.
This father’s day, I give thanks to being a dad. And sharing those last days with my dad that remind me how precious every moment with them is. My dad didn’t die until I was 20 years old, but he was unavailable to me the moment he walked out of the house when I was about six. He drank himself into nightly stupors, first alone and then married. Already my kids have got a much better deal. Not ideal, but okay, survivable.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
And tonight…
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
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Got my dad by my side – A video of Peter Gabriel and his dad by Peter’s daughter Anna Gabriel.
Winning the Battle, Losing the War: Divorce and Co-parenting
She’s ready to turn my month-and-a-half-late ass over to the Attorney General’s office. (See: Sting) She let me know yesterday via email. And as I was responding via email, I think I identified and called out the crux of the issue.
Perhaps this can provide some illumination into my thinking. It’s not that I’m late, it’s not that she needs this money right this second. It seems to be the “principle of the thing.” And what I understood while writing this message to her, was how closely this situation echoes much of the trouble in our relationship. These actions closely resemble the actions and misunderstandings that led to the divorce.
I don’t think it’s about the money. I don’t think it’s about her fears that I won’t ever pay or get caught up. (I’ve never failed before.) I think it’s about having someone to focus your anger on. Whatever is wrong with her world, I am still at the center of her problems. Now, I don’t believe this. I didn’t believe it in the closing moments of our relationship. As I asked her, “Do you think you are suddenly going to be a happy person when I walk out the door?” She didn’t GET HAPPY.
And she’s still unhappy with me. And of course, I am to blame for her unhappiness, because she’s owed this money, and she might never see it, and… WAIT. In what universe? Like I’ve got an option to bolt on my child support? NO.
So if it’s not the child support, really. Well, I think it’s easier to see from here. Let me know if I’ve got something wrong. I’m prepared to hear that my logic and emotional truth is OFF on this one. But it felt so right when I wrote it, that I knew I had to continue the drama from yesterday.
And with this letter, I’m setting in action the process that will remove “money” and “timing” and “enforcement” from our vocabulary.
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Dear ___,
I am certain that I don’t know your situation. And I’m not sure it has any bearing on my options.
I did not run out of money. And I am not trying to keep you in the dark about my situation. My company shifted to NET 15 on me. Instantly changing my cash flow. And, of course things happen (car repair, computer loss) that can compound the situation. That’s all that has changed on my end. A couple new clients in the pipe for both my company and me personally, SHOULD open things up again.
Your responses to the information I have been able to give you is, “that’s not good enough.”
And yesterday you basically said you’d rather have the AG’s office sort it out for us. For the next 8 years! Wow.
So that’s what you’re gonna get. It’s fucked. And there is no way to unplug once we’ve entered the system.
Therefore, my responsible duty is to recalculate what your are owed, what you got in credit based on my projected income. I’m guessing it’s a bit more than half, averaged-out since we’ve been divorced. So you can re-run all your calculations based on that idea and see where you end up.
My preferred approach was to honor the expectation, even as it affected me quite adversely. In the name of being nice, giving you everything I hoped to give you, that is what I was trying to communicate to you.
But it feels like some macabre redo of our divorce. Me asking, “Are you sure this is what you want?”
Want to calculate the money based on reality? Want to bring the AG in to help you?
Done! And done!
My “thank you” response yesterday was genuine. You are forcing me (again) to look at an unhealthy relationship. I am being given an opportunity to clean up my own shit. And, with the help of the state, I will gladly disconnect from the cash flow crisis mode one of us seems to benefit from.
I hope this process will allow us to remain friendly and cordial with our coparenting. All of us benefit from being flexible. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure the AG’s process is setup to fight against flexibility. And maybe it will help us keep our business to parenting.
You will now be able to call your case worker and explore “collection” and “enforcement” options with them. Hope that serves you.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
Breaking Up and Getting Over It: Someday We’ll Know
Tonight was one of those nights when you see your ex, and you think, “Thank god I have been released.”
It’s not that she’s suddenly become unattractive. Or that she’s doing a bad job at being a co-parent. (Hammering me for money is another thing altogether.) But there’s a hardness that I hadn’t noticed before. She’s gotten too thin. And kinda mean looking. (This is not meant to be a rag, sorry.)
She also looks very professional, and I am grateful that she seems to be thriving in her current job. As we no longer combine forces, she no longer has my sympathies, but I respect her hard work. She’s always been a dedicated worker.
But tonight, watching our son perform in orchestra, I was glad she came to sit next to me and then decided, “I need to be closer where I can see,” to move towards the front. I had a nice side view of her intense face. She was staring into her phone. (Seems to have become more and more the mode for her.) Perhaps she was exchanging chats with her lover. Perhaps racy emails with her girlfriends. Who knows. But what I saw was complete disinterest in what we were doing at the school. It was a checkbox. A task that needed to be completed at the end of the school year, like so many other tasks. And it was the last event that was keeping her from her night with her lover, before a weekend where SHE HAS THE KIDS.
It really must be odd, and I don’t know the feeling, of wanting to be elsewhere when your kids are around.
My daughter said something tonight, about how there was never any food in the house. “L the babysitter always goes to the store for dinner stuff, and there’s never any leftovers.” Now, my daughter, who was saying this, has a tendency to be dramatic. But she was sharing a glimpse into the life that my ex has constructed.
I know it well. When she got on the work train, while we were married, there were many times when it was assumed I would feed, read, and put the kids to bed. I was being her “wife.” Well, I was grateful again, that she was employed. And I would do whatever I could to make a nice house, a nice leftover plate for her, and a bunch of smiling (from bed) kids for her to return home to.
And, god knows, there were even more times when she was performing this type of 100% parenting for me, while I was working late. But there was some different tone about the entire thing.
For me, it was more acceptable. Like the man at work, the wife at home making dinner. While I spent a number of years at a large corporation, it was a lot easier for her to work less than full-time, and spend a lot of extra time with the kids, at their school, doing projects at home.
When she was working late, by contrast, it was kind of dramatic. Like there was some great urgency that was keeping her at the office. And some sense that it was quite unfair for her to have to be working so hard.
WAIT A MINUTE!
That was MY INTERNAL VOICE saying those things. It’s dawning on me — right this very minute — the resentment I was feeling was not about her attitude, it was about mine! WTF? Seriously? I should have been the one working late, not her. If I had been a better provider, she wouldn’t have to work so hard.
Maybe she played into my shame, a little. I don’t know. But I can now see this was MY SHIT, not hers.
I’m wondering if my scoffing at her taut looks tonight is also a product of my shame. I’m asking myself, “Sour grapes?’
I don’t think so. BUT, she was the best thing I’d ever had up to that point. She stayed with me through the toughest times in both our lives. And then she gave up on me.
No, for that I won’t be forgiving her. For the release from a sexless and joyless marriage, I have to thank her. I won’t be putting up with that again either. Ever.
And that’s the wonderful thing about the story. Even if I don’t know the ending, what I do know is the possibility is out there. GF #1 showed me what it feels like to really be adored. I CAN HAVE THAT AGAIN. And I actually deserve it.
In the discussions with women, of our age, about who they are meeting in their dating lives, what I get is that most people our age are cynical and bitter. I am always complimented on my POSITIVE ATTITUDE. “You’re so positive.” or “So much positive energy.”
It’s not exactly the same thing as irresistible, but I’ll take positive right now. And that’s the side I’m showing my kids.
The ex also asked me if I would let the kids know about the money shortage as well. As if she needed me to fess up to my own contribution to whatever struggles they were having about “stuff.” I spoke to them tonight about my current situation. I said we could not go to the BBQ place for dinner, because I didn’t have the money for it, and I had plenty of food at home.
“Why don’t you have any money?” my son asked. It was just a point-blank question, no real emotional inflection.
“I have three clients that owe me money right now. And it’s not like I don’t have any money, it’s just that when things get low, I really don’t spend money on stuff like eating out when I have food at home.”
That satisfied both of them. My daughter, who has become somewhat obsessed with Starbucks, was quiet.
I am positive. I am certain I will continue to dig out of the financial hole the divorce and my subsequent low-times wreaked on me. All systems are go, the work is ahead, the clients are happy. (Affirmation: no low-times this summer.)
And I am positive I will find a more compatible mate. Now that we have this kid thing sorted out, there is only the relationship between me and this new person to sort out. I don’t need anything from them but adoration and the opportunity to adore them back.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
related posts:
- My Divorce: A Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory
- Waiting for the Other Person to Change
- Love, War, Divorce: Why I’m Not Fighting My Ex-Wife About Custody
- Divorce is Not About What’s Fair, Let’s Get That Straight
- Getting Angry, Reaching Forgiveness, and Moving On After Divorce
resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
image: creative commons usage – medusa
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Someday We’ll Know – The New Radicals
Me, Deadbeat Dad? Um… (Problems with Custody and Child Support)
I cannot seem to get a handle on the triggers for the ex-y’s money demands. I know they often happen on Sunday nights. Perhaps she’s paying bills, or just planning for the week ahead, and up comes the check box, GET MORE MONEY.
I understand. I understand all to well. But… This message from her, in a typical escalation of demands involving the words “collections” and “attorney”:
“The frame is that we have to pay kids expenses before we cover our houses and cars and bills. I am paying my part. I won’t sell this house to pay your part while you take the stance that your child support stands in line behind Wells Fargo.”
Um, it’s actually backwards in my book. Of course she’s not struggling to meet Wells Fargo’s demands, she’s talking about the incidentals, the nice to haves, the keeping up with the standard of living we have come to expect. And thus out kids have come to expect.
Hello! The facts are clear. And I stated them when she first demanded a divorce. “We can hardly afford one house in this neighborhood, do you think we’re going to be able to afford two?”
Of course, the truth is, she didn’t. She expected SHE would be able to stay in the beautiful house in the beautiful neighborhood with greenbelts and tennis courts. She didn’t care too much about what I was going to do. She still doesn’t.
But the reality is we cover our housing and food needs before the incidentals.
Another thing she doesn’t seem to factor in, she’s got zero debt (I took the CC debt) and she’s got in excess of 30k in retirement funds (much of it paid in while I was the one bringing in the excess income that afforded our 100% contribution) AND she has the house that easily has 60k in equity after costs.
She was going to sell it. At the end of last year. She decided not to, claiming it was easier not to have to gamble on our daughter being transfered to a different elementary school. Probably the move could’ve been averted with a petition to the school board.
For what ever reason (maybe she’s going to get married soon and they want to get a house together) she’s decided that she’s done “affording” the kids what they need because I can’t pay.
What I keep saying, “It’s a delay, not a default.” But she doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t have to hear it. And she doesn’t care.
I guess in the eyes of the law I am in default, I am a deadbeat dad, who is two months behind on his child support. And when she rattles the Attorney General’s office or the threat of lawyering up, I laugh. I can’t do anything else.
“You are in default on child support. It’s your responsibility to give ideas and plans for how to cover your part of their expenses. You can’t opt-out of supporting your kids, and telling me you won’t tell me any information about support moving forward is opting out. “
What I keep trying to say is:
“Whatever. You’re escalating again. My frame is we pay for shelter and food then other stuff.
I’ve given you every bit of information I have. If that is defaulting to you, so be it. I am delayed in my ability to pay. That’s quite different than defaulting or you needing to hire help to “collect.”
All I can give you, still is an agreement to pay 100% of my share and a willingness to give you all information as I have it.”
It’s never enough. In fact, in our marriage, it was never enough. She’s not going to be happy with me even if I was paying extra. But she’s happy to point the daggar at me and threaten me. She doesn’t have to be nice.
But am I a deadbeat dad? Am I failing my kids?
Maybe so, if you consider that child support of a woman in an affluent neighborhood in a nice house without debt should be paid before my mortgage company and electric bill. I guess without a house I could go live with my sister again. But the only relief selling my house would bring is about two months of catch up. What about the next 8 years?
I’m not aware that this pattern is something that is very familiar to me. Women giving up on me.
I won’t stand for it. I cannot pay her incidentals (summer camps, new shoes, fancy clothes) before I pay for my own shelter. I’ve never indicated that I would not catch up. But I am also not responsible for her cash flow issues.
She wants to plan a trip to DC with the kids. Great. She wants to buy plane tickets in advance. Great.
I want to keep my house, keep the lights on, and occasionally be able to take a date to dinner.
Here’s what I have to keep repeating. “I am making enough money to catch up over the summer on everything.”
Beyond that, it’s drama and escalation There’s no reason I have to buy into that, and no reason I should start feeling bad about myself and my deadbeat approach to a difficult situation.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
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lyrics from Helpless by Sugar
Another time time after time
You make me feel so helpless I
I never tried to change your mind
I keep it to myself it’s
Sometimes I’ve got to tell you
Is it this time I’ll tell you
We’ve got to go to places
Somewhere I don’t mind it’s special
And now you find as time goes by
You’re left with nothing
Meaning much
The meaning I will have to try
To take your mind to places
I wish that I could help you
But you seem less than helpless
I always tried to tell you
Someday that it’d seem so special
Time after time what’s on your mind
You make me feel so helpless I
You never tried what’s on your mind
You make me feel so helpless I
I feel so helpless I
You’re left alone with something
And I hope for you it’s one thing
That something you and yours can
Hold and hold as something special
And now you find as time goes by
You’re left with nothing meaning much
The meaning I will have to try
What’s on your mind so helpless I
I feel so helpless I
The Drama of Divorce and Money: The Deadbeat Dad Myth
I’ve got my largest two-week consulting check coming in, ever. Problem is, it should’ve arrived on Saturday. AND my car stopped running properly on Saturday. AND my ex-y asked for “timing” advice last night. And my client said, “We will get it in the mail this week, sorry we were on Spring Break.”
There is no doubt that cash flow problems hit us all. And I will also admit that I am not very good at mapping bills and expenses to income, especially when things get tight. And sometimes they get so tight…
So the drama between the ex-y and I continues. Except for the drama on her side is really for show, for frustration, for antagonism. No, I take that back. She’s not even interested in upsetting me. She would get no benefit from that. But she is not required to take my situation into consideration, nor does she. I’d use the word narcistic if it weren’t a bad word. Self-centered would probably fit more appropriately.
The part I don’t get, when her wants and desires become the priority in her life, over, let’s say, our kids lives. Let me give a few examples.
Within a month of our divorce being finalized, she was sleeping with a plumber who’d worked on her house. Not that there’s anything wrong with plumbers, but this one had rebound, revenge, self-centered written all over it. A friend told me about it. I was furious. Oops, my bad. I was supposed to be detaching. And of course she had tightened down her chastity belt so tight, I guess her sexual needs could not be contained. All I can say about the plumber was, thank goodness we’d put a 6-month chill clause in our divorce decree before either of us could introduce a significant other to the kids. I asked her, “What example is he going to set for our kids?” Again, nothing against plumbers, but as the next pseudo-father of my kids, I was aiming a little higher. I understand it’s not my decision, but I have some hopes that he will be a creatively intellectual individual that my kids will admire and aspire to be more like. Again, I never met the man with the dragon tattoo. He may very well have been the Michael Angelo of plumbing.
Another misqueue in my opinion (a problem with that right there, I really don’t have a right to an opinion) was all the times I’d check-in with my kids on a weekend and they’d have a babysitter. Again, I don’t even pretend to imagine the different experience of the world and making a living, between men and women, but it certainly wasn’t sexual companionship she was looking for. She was in the immediate hunt for my replacement as a provider. She was panicked about being alone. (Part of the reason I didn’t want the house, too many ghosts around if the kids weren’t there.) But deeper, I’m guessing, was her fear of not being able to make it alone.
Again, I am speaking about something I know nothing about. I know about money woes. I know about companionship. But I also know that MY healing comes from time alone, feeling the feelings, and working things out. First with myself. Then with another person. She was aggressively trying to fill my spot before she really had to do the work of understanding why it was empty.
So I paid a few weeks late on last months child support, and she made a big deal about how much she needs the money, how dependent she is on my support checks. But it’s bullshit. It’s the clear and present danger in HER mind, but she’s only thinking about herself.
Let’s see: 1. she’s got a house that is worth at least 100k more than her mortgage; 2. she’s got over 25k in retirement accounts; 3. she’s got me paying almost all of her mortgage every month. Where is the money crisis in that?
I think of Bill Hader’s drama-queen character. The kids and I watched a couple SNL skits last night before bed. And in this one, Hader played a fireman who was still not over a relationship that had ended over nine years ago. He simply screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
It was a fitting metaphor for my ex-y’s behavior.
1. She knew I was struggling to get last month’s payment to her; 2. She’s working on her own budget for the week/month/year; 3. Like a bill collector, she’s asking when is she getting the next payment and “how can we set this up so it doesn’t affect me and the kids each month?”
Good question, that last one. I’m thinking this is the answer: “Get the fk off my ass for $1600. You are NOT in crisis. You are connecting your emotional vulnerability to the payments from me. They are NOT the same thing. You have plenty of money. I am paying as best I can. Saying “thank you so much” and the bringing the enforcer ask right after is not caring, it’s manipulative. Unfortunately, it’s also transparent.
I won’t answer her with this vitriol. It would do no good.
So as I do with the mortgage demands that start coming in the day after the payment is due, I ignore them. She is a detail and a bill collector. She does not have feelings, nor should she need to, about me and my money. It’s just business.
And fk that. I’m a person. I’m also worthy of respect. And before you hammer me about “when is the next check coming in?” please check your balance sheet and know that YOU ARE OKAY. You’re security and joy does not depend on my money. Never did. And I will support you as long as the law demands it and the kids are in school. I am 100% committed to that.
Let’s not forget that she started threatening to turn the process over to the Texas Attorney General’s office and Child Support Division a few months ago. She’s just working to get me with the program. Not a very compassionate approach, but I’m not part of her drama unless she can make me part of it.
But this week, when the check comes in. I’m going to pay last months mortgage payment. And a few other bills that have significant weight. Yours no longer carries that priority. And your drama-infused demands no longer have the power to affect me. (To be honest, they still can rile me up. This post is an example.) I will pay you, as I have for 2.5 years. We’ve got approximately 8 to go. And if you continue to scream “oh my god” in your emails to me, I’ll just start putting you in the spam folder with Wells Fargo. They are going to get their money too. Everybody is going to get their money.
Now we need to relax and pay attention to the things that are more important than paying bills or finding a boyfriend/girlfriend. It’s time to wake the kids over here and get them ready for school. And that’s an activity worth my priority and attention. Your self-imagined money crisis is not.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
Reference:
Sittin Here on Valentine’s Day
Sittin here on Valentine’s Day, watchin the comings and goings in my local neighborhood up-scale coffee and wine bar. And I notice her, getting out of a white 535i. She’s wearing her yoga pants, has her dark hair in an athletic pony tail, and bounces out of the car and heads for her sandwich pickup. There is a “guest” sticker on her warmup top, where she’s just come from her kid’s Valentine’s day party. She’s proud, happy, pretty, and it’s a sunny day. All good.
Except there’s something stuck in my craw. What’s the path that creates these young entitled goddesses? And why when I am walking the grocery, in same up-scale neighborhood HEB, do I long after their rocket bodies and astral attitudes? I think of the Mathew Sweet song, “But does she talk?”
So I long for them. But I also have a bitterness about them. And I want them. And they represent the affluence I aspired to when I was married. But there they are, and here I am. And something about their entire life path seems trivial to me. AND… Truth is, I know nothing about them, their marriage, their career, their path in life. I know about things.
- They are young and beautiful. (is this the rub?)
- They have ample money and ample free time. (Don’t we all wish for this?)
- They love their children.
What is it about this culture that has me lusting after these young bodies and beautiful smiles? And what same culture has me bitter (just a little) about my path in life and the fact that I didn’t get to accomplish the financial prowess of my father. (Yeah, but how did that end up for him?)
So, this sweet young thing, hops back to her $50,000 BMW and buzzes off to what’s next in her life. And I know nothing about her. But I want to be her… what? Her husband? (Um, a bit too worried for that.) Her lover? (What would I do with her once the sex was done?) I want to be her… DAD? I’d love to be able to provide the life for my daughter that I would’ve hoped to have provided for my now ex-y.
There is some double standard going on, that has many of us a bit confused.
If they are too pretty or too successful or too… something. They are either spoiled brats or kept trophy wives. It’s MY sickness. It’s our culture’s sickness.
Aspire to a woman with a great body and a great mind. Pray, exercise, work, improve. But when you seen HER, the IT GIRL. We are angry with her, not desirous of them. HUH?
Sittin here on Valentine’s day, I’m sitting in judgement of other peoples lives, wives, successes, fortunes. And I’ll drop it here and rise above it. But I wanted to express and capture a moment of my own confusion, and acknowledge the conflicting culture we live in. And then I can clearly state, I DON’T LIKE JEGGINS.
So happy single day, to my single friends. And happy Valentine’s Day to those who have significant others. And I’ll focus on my 10 yo daughter today and get my mind out of the BWM and LuLu Lemons. But I’m aware there is a problem.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to On Dating Again index
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
she is silenced in my back pocket
[from The Black Pages – poetry]
she means nothing
now
she has taken everything
and given me nothing
except my silence
and wings and self
so i fly now without
a copilot
but i do still fly
and she is silenced in my back pocket
because I cannot stand her
beauty and sadness
and her voice
provides images and reflections
of loss
and new silences
depths i’ve never explored
near death
crashes
like sunken treasures
of my soul
she is silenced in my back pocket
as she has chosen
someone else’s hand
but she is always
she is forever
she means nothing
in little details
of who i am yet to become
what will fill the space
left from her leaving
i am throwing things out now
recycling books, memories, hurts
i am looking for perfection
again
this time
she gave me the heir
and the dowry
and each drop of blood
is mixed with her
and she will never leave
she is already gone
a call i can no longer take
a request
i am not ready to entertain
her
again
just this moment
she can be silenced
just for this moment
i return to peace
her buzzing
stops and dings
a siren
reminder
request
emergency that can wait
january 2013
Alone is Different Than Aloneliness After Divorce
There are hundreds of times during the day that I miss my kids. (The ex, not so much.) And on the days when they are not coming home to MY HOUSE, well… I can choose to be sad about those days, or…
Alone I have all options open to me. My time is my own. While I still have to make money (and now, supporting two households, it’s even more than it was when I was still married) the time back, the time I would never have been able to negotiate during my marriage, is a great thing. When I’m up, that is.
When I’m down, all time away from my kids is sad time. However, I understand that a whole bunch of that is MY SADNESS, and probably has very little to do with my kids or my divorce.
When I’m DOWN, alone-ness is hard. The things I try to remember are:
- It ends, I will feel better
- If I can exercise, even walking around the block, it is better than moping
- Eating is essential, and eating better is even more critical when you are self-medicating
- I’m better off not sharing this deep and existential pain with my kids (they will have plenty of time to learn about it for themselves, and they can read my writing about it, LATER.)
- Getting enough sleep is essential
- Laughing (movies, games, social media) is good medicine for the mind
- Waking up at your normal time (not sleeping in unless you are sick) and shaving and taking a shower is good for your body and mind
When I’m UP, well, there’s no lack of projects and activities that I want to get to. I do have to reign in a few things in my UP mode as well.
- Getting enough sleep is essential (staying up one night in an inspirational fit is okay, two nights is a problem)
- I still have to do my WORK and pay my BILLS (those things often bring me out of my dream-like creative state, but they must be done)
- I have to prioritize my time (all play and no work, all fresh air and growth work without any billable hours will get me into trouble pretty quickly)
So today, Sunday, I am still balancing the creative big ideas and the need to get a few hours of work done before Monday morning. And that new guitar sitting over there looking quite pretty and seductive, will have to wait until I get my Dec. hours billed.
I’m alone, but not lonely. And I’m grateful for that. And that I know the difference has had a huge impact on my approach to the feelings of Alone-ness vs. Aloneliness.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to The Hard Stuff pages
related posts:
- Losing Touch In the Off Times
- Check Engine Light: How Long Until Repairs Are Forced By a Breakdown?
- How Much Longer Until I Feel Better? (Post-divorce Depression)
- Followed by the Black Dog (of depression)
resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
image: loneliness, ktoine, creative commons usage
Happy New Year, Ex-Husband, I Need More Money
The first day of the new year hadn’t cooled before my ex-y was laying down the law, making spreadsheets and requests for more money. It was a lot like how she was in our marriage. But I was just a bit too fresh to my new year, celebrating that I wasn’t hungover or depressed, to respond in a loving way. (“It’s just about the kids.”)
I tried deflecting the conversation.
She responded with more heat.
I took a different approach.
Another hot response.
And here’s where I had the ability to end it. And I did. I laid down my boundaries. “I will make my payments as scheduled for January. If you want to send me the spreadsheet of extra expenses you are asking me to pay, you can pause the send until February and you’ll get a better response.”
Fact One: One of the reasons we’re no longer married is our hardship in navigating such emotional and murky waters.
Fact Two: I have an obligation that I agreed to in the divorce contract. Some days I feel like it’s too much money, or that it’s unfair. Other days, like today – even, I am optimistic about my prospects and I let it roll off the proverbial back. Like a duck.
Fact Three: I can set my boundaries in a different way than I was able to do while we were married. We ARE still in a relationship, that won’t end, but I don’t have to jump and scramble to her urgency to solve this issue today, tonight, the first day of the new year.
I’m not real clear about how much “stuff” I’m still carrying into this negotiation. So for now, a PAUSE is best. I can take a breath. Stretch my mind and heart with some yoga or chat with someone else. But I don’t have to give her an answer this minute. I don’t have to give her the answer she wants.
She said something quite insiteful in one of her responses. (paraphrased) “This is not about you and me. It’s about taking care of what our kids need.”
Yes, she’s right. The request is about a summer camp tuition for our daughter. The issue will be solved. We will pay for her to go to camp. But today, with my finances still a bit out of whack, I don’t have to answer.
Did money play a huge role in the stress of our marriage and eventual divorce? Absolutely. Was the economic recession after 911 the hardest economic times for most people? Yes, and we’re still digging back out. Do we have to deal with money issues with drama or crisis-like urgency? Nope. Not gonna do it.
I have the pause button. Not to abuse or neglect her efforts to do what is right by our kids. She is not doing this to be angry, nor to attack me. It’s a difficult negotiation and discussion that we will have plenty of times over the next 10 years or more. And the best response for me is to step back, not poke out a hurtful reply, and regroup. We can try again tomorrow.
I’m learning this.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
Note: Writing this post in the heat of the moment, I needed to step back and look at my intention. Here’s what I came up with.
This blog is not written to my ex-y. While she knows about it, my guess is that she stays clear of reading it. So, I’m not writing TO her, or intentionally trying to communicate to her through the blog. It is only with this distinction that I feel I can write from the hot core, rather than skim over the surface so as not to hurt any feelings.
Oh, “that” Conversation Comes Up – Post-Divorce Holidays
It happened last night. The “big” conversation. It wasn’t that I was trying to avoid it, but I didn’t really prepare for it. What can you do? Be open and honest.
She, the “girlfriend,” was asking about the balance in our relationship. She was/is/has been expressing her desire and affection for me. She was curious if I was enjoying our relationship for something more than affection, comfort, sex, and closeness.
Huh?
Okay, I knew what she was asking. In a subtle way, she’s been asking all along, “Do you love me?” Not directly, that’s not what she was asking, but she wasn’t hearing the words she was seeking when she professed her affection for me.
I tried to explain:
“I’m unpacking a lot of old baggage. You are helping me un-armor and open up. And we connect on so many levels. I am certain that I don’t know the answer to what you are asking, but I am giving you all of my available time, I’m not looking for another relationship, I am here.”
She retreated to the familiar, “It’s okay. I mean, I know you like me a lot.”
And I didn’t say this, “That is enough. That is all I have.”
We’ve been “dating” for 95 days. And it is Christmas. Her first Christmas post-divorce. This is my third. And I’m damn happy. Well, I’m not 100% happy. I’m still missing my kids deeply. But I’m confident that they are in an okay place with their mom, and they will be excited to see and be with me starting tomorrow at 2pm. (Christmas Day.)
And she may be right when she says that she’s my “healing relationship.” And I’m okay with that. But what I do know, is that I have very few “adult” experiences of being with another person.
We are equals. She doesn’t need me. We have good solid lives. We enjoy time together. And we make plans to spend as much time together as possible.
What more is there, at this point in our trajectory? Anything else would be jumping the gun, in my opinion. And I’m certainly not stepping in to fill her Christmas sadness. I can’t. I don’t want to. And I won’t. She’s got to work that out on her own. I will be there. I will hold her. And I will be with her and her kids tonight, Christmas eve. (Because I can’t be with mine!)
And we will be boyfriend and girlfriend.
And that’s enough, for now.
Sincerely,
The Off Parent
< back to On Dating Again index
Resources:
- The Divorce Library (reading list)
- Songs of Divorce (free listening library – youtube sourced songs)
- Laugh It Off (building a resource library of funny videos and other diversions)
- Facebook (follow us on Facebook and keep up with all the conversations)
- The 5 Love Languages (a book on love styles by Gary Chapman)
