i can’t even breathe and i wasn’t there and i’m not you and they aren’t my boys. but, i really felt your pain there.

i have to tell you… i am 35. my parents are youngish – just turned 56, both of them. i’ve always felt proud (or maybe i was trying to convince myself as i look back) about how they managed to stay married. after 33 years, my dad left my mom. at 33, i struggled with it. at 33, i felt stuck between them and i didn’t have to live with either of them. and even still, i have felt like i’ve had to “choose” or rather to take sides.

but i now also have the benefit of being a parent and knowing the love for your child. and knowing, beyond a doubt that any truly loving parent (and, as sexist as it sounds, it’s true: especially a mama) would 99.9% of the time put their children before themselves. but then there’s that minuscule fraction that taunts – the one that lurks, clings to you, guilts you. no matter how many GOOD choices you make for your kids, you can’t seem to push past that one time that you might have, could have, should have done something different. why is that!?

i’m a fighter (ugh, i hate this about myself. it’s one of the very ugly things i see in my dad that i just pray i do not press the way he has), but i am also a mama bear by nature. so my initial instinct, of course, was GOOD FOR YOU! he’s rude, i have read enough to see that. i have read enough to know that it seems as though he does things to get under your skin just for the sake of getting under your skin. and then it also seems like he does things because he thinks that he can get away with it.

but, then, my heart ached for dear boo. how uncomfortable for him. how awkward. so i see your struggle. and what would i have done? i don’t know. probably exactly what you did. and then later question myself, asking others if i was wrong, worrying for days on end that i harmed my boy in some way larger than i can actually see. but – had you NOT said something… had you let him stay there, through the discomfort, especially while knowing that boo was uncomfortable too… what message would THAT have given boo? that’s the difficulty, my new friend. no matter what we do – we never feel completely confident in that choice. no matter what we do – we feel guilty.

i hope that you’re feeling better about it. i hope that you’ve been able to snuggle boo and that he knows that this is the ugly truth of adult relationships sometimes. the beauty of it, fe – is that he also knows that the beautiful truth, a fact he can always count on, is that you love him. through and through.

You do what you have to do, there is no right, no wrong. You just do what you have to do.

Sometimes, you will have to put yourself in front of your kids. Because if you do no, there will be no strength left in you FOR your kids.

It’s a toughie. Would I do exactly the same thing again?

No.

Do I regret doing it? Yes, because it gave Boo such a contradictory message… the opposite of the words that I usually say. Yes because DH has escalated it since. No, because I actually stood up to him for once.

What will I do next time? Either nothing, or send Boo away before talking to him, or move myself.

Do I regret posting about it?

Hell no!

xoxox

I go to a great family counselor who said “If you want something to turn out a certain way, do not rely on anyone else’s behavior other than your own.” Next time, giggle a little and whisper to Boo ‘lets move, I can’t see very well’ and just get up and move with no conversation with DH. Boo will know whats going on, but you gave him an out……..

That sucks, how he deals the kids. I SO believe in Karma, and if it makes you feel any better, I haven’t gotten any child support for a year and a half.

Chin up! We are strong Mother Bears

I am in no position to say what I would or would not have done. I guess this is the damn ugly truth of divorce – that when you have children together it is not and never will be a total severance from each other. There will always be school concerts, meetings, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and all the rest that goes with life.

There is not one person among us who does not see what you are going through with DH as awful, tricky and emotionally very taxing.

I do know, having been in the front row seats of my own parents divorce and having done myriad research since into the best ways of minimising the negative ramifications of a parental break-up that the most damaging thing to happen to a child in the midst of it all is to have one parent bad-mouth the other. I guess it is that scenario of the kid coming from a home where there is violence but who stays/still goes back – they are their parents and they love them come what may.

I am only glad I never had to walk that ridiculously fine line my Mum did between comforting me when I’d come off the phone from a particularly awful conversation with my Dad or another awful weekend with him and simply denigrating him for the careless, thoughtless, selfish person he was all those years ago.

Sometimes life deals us a dud hand and sometimes it is totally unfair and all the rest, but my Mum, despite everything my dad did to her and to us (from physical violence to not paying any maintenance or the school fees and the rest) never said a bad word about him. Ultimately my Dad dug himself a big hole with a letter to me at around the age of 16, the result of which I did not speak to him for 6 months.

My relationship with my Dad has seen some very low lows and never any real highs but our relationship is our own. Even as an adult when we first moved in with Mum (and even now) I found it very confronting and very very conflicting when Mum would say something derogatory about Dad. And that was as someone in their late 20s.

What am I trying to say – I guess that I totally understand your actions and that you are always coming from a base of doing the best for the boys, but at the end of the day the relationship he has with them is his. Let him fuck it up on his own.

I know Boo said he was uncomfortable but he has to find his own peace with that – there’s no easy path to it, I still feel tense when my Mum and Dad are in the same room (and their divorce happened about 25 years ago!) – at the end of the day there’s going to be a load more school concerts and events when Boo is going to have you both there because – irrespective of what we think his motives are – DH is their Dad.

Should you have asked him to move or should you have said something along the lines of ‘due to the fact we’re still in court I don’t think it’s appropriate we sit so close to each other, so I’m just going to move to the other aisle’? Who knows. There is no right answer in these situations Fe. You can beat yourself up about it or accept that was how you handled it in the heat of the moment and next time you’d do the same or do different.

I can honestly sit here now, all these years on from those events of my teenage years and say that all of it – even the ugliest parts – have made me much of who I am today in terms of my resilience, my ability to stand up for myself, my skill at reading people and their character and also in knowing that sometimes shit happens and it isn’t because I’m a bad person or because I’m fat or because I’m ugly or because I ate an entire packet of Monte Carlos last night but simply because on different days and weeks and years we have to play the hand we’ve been dealt.

God, I hope you get where I’m coming from and that I haven’t upset you in anyway. Remember, all any of us are doing is the best we can do. Don’t be too hard on yourself.

Sorry guys.

well done!!!

A huge congratulations to Toto!!! What an awesome achievement.