Divorce theme #4 – impact on children

My pre-teen son is a victim of “our” divorce. He cringes when his dad and I talk because it quickly escalates. Before the divorce he tried everything to keep us together. Now he tries everything to keep us apart. He shudders when we fight. 

Your image of a fearful child is surely sufficient to motivate you to keep the child away from your skirmishes and to reach a place where they do not have to occur at all.

Your boy is connected to both of you. The disconnect will, as you have so graphically portrayed, will tear him apart. 

Try to remember there was a time you loved the boy’s father enough to marry him. This may be of little comfort when you are desperate but it may help to see the “big picture” when you are most desperate. 

Your son miraculously embodies both parents. When you reject each other you are both in some ways rejecting your son. No matter how much the connection between you and your ex has disintegrated you can do your part in engaging in respectful behavior.

That part is about you, no matter how your ex behaves.  His behavior is up to him, your is up to you. While you think you are “causing” each others behavior you are not yet unhitched. You divorce may be final but your connection is still “live.”

Mature parenting demands the adults sacrifice for their children AND develop strong and meaningful lives as if they were not parents at all! 

I know it is difficult. It is difficult in the best of circumstances, and much more so when there has been a divorce.

My ex has a really nice family. These are people I know well and have been very close for years. Two of these dear people are my children’s grandparents. My ex wants me to have nothing to do with any of these people anymore. What do I do about this?

You divorced your spouse, not her/his family. I am aware some would disagree but I do think it is possible for mature adults to maintain healthy relationships with family-by-marriage people. I will not pretend it will be easy or comfortable but it is possible.

While I’d suggest you do not go out of your way to humiliate an ex I’d suggest you not afford that person undue power. Give the divorce a little room to breathe – a few months perhaps – and then see how much interest remains in servicing relationships with members of your family-by-marriage. Those that continue to possess vitality will probably endure; others are likely to drop away. 

Grandparents? If they are of sound mind and generally regarded as good people I’d suggest you fully cooperate in fostering their relationships with your children and your relationship with them. 

Please, resist any urge to punish children or grandparents because things have not worked in a marriage.

My ex seems to want to monitor my life and gets difficult and moody if I don’t cooperate.

When there have been control issues in the marriage they won’t cease because the marriage has.

Controllers are controlling, married or not. 

The glorious thing about marriage is that your lives connect very powerfully. Children,  mortgages,  cars, vacations, savings accounts, inheritances, mutual friends, businesses (successes and failures) become the glue that binds it all together.  Marriage is a theme park for the controller, especially if it’s faith or religion endorsed. Of course he or she is going to resist your efforts to escape even after the decree is issued. 

Unhitching all that requires skills taught nowhere. 

Unhitching all that – which is what divorce means – is as war and is as painful as can be even if it’s desired and necessary. 

But, alas. These things are mutually developed. Blaming the controlling party only goes so far. 

He or she was permitted such ploys by the partner – with or without awareness. 

You entered it together. You have to escape (unhitch)  alone. 

Divorce is legal. He or she has no authority to reign in the dissolved, non-existent relationship. 

The only legal connection will be determined by what the courts declare regarding the parenting of minor children. 

Stay out of control. Speak up. Resist. Refuse. Access your backbone, voice, and courage. If you accommodate controlling behavior it will grow. If you refuse to water it, it will react and fight but it will die and both parties will be better off. 

No one benefits from arm-wrestle living, not the stronger or the apparently weaker.

Theme: I have been divorced several years. My young-adult children do not like the man I am dating.

My response: In decades of listening to people, many of them facing this and parallel situations, I will say it is extraordinarily rare for sons and daughters (all ages) to embrace the person a mother or father dates post divorce. Resistance, rejection – subtle or gross – are common and understandable reactions. 

I’d suggest you “obey” your children. End the relationship. But, do this only if your children will agree to similar choosing, vetting, endorsing on your part about whomever they choose to date and/or marry from this day forward, forevermore. You may want to go all out and suggest the entire family agrees to arranging all of each other’s relationships – intimate to casual – from here on out. Agree to always Gate-Keep for each other.

Unless the person you are dating is married (which is another matter completely) then I’d suggest you be very kind and patiently suggest your sons and daughters honor your choices and begin to learn to celebrate that their parent has found sufficient healing, sufficient post-divorce repair, to even want to date and enjoy a “new” relationship.

May you find real joy. 

Don’t let young adult children – or younger or older – rob you of your adventures.   

Parents, please teach your children as I try to teach mine….

• There is no substitute for hard work. If you cut corners, avoid doing things well, you will probably have to pay for it in the future.

• “Please” and “thank you” are beautiful words and they should be used as often as possible.

• Don’t interrupt adults who are having a conversation – and saying “excuse me” as you interrupt doesn’t make the interruption acceptable.

• Wear clean clothes, use deodorant, and brush your teeth – do all this without having to be reminded.

• Stand up for adults when they enter a room; offer your seat to adults if all seats are taken, open doors for adults. Stand back.

• Ask politely for what you need; don’t demand what you need.

• Listen when people talk to you. Checking your phone in the middle of a face-to-face conversation is rude.

• Although you may not think it is so, your elders have a lot to teach you and you have a lot to learn.

• When you are more aware of your rights than you are aware of your responsibilities the imbalance will ultimately lead you into trouble.

• Earn more money than you spend – it’s as simple as that – or you will land yourself in trouble.

The Mercury / Saturday

It’s no secret that I am thousands of miles (kilometers in your culture) from the bulk of my readers. Nonetheless, I want you to know I love receiving your letters. I love families and the minefields that accompany family life. That may sound odd, but, yes, families and their complexities are one of my passions.

May I remind you (as I remind myself) that so much pain and conflict is avoidable with very few simple (not easy) steps are followed. Here they are, whether you’re a reader on the other side of the world – and you see my work in your paper, or if you’re getting it on the website, or FB, or if you are a face-to-face client visiting me weekly:

• Clarify expectations. Be as clear as possible with as many people as possible about what you do and don’t want. If you are unclear with your expectations you will almost always get what you don’t want. If self-assertion is tough for you, you may want to avoid meaningful relationships. Self-assertion is NOT selfish. Avoiding it may well be.

• Your family, other people, your work, your church – none of these people or things or organizations will make you happy if you are already an unhappy person. You are asking for the impossible. The Promised Land is within. Happiness and fulfillment are inside jobs – always.

• Forgiveness and generosity and grace expressed to others (all others) are healthy foundations on which to build your (my) life. Without these as a base everything else you do will be anxiety-riddled.

“My husband – second marriage for him and my third marriage – after three years of marriage is starting to go against something he committed to in the early days of our relationships. His adult daughter is a very controlling woman, always looking for money. He promised he’d have nothing to do with her if we got married. I have found out he is having contact with her and wants to meet his grandchildren. He has kept this secret from me – starting to be in touch with her – and I am very upset.” (Edited for brevity and clarity)

You can hold your husband to his marriage vows – the ones you exchanged at the wedding – and those alone. Asking a man to have no contact with his adult children (or grandchildren) is to ask what is “outside” of your realm of reasonable expectation. His relationship with his daughter precedes his relationship with you. In that sense it is none of your business and never will be. You married a man with a daughter. You knew that going in. While his daughter may indeed be “a very controlling woman” I trust that you will be able to see that you are trying to exercise control over matters that are beyond your reach.   

To the men and women finishing up their matric examinations within the next two weeks. 

I want you to know the expectations placed upon you far exceed anything I have seen in any school system in the USA. 

You are indeed privileged. 

The quality of your instruction and the examination of your knowledge will stand you in good stead no matter how arduous it may feel right now, days from the end.

Please think on these things:

• No matter what you become, may generous, kind, and thoughtful be words always used to describe you. If you are going to be a doctor, lawyer, teacher, artist, scientist, entrepreneur, nurse, be generous, kind, thoughtful while you are at it. Jerks abound. Don’t be one of them. 

• No matter what, may you also become an expert in your own behavior and respect how your behavior impacts those in your immediate influence and those whom you may never know or meet. Understand and use your power for good. You will be amazed at the good you can leverage.

• No matter what you become may you learn the power of sound financial management. If you play your cards right (and I don’t mean credit cards) you have enough years ahead to be financially sound and financially independent by the time you are 40 – and be generous, kind, and thoughtful while you are at it.  

The Mercury / Friday

Have you heard about the woman who left a town because people were unfriendly?

When pushed the she said the place was full of angry, judgmental people, just like the churches she’d also left.

She left the next town and church, and this time the book club, too.

Same reasons.

The woman got a return on her resentments.

She got back what she put out. Nothing wrong here. Works without fail.

You and I don’t get to escape this.

We get what we look for, find what our eyes are trained to find. Our lenses are shaped by what’s locked in our heads, hearts, souls. We trip over, time and again, what we accumulate.

You may have noticed that our beings (brains, hearts, souls) are wired to provide a rather complex backdrop of experiences to our every encounter and every context. It doesn’t take much information – or the lack of it – for what Freud dubbed projection to run its course.

Our dislikes, hates, are banked, vaulted in complex passageways and troves deeply within us. And yet, in an instant, a mere phrase, a whiff of scent, a vague facial likeness met in a “new” person can unlock our depths only to spew all manner of emotions, resentments, prejudices.

“Where did that come from?” an observer may legitimately ask.

It’s a return on resentment.

Watch what you hoard.

I’ll try to do the same.

Step 1 in every exchange, crises, debate, large or small – significant or insignificant – is to hold onto yourself. This means to be deliberate, thoughtful, and to behave in accordance with your long-held values and integrity. 

Knee-jerk responses, off the cuff “decisions,” doing or saying the first things that come to mind are seldom helpful. Reactive impulses and their ramifications are probably not going to pay-off well for you in the long term even if they are impressive to you and to an observer or two in the immediate. (“Wow, I am impressed how you you let him have it!”)

Letting go of who you are, or “losing yourself” – I will remind you that all analogies are faulty – is somewhat like having a loose ball in rugby and in a flash the outcome is up for grabs. 

The power shifts and the outcome changes the moment you lose yourself – and it will seldom be in your long-term favor.

But, holding onto yourself is seldom successfully done without thoughtful preparation, a life-style of such living. Holding onto yourself in a crisis – mini or large – comes from doing so when you are not in one. It’s a frame-work of operation. It is developed in the mundane, the totally inconsequential. It is practiced day-to-day in the “little” things so it becomes a life-style when the consequential is on the line.