Parenting is the biggest adventure you can set in motion. By becoming parents you are agreeing to give a priority to your children, over yourself. The sacrifice of becoming a parent is about making a better life for our kids.
As parents, our relationship may not work out. In divorce, we’ve got an opportunity to remain connected as a cooperative co-parent. Our role as divorced parents is to support our kids with less concern for ourselves or our disappointment in our ex-partner. It is important to leave your anger and frustration behind, and pay attention to your kids and their needs.
As much as we wanted to remain in love and grow in love as parents, there were some fundamental shifts that happened in our lives and in our aspirations. What I learned from my first "touch" lover was that my needs for closeness are fundamental to my complete happiness.
As we grew into our parenting roles, we had different ideas about how that should look. And I fess up, I was unhappy. I was asking for a massive change. And in the end, we disagreed on what we wanted as a couple.
I often wonder if I could've reached out in a way that would've fundamentally cracked open her guarded heart. Even in those final two months when we were sharing the same house while agreeing that we were getting a divorce, I was trying to express my continued love through songs and poetry. She didn't want poems or romantic music. She wanted action. She wanted me to be different.
Down has become the new up, and I have become a new single dad, still committed to his kids, and in many ways, to his ex-wife as well. We are still a family, still connected, even when we're not together.
Allow the hurricane to arrive and blow away the old aspects of your lives. Reset your expectations and parenting lives around the love and support of your children. Then, even if things don't work out with the marriage, the closeness and love that you've established with your kids, becomes the strength and bond that guides your relationship even after divorce.
It's not uncommon for the dad to be the big "player" in the house. I continued to wrestle and chase and hug-hold-squeeze my kids with abandon and intensity. Perhaps at some point, I was using that affection to replace what I felt was lost between me and their mom. Still, we sailed along as a family, doing the best we could.
part of my joy is losing the anger at their mom. Getting over the loss of time with them. Getting on with what I need to work on in my life, as a single man.
And I'd go back to the filters each morning, as some sort of symbol of the countdown of my divorce. Some weeks I would be a total butt. Some how, I imagined, that she would be sorry that she had angered me. That didn't work at all.