Single dad Matthew Williams doesn’t see his children every day. Yet, he loves them dearly.
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Daddy.
There is no sweeter sound in the world than the word Daddy from the mouths of your children. Of course there are also times when its sound is rather less than sweet – “Daddy, that’s not fair!” “Daddy, I’m finished can you come and wipe, I think it’s a messy one…” – but for my purposes here let’s stick with the sweetness.
From sweetness to the bitterest pill that you are forced to swallow when your marriage collapses – you will no longer be spending every day with your children. When you wake up, they won’t be there. When you arrive home from work they will not greet you. Lastly when you go to bed at night, you will not be able to check in on them and kiss their foreheads.
These realisations are sudden and devastating. They’re accompanied by fear over how their lives will be affected and a crushing sense of failure that your children, the most precious people in your world, will no longer have a stable loving home with their Mummy and Daddy.
Then comes the heart-wrenching inevitable realisation of a new truth: sooner or later another man will become a significant person in the lives of your children. Nothing can prepare you for this hurt, pain, and sense of powerlessness.
You set about doing what you can to create a new life for them, new routines, always making sure that they know that you love them and are there for them even when you’re not there physically. Looking back from a distance of 16 months this period of adjustment seems like a blur, a foggy period of transition. It started with a world that was stable and secure to a new world of doubts and doing your best. This new world features visits to familiar places with a new and unfamiliar definition of family, akin to a body that is missing a limb and must learn to adapt and function in a new way.
One of the things that you realise – and is frequently pointed out to you by others– is that this situation isn’t unusual anymore. That is scant consolation to you. Everybody wants what is best for their own children and being a “broken’ family” never figured in my vision of the future. My children were young at the time of my divorce. I’m despondent that they will grow up with little or no memory of our complete family, despite the fact that my ex-wife and I were together for 19 years. On the other hand, many children grow up with all-too vivid and painful memories of their parents’ divorce. There is silver-lining of sorts to be found here.
Without the counterbalance of a wife to raise your children alongside you, you become all too aware of your personal deficiencies. As a man with a daughter, I am now acutely aware that I am relatively useless when it comes to doing her hair. Deficiencies in my organisational skills in the home, though improving, are frequently thrown into sharp focus. For example, getting everything ready for school in the morning, trying to keep on top of homework (for under 5 year olds, don’t get me started on that subject…), making sure there are enough clean school uniforms when every day a white polo shirt comes home covered in paint and ink…the list goes on and on.
Somehow though you manage, and as in everything you do your best. I do my best for my children. Even though you know that is all that you can do, and even though you know that the most important things that you can give to your children are your time and attention, and even though I am one of the fortunate fathers that has shared custody of the children, there is a little part of you that questions yourself. This part wonders whether your children prefer the life that they have with your ex. For the children, shared parenting in two different homes becomes the norm, and although any reasonable, mature consideration of the situation concludes that this is not a competition between parents, in the inevitable moments of doubt and loneliness the niggling question arises.
Do my children like spending time with their Mummy better than me?
The time comes when another man enters their lives. As hard as it is to face losing your wife and the thought that she will love another, underneath it all is the awareness that so too will you. Nothing can prepare you for another man entering the lives of your children. No matter how good a father you can be, no matter how special and unique and wonderful your relationship with your children is, there is somebody else that will become a significant influence in their lives.
There are times when I’m not sure I will ever come to terms with this.
You get on with it – after all, what choice do you have? Unfortunately, it leaves its mark on you. It scars the dreams that you had for your future and the anticipation of the special family events that you looked forward to. When you embarked on the wonderful and scary world of parenthood, you imagined birthdays, graduations, weddings, grandchildren – suddenly there is a new and unwanted presence in the storybook of their lives.
I’m working on greater acceptance. If we are to truly make the most of the limited time that we have on this earth, we need to accept the world as it is and not how we thought or wished it should be. There is a saying that it is not the strongest that survives but the most adaptable to change. That is true of families; through adversity we can learn how fantastically adaptable people can be to their circumstance. There is no one certain way to raise a happy, secure, loving family.
Adapting to a new definition of family isn’t easy and it isn’t quick, and for me a sense of stability is something that I am still hoping to one day find. When I’m with my children we smile, we will laugh, and together we are creating happy memories. We know that we will love and be there for each other.
Always.
My own father didn’t want me around as a kid and he still doesn’t care to connect with me or his other two kids…and I am almost 40. My stepfather was horribly abusive growing up… However, I have always met and known the kindest most loving men. Men who wanted to be fathers since before they were even dating anyone. My husband of twenty years was and is that way with our kids. A dear friend of mine misses his daughter daily and was hurt and disappointed when she requested to live with her mom hundreds of miles away, though… Read more »
Beautiful words, Matthew.
Powerful stuff, thank you.
Thank you for the kind comment, much appreciated.
“Then comes the heart-wrenching inevitable realization of a new truth: sooner or later another man will become a significant person in the lives of your children. Nothing can prepare you for this hurt, pain, and sense of powerlessness. ” One of the greatest injustices perpetrated by the most vile of agendas, the effect of which is harming 85% of divorced fathers and their children. We now know and understand how this came to be, was orchestrated, but the fear of standing up and doing the right thing still abounds. With all the talk of sexism, gender roles, injustice, this issue… Read more »