My children wanted me to leave their father. His behavior was upsetting our home. If anything, I ignored their pleas for too long. But like me, they thought he was a better father than a husband.
We were collectively shocked when he didn’t come looking for them.
“The boys miss you,” I say. “You haven’t come looking for them in the past year.”
“I go to their games,” he says. “I drive some carpools. I see them.”
“Look,” I say. “One of our kids is in college so he’s not home. Our other son is a senior so he’s naturally becoming more independent but our youngest child is fourteen and he misses his father.”
The conversation fell on deaf ears.
It’s been ten years since I initiated our divorce.
In those years, my ex-husband never took our kids for a weekend or overnight.
He never took them for a weekly dinner or even a monthly dinner. He didn’t look for them on holidays. He even canceled the two holidays they once tried to schedule with him. It was Father’s Day which they found particularly shocking and Christmas. In ten years, I think they may have spent one holiday with him.
It got so bad that one summer day I overheard my children talking.
“Big surprise,” one of my boys says. “Dad called he wants to hang out because there’s a game on.”
They understood he only called every few months if he needed someone to watch an Eagles, Phillies, or Flyers game with him.
There were a few times during the divorce I made my two younger sons stay with their Father. My husband was contradicting my parenting and it was causing a lot of disrespectful words and behavior. But if you added that time up, it would have been about three months time over a five-year divorce for my one son and maybe a month’s time with my other son. Collectively, not a lot of time.
During our marriage counseling my husband was diagnosed as lacking empathy.
And having a narcissistic personality disorder.
Definitely not what you want to learn about your husband.
I chose to approach my children’s confusion and disappointment about their Dad the way my own mother did. She told me my Father was an alcoholic and it was an illness. He loves me and I should love him. He just has limitations.
One day, one of my boys looked at me and said, “Mom, is Dad a good person?”
I knew what was going through his mind because the same thoughts had once gone through mine. Everyone needs to believe they come from goodness. No one needs the burden of thinking otherwise. His Father had done a lot of abusive things in the divorce and I knew he was struggling with this.
“Yes,” I said. “I would never have married someone who wasn’t a good person. But your Father has a serious disorder. My Dad also had a serious illness. When he was younger we got the better parts of him and as he got older we lost those better parts and the illness took over. The same can be said for your Father. When he was younger we saw the better parts of him and now we are losing the better parts of him and the disorder is worsening. Your Dad loves you as much as he’s capable of loving anyone but he will always put himself first. Just as my own Dad loved me as much as he was capable of loving someone but he would always put alcohol first.”
I believe those words I spoke today as much as when I first imparted them.
Narcissism and abusive behavior are catastrophic.
I tell my children the truth about narcissism. I have been in the counseling and research of narcissism for more than a decade. I write about it. They understand the abuse, the atrocities, and the danger of this extreme and serious personality disorder.
It doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to love their Father.
But I worry about his influence.
They go through periods of giving up on him and an inability to do so.
No one understands this more than I do. I went through the same cycle of emotions. I wanted to leave my husband. I wanted to believe in my husband. It’s hard to give up on someone you love.
Overall, my boys have a healthy perspective.
They understand the seriousness of their Father’s narcissism.
They have developed better boundaries.
It doesn’t mean they can’t still occasionally be manipulated. They are kind, caring, thoughtful, generous, sweet, empathetic, and extremely loving boys.
Because of this I try and impart our marriage counselor’s wisdom, “Kindness is forgiving bad behavior once or twice. Enabling is forgiving it over and over again. Overly caring people have a tendency to enable bad behavior by making repeated excuses for a person.”
It’s a fine line to walk as a parent.
When I’m worried or stressed I will say things I shouldn’t say because I’m tired of their Father’s behavior, abuse, manipulation, and what he has put them through. Honestly, I don’t regret it. It’s my job to protect them and their Father has shown the ability to use, confuse, and abuse his own children as a means to winning in divorce.
He has no ability to put them first so I will.
My Mother was a great example.
She had those same human moments, who wouldn’t? Especially after leaving men who made your home feel unpredictable and unsafe.
But she would follow it by making it clear our Father loved us despite his absence. Again, as much as he was capable of loving with a serious addiction. She didn’t put us in a position of long-term conflict. Yes, we experienced short-term conflict just as my children did.
It’s nearly impossible to live with or leave someone like a narcissist without it.
When I made that call to my husband during the first year of our divorce I still wanted him to spend more time with our kids. I was partially in denial back then. I thought divorcing him would free us of his influence.
God works in mysterious ways.
It was actually better for my children that he didn’t come looking for them. As painful as it was. Because even despite my husband’s lack of interest, my kids haven’t found it an easy line to walk. It’s easy to get pulled into his world because they are good people.
I loved my Dad but he was not a good influence. My Mother made it clear alcoholism was a serious illness. We knew it. We lived it. She told us to be free to love him. That didn’t mean she wanted us to be like him or his behavior.
I won’t apologize for being conflicted.
I am a mother.
My children will always come first.
I want my children to love their father.
I do not want them to be influenced by him.
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Photo credit: Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash
