A Divorced Dad Falls in Love–and Builds a Wall
Hi Readers, You know how I love Martin Babits, L.C.S.W., and author of The Middle Ground: A Couple’s Guide to Renewing Your Relationship (http://www.amazon.com/Power-Middle-Ground-Renewing-Relationship/dp/1591026628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256606628&sr=8-1). Marty is a divorced dad, and here’s what he has to say about a recent very important project–building a wall in his apartment once things got serious with his partner. The wall is going up today! Read the piece–and then leave a comment letting Martin know what you think of what he’s doing:
It’s been four years since the divorce that ended my 27 year marriage. How and why it happened is a story I’ll tell you some other time. My son, knowing that it is not even a remote possibility, is rooting for his mom and I to get back together. He has tried to persuade me to limit the length of my dating to six weeks per dating partner. “After that,” he counsels,” you’ve got to find someone else and start again., dad.” So now that I am having a relationship with a woman, a woman I am crazy about, and have been seeing for well beyond the six week stint that he approves, I get considerable bristling and growling in response to mostly everything, mostly everyday. He avoids her at every turn. Before she’s been invited into the picture in any formal sense, he’s invited her out.
You should know that, up to now, I’ve had no privacy in my post-divorce living space. My bed is set down in a combination living and dining room area. It’s large enough to separate into two rooms but I haven’t built a divide. Why didn’t I put a wall up? Probably because I’ve felt guilty about not being able to shield my son from the pain of the divorce. So with no wall, I’m on 24/7 call. I’ve been focused on making him feel how important he is to me. Whenever I think of moving on, the following question dogs me: “How can you bring a new person into your living situation (my son lives with me) against his vehement opposition?” This is where I have been stuck.
Wednesday Martin, like the good friend that she is to all her readers, helped me reason this through. Reason, not as in Archimedes’ principle, I’m talking about heart-reason, emotional logic. Stepmonster helped me understand that by living without a private space for myself, I was sending my son a confusing and essentially untrue message: that time was standing still. Also, he had a room with a door. Was I telling him – by my actions – that his needs trumped mine? That’s not how I want him to understand me; it benefits neither of us. We both have to learn to take care of ourselves.
Children of divorce, probably universally, harbor fantasies of their parents reuniting. Having no wall invites him to misinterpret what I am doing and feeling. It is of form of colluding with him by allowing the fantasy of parental reunification to comfortably flourish. As his dad, I realize that he needs to accept that the ending of my romantic relationship with his mother has already occurred; it is a fact rooted in the past and not to be revisited. The inevitability of my son’s need to grieve the losses he has experienced as a result of the divorce – and the fact that the divorce marked the finale of his childhood – amount to a double assault on his sense of security; two tough blows, two rough psychological truths that he must learn to come to terms with. Maturation is dotted with traumatic interludes. Failure to grieve brings on failure to thrive.
So the wall that marks my readiness to move forward in my life, to re-establish my need for privacy and the prospect of a life – or at least a significant portion of a life that is uninterrupted by my son and intentionally kept separate from his experience – is now appropriate. Maybe the wall is a way of walling out the past from the present; or at least walling out the predominance of the past in the present. Stalling on the wall registers as a vote of no-confidence in his (and my) learning to handle the changes in our lives. Seeing it from this vantage, I am tempted to erect a series of walls, one for each developmental juncture – in my son’s and my own past – that needs resolving. But, of course, I know the bulk of this work gets done internally. So, it’s one wall to represent them all.
Tags: children and divorce, divorce, divorce with children, Martin Babits, parental guilt post-divorce, partner, repartnering after divorce, stepfamily, stepfather, stepmonster, The Middle Ground, wednesday martin
October 26th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Thank you for this focus. Perfectly timed, beautifully said . . . may all dads take note.
When a father makes an appropriate and clear delineation and does the hard work of dealing with the grief with the child, it paves the way for the new woman in his life. If he doesn’t do this hard work, then the new wife is literally the sacrificial lamb, being thrown into the fire as the family uses her to deal with their grief and loss. Only when the family has dealt with the grief and loss will they be able to rebuild a new life from the ashes and start again. (So says the voice of personal experience.)
Bravo!!!!!
October 27th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Kim,
I so agree. Marty really knows what he’s talking about here. And I’m fascinated to hear how this process goes for other men and women! xx wednesday
October 27th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Good for you Marty. You’ve obviously got a clear idea of what is good for your son by not pandering to his every whim through guilt, but instead setting him an example of what it is to respect one’s own needs. Gaining you and your new partner much needed privacy, and him a better role model.
Congrats on the new love interest by the way! Good luck for the future!
LBM xxxx
October 27th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Marty, good for you for considering your son’s perspective but not catering to it. I think the hardest thing in any situation, divorce or otherwise, is to consider the perspectives of others. Good for you for being self-aware and seeing that well-meaning intentions can create an outcome you didn’t wanting and being able to change that without guilt.
I also really liked your comment: ” I realize that he needs to accept that the ending of my romantic relationship with his mother has already occurred; it is a fact rooted in the past and not to be revisited”.
My husband has made a similar comment about divorce with respect to his ex rather than his kids – that getting a divorce is a one-time occurrence that you move forward from, not wallow in as a state of being every day. Or as he put it to his ex “We got a divorce. It’s over with. Move on!” Marriage is a state of being, but divorce shouldn’t be.
Katherine
October 28th, 2009 at 6:29 am
May all divorced dads read Marty’s words!
Thank YOU!!
October 28th, 2009 at 7:17 am
While I read your book, I found your description of personal issues even more helpful. I wondered how old your son is but his reaction sounds so similar to children of all ages as raised by Upper West Side parents. How difficult it is to push back boundaries after leaning over backwards to be “perfect parents.”
October 28th, 2009 at 11:12 am
To all,
Thanks so much for the comments, congratulations and good wishes!
Best,
Marty
October 29th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Wow – you are building a wall between your son and yourself to essentially break through/down your son’s wall of denial, anger and wanting to control your actions. I applaud your courage of giving yourself the space you (all) need to move forward. I wish you much happiness with this bold step in your journey of recovering from the divorce and reclaiming your right to have a life in your own apartment!
November 1st, 2009 at 1:51 am
I feel the need to comment on how much positive feedback without challenge a man gets. Not the same when a woman posts; most feel the need to fix her state of mind…good, bad or indifferent. Curiously fascinating. On the other hand, yes bravo to Marty for waking up. However, I cannot help thinking how much of a cultural phenomenon this all is considering how many millions of children live without their biological parents and live without food and water, and here we are catering to the most finite details of emotion. This level of self-indulgence I find hard to listen to…let alone digest
November 1st, 2009 at 8:25 am
Self indulgence is not the term I would use when it comes to helping stepfamilies and parents repartnering after divorce–the most stressful of all unions. When those unions dissolve, children do suffer. In my view caring about the state of being of these children and their parents/stepparents is crucial, even as it demonstrates how “lucky” we are a society to be able to pay attention to it. Comparing stepfamily dynamics to people dodging bullets in foxholes and children living without food and water–not a place stepfamily researchers are going. Are some children more disadvantaged than others? Yes. Does that mean we shouldn’t try to help them all? I don’t think so.
It is interesting, I agree with you, how women are urged to “fix themselves,” as you say, and are often quite quickly pathologized as “the problem” in a stepfamily scenario while men are less likely to be.
thanks for reading and commenting
wednesday
November 3rd, 2009 at 7:06 am
I just want to say I have read an re-read this piece by Babits, and get something new from it every time. It is a beautiful articulation, from an usually self-aware person. Male, female–doesn’t matter; but it’s true I’ve seldom seen such an introspective and emotionally dispassionate piece on this topic from the vantage point of a divorced father–which does encourage the reader just to stand back and leave it alone.
In this sense, it’s almost the developmental equivalent of the “Disengaging” essay for stepmothers–a paradigm shift in perspective that leads the way down a new life path.
I’d love to read more from Babits on the developmental milestones in his coming to terms with the emotional challenges of being a divorced father.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Men and Women aren’t too difficult to just understand. All it takes takes some communication on both’s part. I am glad you finally realized that!
January 13th, 2010 at 4:28 am
I completely agree with everything in this post. keep up the good work
January 19th, 2010 at 5:47 pm
I write articles and ran across your blog while I was doing research – thought I’d stop by and leave a link to one of the articles I’ve written. Feel free to leave me a comment!
September 8th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
you were only married for 22 years so take this entire post with a grain of salt.