There is no way for me to point back (nor would I want to) at my ex-wife to blame all of this malfunction and malfeasance on her. BUT… And this is a big one…
My ex-wife removed me from 70% of my children’s lives. Even after we negotiated a collaborative divorce that would’ve been 50/50. She did that. She renigged on the negotiated settlement. Then she took hostages. My kids and I were close. I was “he who makes the pool fun.” I was also the levity and trusted advisor when they needed help, were in crisis, or just ready for cuddles. My 23 year old son does not want any cuddles. He wants nothing at the moment. Well, that’s not exactly true. Here are my son’s demands/ideas for his immediate future.
- i don’t have a car
- i want to finish college
- i want to get a job
- and get the fuck away from you people
Um, yeah… About that.
I wanted to say, “Self-inflicted” at lunch this afternoon but I didn’t.
At some point, speaking about my current experience of the moment, I did say, “So I’m still looking for a job.”
He joined, “Me too.”
Um, hold on… About that.
“You have never had a jobI” I said. A bit of truth-telling. “I need a job right now because I have two kids, with needs, a house with a mortgage, and health insurance through ACA that’s costing me a lot of cash. So, don’t pretend we are ‘both’ looking for work.”
“Well, I don’t have a car anyway.”
Again, I holstered my weapons and tried to tune into my son. “I’m sure if you got a job right now we could figure out the car. His damaged parents have a crap Honda FIT that would be perfect for him.
Here’s what I said.
“Do you understand this: I am trying to reach you inside your burning building. That’s all this is. I am not trying to make sure you’re eating, there’s plenty of food in the house. I am trying to reach out to you emotionally and give you a hug, some hope, a glimmer of the future that you’ve got to want.”
We tussled about the specifics of my charges. He harped on the “guns” again in a sideways comment about “knives are all I’ve got now.”
“Because I am afraid of you,” I said, reflexively.
“I would never harm my family…”
“That’s exactly what the kids who shot up entire schools said. No one expects to come unhinged. But you are close. And when you showed up at my house a few days ago pissed that I’d taken your guns again…
“I was afraid of you.”
“Okay.”
“And I’ll take my odds with you and knife. With an AR-15 I don’t stand a chance. I’m not going to negotiate with you about the guns. For now, they are mine. They are safe like you are. That’s all we need to say about the guns.”
His mom is hyperfocused on the ticket he got from his wreck when he totaled his car. She texted the joint thread between me and my son, “If you don’t pay it, they will put out a warrant for your arrest.”
It’s not about the TICKET, it’s not about whether we can we get him reregistered for his final (2 class) semester to graduate. Not about kicking the can down the street and hoping for the best. It’s about us STOPPING and allowing him, our son, to take his initiative.
“So, you think it’s enabling to ask him to take care of his wreck?” She texted.
I never used the AA jargon, she’s uneducated, unrecovered, and is trying to get up to speed.
“No. But it’s not what he needs to be focused on. He has no car. They couldn’t find him right now if they put out an APB. Hell, we can hardly find him. He walks around all day with his headphones in. A ghost in my own home. I’ve asked him to try not to leave the bathroom light on when he’s no longer inside. He was prone to shutting it with the light on, and I would walk by it for hours thinking, “What is he still doing in the bathroom.” He accepted that boundary. He’s about 50% in compliance.
And that’s the hard rule: zero tolerance for bullshit now. He doesn’t know it, but I’m hard at work to give him NEXT STEP options for his journey. I am NOT collaborating with his mom and her husband. They had their shot at playing it with white privilege, hoping to damage him as little as possible by not forcing him into treatment. He did that himself by crashing his car.
It’s all about attachment, however. My wife’s attachment to my kids is SHOPPING and DRAMA. That’s all she’s got. In a reversal of the Disneyland Dad, she was the shopping mall mom. They would go hang out at the mall for hours. My son still thinks that’s “spending time together.”
And a few years into the divorce, after I had procured a new place to live, my ex was thrashing a bit about me landing on my feet, giving my kids a happy place to live, as an alternative to her home-of-origin. One of the first acts of Dad was buying a trampoline. She would never allow the conversation. Now, I didn’t need her approval. And we JUMPED a lot.
The kids could say, “Get up and jump,” at any time, and I agreed that I would go play on the trampoline with them. We had a trampoline. We laughed, wrestled, loved, and for two weekends a month, we tried to forget that the majority of the week we would be apart. I’m not sure their return to the sad house was any less emotionally draining than dropping their bags off on a Monday morning after delivering them to school. To my old house. In my old neighborhood. I don’t think she ever really thanked me for taking up more than 50% of my responsibilities for logistics.
At this time, my son had a girlfriend and my ex-wife began letting her sleepover with him, in his bedroom. In high school? As a junior? Where was the potential “win” in this terrible idea? Apparently, she negotiated this with the woman’s parents. She forgot to negotiate or even mention this to his other parent, me. When I found out I was livid. But there was little I could do. A few months later, my ex-wife would throw our decree at the Attorney General’s office for collections. I was 30-days behind. I told her I was going to get behind. I showed her my work receipts.
Here’s the bottom line: she did not need the money. She needed to hurt me. She needed to inject some drama and misery into our “seemingly happy” weekends.
It hurt. Forced me to fire sale my house. And, I wound up living with my mom for the first time. With my two kids. Perhaps some of the best months we had together post-divorce. Why? Because my mom was really filling in a lot for their mom. My family is a FEELING family. Her family was a stoic, STFU, family. Stuff it. Frame up any reasonable explanation, don’t call it a lie. Attacked me with the AG’s office and child support division. It wasn’t because she was at risk of losing the house. It was 100% because she wanted to hurt me, perhaps didn’t like how happy the kids seemed to be on their weekends at my house. She bought a trampoline about a year later. I don’t think it was a place of joy and bouncing engagement.
There was a classic moment when my kids talked about their mom’s trouble getting them to school on time. “I asked if she could do it more like you do, Dad,” said my son. “You wake us up early enough that we’re not always in a hurry and always late.” I still smile at how that must’ve tasted to her. Perhaps that was shortly before she filed against me with the AG’s office.
From the beginning, my ex-wife has not been honest. About most things, she’s told a version of the truth, leaving out the salient details. She’s a liar. She’s also an arsonist. And why she is focused on my son’s traffic ticket shows exactly where she is “emotionally” with this entire situation. Sure, she feels culpable. Sure, she was the reason my son began playing with Adderall in his junior year of high school. Sure, she blew away our 50/50 shared parenting negotiations, because she knew she would win if she went for the “divorce package.” I didn’t fight her. I wrote about her. She changed her name as quickly as she could get married.
And today, a ground zero, she’s worried about his traffic ticket.
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