I missed it before - how devastating to have your father elect to walk out of your life. The only ameliorating aspect i can come up with is depending on their relationship (both your parents) it might have been more devastating to have stayed together.

My parents should have split before they did - before my father was too old to deal with it - but as always my sainted mother had her excuse at the ready. She did the heroic thing and waited till all her children were raised. MY OPINION it wasn't all that heroic - we would have been better off had she departed sooner rather than stay in place and grind people down. My parents never should have married imo but my mother can be VERY PERSUASIVE

I can just imagine the argument she came up with or the pressure applied. My father was 43 years older than she was. I remember special times with him when I was very much younger - he tried really hard for me and my brother and sister (who were adopted). he took on the responsibility for children at a time when most parents are sending their kids out into the world. i've seen pictures of him - he was a good sport about it - although when i got to be a teenager we had more than our share of contretemps - most of them inspired/encouraged by my mother.

I think she had a way of gathering ALLIES whenever she had a war to wage - she would assemble the forces necessary to accomplish the task - she had a mental list of resources in one profession or the other or family/friends or even priests (yuck mostly) so that no matter what the task she could getter done, unfortunately for whoever the targeted one was. Anyway I can well imagine my father went along with her vendetta against me to save himself and i can't entirely fault him for that. he was old and wanted peace in his life which he was entitled to.

There are many different types of people in life, one i have observed are people able to attract mates one after the other - sometimes not waiting until the old one was out of the picture (my ex-husband comes to mind). My ex-daughter-in-law is one of us, the troubled, not sure exactly what but something I'm not privy to. She went undiagnosed for some time. But that did not stop her (like her mother) from attracting the next guy - without much effort it seems - sort of like the proverbial falling off a log - but nothing good came of it except for another daughter in addition to my grand-daughter.

So I'm not sure finding another mate is all that much to be sought after. I'm with you though, I have a difficult time, i either pick out a loser or go along with one who picks out me - or in the one case i can think of where he actually had potential, the only guy I dated who was not physically and/or mentally abusive - both of us had issues - mother issues actually - his could not be overcome. He was special - I liked being with him even if we were doing nothing special - it was not to be.

My ex-husband who was quite the womanizer has been married 4 times but number 3 took the wind out of his sails which I could appreciate actually unfortunately in so doing she was very detrimental to my sons life as well otherwise I would have given her a high-5. After he got free of her (at very high cost - she was willing to stick around thru the divorce going for the big bucks which I was not) I think he was pretty much of in need of settling down.

He has number 4 and lots of money a new house and a very comfortable life even though in some ways he's very stupid and block-headed (he has all the sensitivity of a garden slug) - i could have gotten a pretty good chunk of change going for his profit sharing but I just wanted out - and I was always intimidated by him so I didn't want to make too many waves.