The element of time

It took some time to figure out. When I was 8 I moved back to my dads'. He had married a woman from town and I could see she made him happy. She had 3 kids of her own and we sorta were the local version of the Brady bunch without the happiness. His wife (I will never call her 'mom') and I began stepping on each others toes almost from the beginning. Her style was to intimidate and shame and at 8 it really rubbed me the wrong way. I didnt get all that superiority stuff. Things went from bad to worse. It was like she was night and I was day. I was happy, she was always frowning. It was a battle of personalities and as the kid I always come up on the recieving end. She managed to convince myself and everyone else that I was the problem. At 18 I left. I was emotionally bruised enough to not return for many years and I lived without contact with my dad for many years while I tried to sort out what had happened to me. In my head I felt like a zombie where I had once been vibrant. It took a lot of years before it became obvious to me what had taken place in my childhood and how permanent her mental condition was. Thankfully mine was not. How freeing it was to finally make this realization.

When I was about 30 I married a girl who promised to love me forever. She didnt understand the depth of my depression and after about 6 months she began pulling away. She began having secret relationships, hiding things, lying. This made me angry and my anger pushed her away completely after just 3 years, taking my son and going into hiding. She also made several accusations about me that I worried might be half true. I was still trying to understand my mixed up feelings from the past and I half believed the things she said. It wouldnt have been so bad but we had had a child together and she was keeping me from seeing him.

I hurt for a long time. I waited for our child to grow so I could finally contact him as an adult and attempt to put things straight. When I was finally able (I wasnt ready but knew it needed to be done for his sake) he rejected me. This hurt tremendously.

During the past summer my dad was in the rest home. Little chance of going home and his mind was failing. My step mom put in orders to prevent me from seeing my dad. After years of staying away she wasnt yet satisfied and needed to pour vinegar on the wounds. This made me pretty angry and I was able to get the order lifted but it showed me the vindictiveness she was capable of and also her true nature. Because of this I was finally able to release myself from more than 30 years of confusion and depression.

With my son I couldnt understand how he could think so low of me, I hadnt been around. Sure he could be disappointed with that but there was an anger that didnt fit and I understood that during the years his mom had run my reputation into the dirt. He wasnt just angry that I'd been gone, he believed I was psycho. I sent him an email telling him about my own parents divorce and how afterwards I didnt choose one over the other. I loved them both. I rationalized that there was something fundamentally wrong with not loving a parent (unless that parent has abused) and that it was his flaw, not mine, that we would not have any relations after all.

Its been very freeing. Was it an ideal outcome? Not at all. But it is resolved and I can move on. 37 years all together. I am wiser, stronger. I will be ok.

Your ex sounds a lot like mine. This is probably going to be a very unpopular statement, but as a society, I think people expect the father to be the one who causes the trouble, messes around on the wife, skips out on child support. The laws are still archaic, favoring the mother. I'm sure there are guys who are jerks, but it kind of leaves a stain on us.

Children should never be used as weapons against an ex spouse. It sounds like that is what happened to you. Very rarely do the kids have anything to do with the divorce. (when a child dies or is abducted parents sometimes split from the pressure, but even then it isn't the child's fault). The one truly innocent party in a divorce is the kids. They shouldn't have to pay like that.

I hope your son will understand what you have told him and give you a chance to show that you really do love him and aren't a psycho. Its hard to explain things and not say anything negative about the mother. Even if you feel anger at the ex, speaking negatively about her to a child just makes things worse. kids believe their paren'ts. They have to. They are dependant on the custodial parent and will protect that relationship any way they can.

I hope things work out and the relationship with your son will be repaired. Losing a kid like that hurts. Relationships between child and parent change once the kid is grown, so hopefully at some point, you will be able to be completely honest with him.

Sam2

If he does, he does. If he doesn't, that's fine to. For me its settled. He's doing well. That was all I wanted.

I wanted to come back and add that the hurt of what happened with my son may never fully go away. I'm only saying that, for now, I am at peace within myself over it. I, like my dad, will love my son forever, whatever his faults (or my own).

And you are right Sam about the hurt that is inflicted in vindication of perceived wrongs. It two takes two adults fully capable of honest communication to make whats best of a failed marriage involving children. When one half fails it nearly becomes an impossible task. In my case, we both failed. I have not degraded his mother and will not. In fact I took all the blame on myself. That was a mistake. The most I have said since was to say that it wasnt very loving of them (mother and step dad) to plant the seed in his mind that his biological father is crazy. Now he can worry if its hereditary and he just had his first daughter. He emailed me that he didnt want me stalking his facebook page to look at her .

Why does society favor mothers? Its anybodys guess and of course there are exceptions. I think it is partially due to the traditional thinking of father as the breadwinner, the hunter; mother the nurse, home keeper. The thinking follows that women are better at child raising. In some cases. Fathers are also typically considered to be the aggressors which is not always the case either.