A father’s perspective of life after divorce

[arafferty]

I thought this article might be interesting for people to read.

postdesk.com/life-after-divorce

"Fortunately I ended up living only 30 minutes drive away which allowed me to keep in regular contact with them; having them stay most weekends, picking them up from school, taking them swimming and for walks in the Lake District. Then the next bombshell came on a Wednesday afternoon last August. My daughter told me they were moving to Berkshire that Saturday! Three days later they?d moved. 5 hours drive away. This was a huge blow for me. How could I continue to be a positive influence in their lives from so far away? And why didn?t their mother tell me? Why didn?t the school tell me?

It seems the non-resident parent has no rights at all. For example just the other day my daughter was taken to hospital. Her mother didn?t phone to tell me, nor did her family. Instead a friend who just happened to read her mother?s Twitter feed spotted a tweet about the situation my daughter was in. Understandably I was shocked and worried but most of all angry for not being informed. I decided to shelve the anger and concentrate on finding out how my daughter was. I tried to call her mother, no response. So I called the hospital. The person I spoke to was abrupt and unfriendly and stated that they couldn?t tell me anything due to patient confidentiality. I told them I was her father but they maintained they couldn?t tell me anything as I could be anybody posing as her father. I asked if they would put me through to her bedside or get her to come to the phone so I could speak to her myself, ?sorry, I can?t do that?. I still don?t know what she was in hospital for however I did manage to speak to her when she was home. I asked her why she had been admitted to hospital and she told me ?you have no right to know?. I said I was her dad and did have a right to know and she replied ?no you don?t? and put the phone down. She is 10 years old, this response was clearly orchestrated by her mother.

Contact is always on my ex-wife?s terms and she continues to prevent me from being a positive influence in their lives."

Sadly it is all too common. Whatever the rights and wrongs were a lot of women do make it impossible to be a ?daddy? in their children?s life and yet to the outside world pretend that they facilitate all contact.

My question to these women is a) how would they like their child to be taken away and then made to jump through hoops to see them? B) Do they not realise the damage is done and carries into adulthood?

Your problem is (I'm assuming you're the blog author) that while I have a bucketload of sympathy for you and can quite see how completely shit that must have been, that sympathy is countered by the many hundreds of posts I must have seen on Mumsnet from women in despair at the hurdles they have to jump to try to persuade their childrens' fathers maintain contact, pay maintenance, show up when they said they would, not break their kids' hearts. There are scores of women out there who would do anything so that their children had the opportunity to have contact with their father - but the fathers have strolled off into the sunset with new woman, new family, new life.

But I do sympathise - there are fuckwit mothers and fuckwit fathers. Just don't make the mistake of thinking the levels of fuckwittery are weighted on either side.

I feel so sad that this has happen to you and your children, I hope you find a way to stay in touch.

Hassled you are correct but by and large the "fuckwittery" is weighted on the female as the tone of your post clearly shows

It's a really sad post and a situation that happens all too often. Yes there are some fathers who waltz off into the sunset but that doesn't make a jot off difference to the fathers that don't want to. In the same way, mothers who encourage access don't want to be judged and tarred as the same as those who prevent it.

IME this sort of behaviour comes down to control. My good friends husband is dealing with an ex like this. He left the marriage for a number of reasons and his ex wants to punish him for that. I have seen her emails and texts where she delights in reminding him of things he missing out on. Examples including refusing to allow him to their son's football presentation because she wants to "enjoy it without looking at you and after all you chose to leave so you have chosen to miss out" even though their son cried buckets because he wanted both parents there. Preventing and disrupting contact at every turn (there is no a court order which helps a little) and insisting her son waers either dirty pants or no ck from a visit to his Dads as she doesn't want "a single piece of contaminated junk from you father in this house". The list goes on and on. Whenever the son gets upset at mising Daddy she says "I didn't want this for you, Daddy wanted this for you, he chose it for you because he didn't love you enough to stay"....who in their right mind willingingly and openly does that to their own child??!! My friend and her hubby are regularly consoling the poor little boy!

I have DC from a previous relationship and I think their Dad is a royal pain in the backside but he is their Dad and they need both us in their lives so I never so much as badmouth him to them. I don't know what makes these women tick and how they can square this sort of behaviour with thmselves but OP you have my utmost sympathy.

This kind of behaviour makes my blood boil.

We have had and continue to have this kind of attitude from my DH's ex. We approached a solicitor as she had stopped all contact and she subsequently discovered (as did we) that as DSS was born out of wedlock pre 2001 DH had no 'official' parental rights.

The fact that DH was on the birth certificate, had always paid for, been there for and indeed at one point had DSS living with him was hastily forgotten in the rush to exclude DH from his son's life some more. Letters to the school informing them that DH was to have absolutely no information as regards DSS, similar letters to the doctor & dentist and of course a smug solicitors letter informing us that she'd done it.

Legally she had every right of course but morally?
Morals go out the window with these women (and I firmly believe there are a lot of them out there) when the chance to "stick one on the ex" presents itself.

Am I an angry step-mom and new wife?
Strictly on this kind of behaviour you're bloody right I am.
Four children who wondered why their brother wasn't allowed to come anymore, not to mention the best part of 10k we couldn't afford fighting all the way to court and we still had to send copies of the orders to prove that as DSS's school so politely put it
"You have indeed been granted permission to interact with us as regards X"

We could have asked the solicitor to intervene as the ex was supposed to do this but hey, do we really want to spend another 250 on letters to and fro?

PFFFT!

No doubt there will be lots of people who assume that I have no idea of what it's like to be on the receiving end of a financially irresponsible, unreliable and mostly absent Dad. WRONG!

After years of in and out of DS's life DS's Dad rarely contacted him and didn't physically see him in almost 2 1/2 years. When he did deign to get back in touch I said we'd draw a line and start again civilly with no recriminations for DS's sake. The ex managed a whole three contacts before it all became too much trouble.

I try and explain to my boy why his Dad has suddenly dropped out of his life again, why he's had no Birthday/Christmas present off him again and why he doesn't answer his phone. DS insists on phoning himself and I have to see the disappointment on his face when no-one picks up.

Bear in mind that my DS has watched us fight for his brother (he's old enough to have known what was going on) so we get "Why can't my Dad bother?" and if that's not bad enough the ex's new lady has four herself.
"Why didn't I get to go on that holiday?" he asked when the cretin his Dad sent photos of their family holiday and a letter 2 years ago.

It's at times like that I lash myself hold fast to the words of wisdom Judge Judy emparts;

"You have to love your children more than you hate your ex."

Who knows how either of these scenarios are weighted. And does it matter? Neither are fair, particularly on the children.

I supported my now xh while he went through the court system to get to see his dd. I will never know whether he would have been quite so persistent or had quite the relationship he has with her if I hadn't been around, but I suspect not.

What I am currently coming to terms with is having to support my dd and hold her when she cries and hurts because her Dad has barely seen her in the past few months as he has a new girlfriend. Not only that, I am doing the same for my dsd - the one he got a court order for - because he has decided that moving the new girlfriend and family into our home is a priority over a long-standing commitment to his own dd that she would move to live with him.

And me? I have to deal with his ridiculous accusations that I am somehow preventing him from seeing his daughter, when the reality is that he can ask to see her any time he likes, and he has just dropped on me that he won't after all be able to have her for 6 days next week (again a long-standing agreement) while I am away working.

That turned into more of a vent that I meant it to, and I too really feel for you OP but please - lets not turn this into a male v female thing, or RP v NRP thing. There are some parents who just don't put their children first, and that's very sad.

I agree. Be they male, female, RP, NRP or a combination of, some parents are selfish beyond contempt.

Yeah, there is definitely a shitty end of the stick which fathers can get, and I think it's unfair to say they don't because some NR fathers aren't very good.

I don't know what the answer is, but it isn't quite right at the moment.

I completely agree with the op but with switched gender roles and families

No matter how hard I tried to maintain contact with exp and HIS family, I have been shot down at every available oppourtunity

I'm a psycho, ds son isn't his, ds doesn't have any right to get to know them or be a part of his family

I have no right to access hereditry health problems even though his family has a nasty hereditry disorder

My ds has broken his heart over broken promises, being shut out and told he has no right

That poor man, how sad.
As the mother of boys (I don't have any daughters), I pray that if they happen to be unlucky enough to suffer a marriage breakdown when they are older, that at least the mother of their children will be a decent enough person to continue involving them in the children's life.

I'm so sorry for you OP. I am divorced and moved 300 miles away from my X, but I still think it is so very important for our son to see his dad. If anything happened he would be the first to know, and I never ever bad-mouth my son's dad in front of him, much as I'd like to. I think your ex-wife is being very unreasonable, and it is unfair to both you and your daughter. Some of us ex-wives aren't like that, so I'm sorry for you both.

araffery - it must be heartbreaking for you.
Agree - hassled - what are all these people doing to their children, other adults and actually themselves - I always say it is often easier and you will be happier by just doing the right thing and not hurting people.