To Douglas

 

I am sorry that you are having to go through these things.  Thank you for posting to the Message Board.  I guess all topics are relevant when it is something that can happen to anyone with a CAH child.  Things will get better for you---and I know that you are thinking “How?” right now but there is a grain of truth in the saying, “Time is a great healer.”

We all sometimes have our patience tested and as Deborah says there is nothing positive as far as divorce is concerned for the children.  My parents divorced when I was 14 years of age.  My brothers and sisters were much younger.  I used to have this dream (now I am an adult I realize that this was unrealistic) that my parents would get back together and be happy.  That is all you wish for as a child.  Sometimes it isn’t possible though and the nearest that you can get to that is just civility.  I reflect back on my parents divorce now and then on my own and see others go through the same thing occasionally and have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a “Happy Divorce.”  I used to go away on long weekends with my Dad and when I got back my Mother would ask the dreaded question, “How did it go?”  I learned at an early age to just play my weekend down and not make it out to be fantastic.  This was just the exact way to get my Mother to spew out her feelings of how my Father had no idea etc.  Things I didn’t want to hear.  At some point I remember that we didn’t see very much of his or his parents (our Grandparents) as she put a stop to it.  This however, only served as a challenge to me.  On the pretence of going up town I would go see my Father.  I know small kids cannot do that but what I am trying to say here is that when you hear someone speak ill of someone, it doesn’t exactly or necessarily sit right with you as a kid.  If anything, I respected my Dad all the more as he never had a bad thing to say about my Mother at all---and it was she who left him!   So in trying to contaminate our heads, it worked in the opposite.  I talk with my sisters now and they agree.  As time went on I just learned to treasure the time that I spent with my Dad.  My Mother has us all the time and she would get tired---hence we saw the worse side of her often and the good side of my Father.  We spent so little time with him that the last thing on our minds was doing anything to ruin the time we did have.  So what I am trying to say her is it is not the amount of time that you spend it is the “quality” of time that you spend with your kids that counts. 

 

All those papers that you cut and pasted to the board are just that.  Paper with writing on them.  Rather like the Marriage Certificate that you have.  It is love and respect that bonds a couple together and a family, not a piece of paper.  In a few weeks or months time (depending on how decent the person that you married) they won’t mean anything.  Just file them in the bottom drawer and think positively.  The only way things will improve having some love and respect and by sitting down and talking between your x partner and your self.  You don’t have to be “In love” with each other to think and sit and talk about what is right for yourselves and the kids.  When solicitors and courts get involved the kids can end up being used like pawns in a chess game as you have discovered and if you are a complete novice and playing Nigel Short (former Grand Master) you are going to learn the hard way.  Eventually you will both come to the same conclusion :  that kids and life are not a game.  Your playing against someone that is hurt and knows what can hurt you and what you treasure most in life.  In the end it is the kids that get hurt too.  Soon, this will be realized, but you need to see what has happened as a learning curve as does your x partner and this all takes time.  Things should get better.  I hope that they do for yourselves and the kids.

 

Regards,

 

JH