All too often, the non-custodial parent is perceived as if he/she is a deadbeat and has no interest in the children.
This is a piece for divorced parents. It is written on behalf of the non-custodial parent; one who wants a relationship with the kids, yet finds the relationship compromised by the other parent. All too often, the non-custodial parent is perceived as if he/she is a deadbeat and has no interest in the children – when that couldn't be farther from the truth. I am one such parent and the tears I have shed over this situation are far too many to count.
Many partners entering into a marriage have a fantasy that there will be a "happily ever after." Too many of us, however, have unresolved issues that bear intense self-evaluation before seriously considering tying the knot. Unfortunately, there are no pre-Cana programs for those who aren't Catholic. Indeed, not everyone recognizes their own unresolved issues. This results in a large percentage of people entering into a marital contract for all the wrong reasons, or without a realistic idea of what marriage really entails. Let me clear up a few misconceptions.
I recently learned about covenants and contracts during a class on the Constitution. The Constitution is a covenant between the people of this country, who have the power to dissolve the government, whose form is more like a contract. Those who hold office are supposed to uphold the covenant. They are contracted to do this. There is a huge difference between these two words. A contract implies that it can be broken if one or the other parties reneges on their obligations. On the other hand, a covenant is a promise to live your life by certain values and meeting certain obligations in order to be assured certain conditions. Breaking a covenant is a much larger ordeal; sort of like having a revolution instead of just changing a few laws or electing different representatives to office.
A marriage should be thought of as a covenant; not to be broken because of the exceptionally large cost which will be wreaked on all the family and friends related to the partners as a married couple. Marriage should not be entered into lightly. It takes a lifelong commitment. If that cannot be absolutely promised, it should not happen. A contract implies that there is an escape clause. Too many people think of marriage as a contract. That is why, in many cases, there are prenuptial agreements between partners in the event that something should go wrong.
Unfortunately, I entered my first marriage for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to break the contract; however, the advice that I received from the counselor who I most trusted was to stay in the marriage. Her reasoning was that if his qualities were over 50% good, if he didn't beat me, cheat, nurse an addiction, and brought home a decent wage, I was doing well. However, I eventually left the marriage because there was one important ingredient that was left out: I wasn't devoted to him or in
love with him. I couldn't reconcile spending my life with a person with whom I couldn't put ahead of myself.
I eventually remarried and that is when most of the problems ensued. I moved out of my ex's hometown to another suburb. I was devoted to my new spouse, who needed to live in the area where we settled. Because this meant it would be nearly impossible to see my children everyday, I opted to have them on alternate weekends and see them in their neighborhood twice a week – plus summers. That sounds reasonable enough — if an ex understands the importance of children having two parents. Unfortunately,
my ex-husband does not.
He made it clear to them that time spent at my house meant being away from their friends and the activities in which they could be involved in what he considered their "real" home. And because he involves himself in their every activity (he is their scout leader, their soccer coach, is a member of where they worship) this has made it nearly impossible for me to take the lead in anything where they live. If I am to see them, I must see him as well. I must navigate those who are his friends, who do not reach out to me. I am intensely alone when I am in his neighborhood, "his town."
The result is that my children have learned not to see me as an authority or as a parent with equal investment in them. I've become an accessory, an obligation, an annoyance, depending on the day. For the most part, my ex has left nothing for me to do with them alone except go to dinner. He even interrupts them when I'm at the house (sometimes doing homework with one or the other) to tell them what they must do (all of the sudden laundry becomes very important, arguments ensue about whether the TV is on) right in front of me, as if I'm a babysitter and am incapable of making decisions about how I spend my time with my own children.
It doesn't help that schools are not required to call both parents about situations that arise. It doesn't matter that the divorce decree states that I have an equal voice about their medical care and treatment; their attending doctors simply listen to my ex-husband and don't feel the need to consult with me when he brings them to their offices. The caregivers understand that he will do whatever he deems necessary and that the children are old enough to go along with his decisions. My kids have been conditioned not to see me as a primary caregiver, whose opinion about their lives should be taken seriously.
Their father knowingly undermines the minimal time I have with my children (I've given up on weekends at my house) by telling them that I'm the one who made life so inconvenient by moving 45 minutes away (only in traffic), that I'm the one who wants to schedule two nights a week with them, which will interfere with sport practices now that they're in high school. I freely admit, I do want them on a weekend or part of the summer, what loving parent wouldn't, and I do understand that it might interfere with camping or seeing friends where they live. While it is true that I could see them all the time if I'd never moved and tried to have a life apart from my ex-husband, wanting to see my children shouldn't require the continuation of a dissolved marriage. He has taught my children to refuse to move beyond what are now circumstances that cannot be easily changed. He has taught them limitation.
He's taught them there is no need to respect me, that I've divorced them as well as him, and that I'm selfish for having a life without them. He treats my relationship with them as a contract, not a covenant. Oddly, that is the same message I received from my own mother about my father when I was a child and they divorced. To this day, I do not have a relationship with my father though I often cry about that void in my life. I don't want that to happen with my own children but I fear I am beginning to see the writing on the wall.
Most incredibly, I have an ex who has taught our children that time spent with their mom has no value; that it isn't important to know their mother. When they see me, there is always something that must be sacrificed. Instead of learning to accept reality by making the best of an otherwise difficult situation, they have been taught to limit their capacity for positive thinking and to dwell on what might have been, building up a resentment toward me that is of late becoming an extremely heavy cross to bear.
I'm sure there are deadbeat parents, parents who think little of spending time with their children, or find dedicating time to them a burden. But there are more parents who have gotten divorced from their spouses and are mortified to find that their kids have become entities included in the divorce settlement, rather than living, loving human beings to be cared for and nurtured. This is a tragedy for the children and an exploitation of the non-custodial parent. I could take my ex to court but my children are teenagers and having been literally brainwashed, would look at a judge and say they don't want to leave their "real" home. They would tell a judge that they don't want to be taken away from their friends and activities, a notion cultivated by the narcissism of their father.
They would look at a judge and say, she's the one who left.
Hi, this is a tragic story that is described too often. Parents having such difficulties (i.e., covert or overt alienation and poisoning of the children) would benefit from reading “Divorce Poison” by Richard Warshak. It’s an excellent resource that offers empathy as well as tactics that can be employed in a proactive manner to try to counter the negative effects on the kids. Thanks for sharing your story. Eric
Well written, and I understand the heavy load on her heart, from personal experience. However, she made a decision to leave. Unfortunately. Knowing her ex as well as she did, she knew in advance the potential for what would happen. And it did. I too knew this type of scenario had the potential to play out in my divorced life. And consequently made the decision not to leave. I remained little more than 3 miles away. Attended every game, school function, called school principals, went to the same church, picked them up from CCD, and coordinated what was going on with my ex, in spite of her frequent attempts to keep me at arms length. They could easily take the school bus home to my house or my ex’s. My personal life, new partner, new job offers, all did not add up to the level of importance that my children were and would remain to me. I made the decision early on that they would remain my top priority and everything else would be secondary. It was not easy; many opportunities were lost, never to come back around. But it was after all a temporary situation. They would eventually grow-up, and become more independent. When that occurred, my priorities changed. Not until. My children are also teenagers now, and often don’t want either parent around. So independence is beginning to take root, but only after my almost daily presence had its impact on their value system. I am not convinced the author of this story was willing to make a similar commitment, and she has lost what she cannot regain. I feel for her.
I am troubled that the writer did not heed the counsellor’s advice. By acting loving, it becomes possible to generate positive feelings in the mate. Clearly they did not abandoned the relationship, but the pursuit of divorce awakened the feelings that emerged as antipathy.
I regularly work with children who suffer for their parents’ choices. Many have fallen
“out of love” with their children as is evident by the battles they engage in. I always focus on dealing with, but minimalizing the conflicts while investing in relationship building activities together and rewarding the positives. When they increase their own standards, those of their children, and recognise that they are on the same, not opposite sides, the situation improves. If we collectively see we can’t bail on either our spouses or our children just because the going gets tough, we miss out on chances to grow and be the people we must become while the others in our lives equally benefit.
Ms. Salvado broke the covenant between mother and child when she left her marriage and again when she moved away to honor her new “covenant.” If she truly considered marriage a contract, then she would have subordinated it to her relationship with her children. That failure caused the trouble. She treated her children like chattel. Of course they react by devaluing her parental relationship.
When the Israelites broke their covenant with God they spent 40 years doing penance in the desert. Horor your covenant with your children; show them that you value them above all others. You cannot depend on or blame others such as your ex. Perhaps then you will regain that which you have lost.
Hmmph! A little heavier on the “mea culpa” please, Ms. Salvato. 90% of those who wreck a home by initiating a divorce are women (this is admitted by feminist Shere Hite in her bookWomen and Love). Like you, the vast majority of those homewreckers offer the same weak excuses you do, fluff like “I’m not in love with him,” “I need to find myself,” or “I don’t want to be married anymore.” This and more is documented by Dr. Sanford Braver in his 1998 book Divorced Dads, a book everyone involved in the divorce industry – from consumers to producers to to policy-makers to their victims – should read.
The tale you tell, Ms. Salvato, is a commonplace story most often suffered by dads and unlike you those dads were rarely the person who chose to wreck the home. Maybe you grew up on the feminacentrism illustrated in the movie Kramer vs. Kramer and picked up the womanfirster mindset exemplified by feminist Phyllis Chesler who once proclaimed “Any father who puts a child and his mother through the pain of a custody battle… is by definition an unfit father.” Frauleiterin Chesler has no concern about the fitness of any mother who puts a child and his father through such an experience – after all, such selfish women reason, “he’s only a man.”
You gave away just how circumscribed is your ability to see beyond yourself early on in this essay, Ms. Salvato, when you commented “Unfortunately, there are no pre-Cana programs for those who aren’t Catholic.” Those Christians outside the Church Universal might not call their counterpart programs for pre-marrieds “pre-Cana” but counterpart programs do exist among those who aren’t Catholic. More self-recognition of your self-centered attitude that made the temptation to divorce your man such a lure to you would have shown that yiou really have learned something from your past bad choices.
What you discovered about what “joint custody” really means after you left your children’s home, Ms. Salvato, is what millions of fathers who were thrown out by divorce seeking mothers already know: one gets to participate in decision-making regarding the children as an equal parent, then the parent with sole physical custody decides. Feminists call that “equality” and fight tooth and claw against reforms that would make equal parenting after a divorce a bit more likely, such as a legal presumption for shared instead of sole physical custody. Rational reforms, you see, might crimp the lifestyle choices of liberated women so feminists oppose them.
Feminists also pretend that the Parental Alienation Syndrome your children experienced really doesn’t exist. Why? Because the perpetrator of such psychological child abuse is usually a woman and feminists arre all about defending the woman, No Matter What. Whatever your offense against your children was by breaking up their family, your children did nothing to deserve being alienated from you – as you claim – by the man you divorced. But you’re not completely innocent of that, Ms. Salvato, because your own actions made you an accessory and enabler of that sin. Yes, you were the one who left those children behind you. Physicallly leaving wasn’t your great offense against your children, your family, and your marriage vows to your Creator. Some parents are forced to leave because the other parent broke the marriage and seized the children. Your great offense was being the homewrecker and the parent who fled your children’s home.
Color me underwhelmed by your confession here, Ms. Salvato. Still, your tale of woe does make one point very strongly: Only lawyers, legislators, and Hollywood stars are superstitious enought to believe there is such a thing as no-fault divorce.
What I find ironic about this whole story is how she consistently is blaming somebody else. It is not her fault her marriage broke up. It is not her fault she left the house. It is not her fault she chose to enter another relationship that she then placed foremost above her relationship with her children. It is always somebody elses fault.
Note in her very own piece she states, she CHOSE (note that is a keyword there) to end her marriage. She Chose to move. She Chose to limit her contact with her children. Why would she act surprised that the children choose to not spend time with her?
The only person at fault here ma’am is you. Had you taken your VOWS more seriously you may have had a great relationship with your children but all you have taught them is they should look for self gratifion first. Great parenting lessons there.