Dad's House » divorce

Tit for Tat Coparenting

dadshouse — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:05:12 +0000

There’s give and take in every relationship, whether you’re dating, married, or divorced.

When you have kids, a nice goal is to share the coparenting workload.

Tit for tat.

But what happens when the tit for tat reciprocation falls flat?

Head on over to the Hot Dads blog for a look at:

Tit for Tat Coparenting

(If that pre-programmed link doesn’t work, just go straight to Hot Dads.)

I reckon tat for tit coparenting is something else entirely.

Flickr photo by stevegatto2, some rights reserved.

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Is Divorce a Crime? David Brooks Might Think So

dadshouse — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:08:53 +0000

I recently had the pleasure of hearing New York Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks speak in Silicon Valley as part of the Celebrity Forum Speaker Series. Let me just say – I was shocked at some of the things David Brooks said about divorce.

Or rather, things he didn’t say about divorce… I’ll explain in a minute.

It’s safe to call David Brooks a thought leader and opinion shaper in the United States. Besides rendering his opinion for the New York Times since 2003, he has held editorial positions with Newsweek, The Weekly Standard, and appears regularly on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. He’s held posts throughout the world for the Wall Street Journal. He speaks on NPR. He’s covered the Senate. He’s met with Obama.

In short, David Brooks has reach.

During his talk at Celebrity Forum, David Brooks told quite a few funny stories. Trust me, the older women knitting in the row behind me laughed just as loud as me.

But on at least three occasions (by my count), I heard Mr. Brooks lump “divorce” into a sentence that was loaded with criminal things. For instance,

“crime, drug use, divorce, …”

The old ladies with their knitting needles gasped and tsked-tsked at the evil images Mr. Brooks painted.

To which I say, WTF!? Since when is divorce a crime? Last I checked, my marital separation was perfectly legal. Not only that, it took a government act to make my divorce official.

I don’t remember David Brooks ever explaining why he lumped divorce with crime and drug use. He simply did it. On three occasions! (by my count). I don’t get it.

Did he want people to associate divorce with crime? (A Rush Limbaugh tactic, if ever there was one.)

I have news for Mr. Brooks – there are a lot of divorced people in the United States. Around half of all first marriages end in divorce. Are you suggesting we lock these people up? Or pass laws to force them to stay married? Some couples need to separate, for a variety of reasons – abuse, infidelity, irreconcilable differences.

I’m not saying divorce is something married couples should aspire to. I’m simply accepting that divorce sometimes happens. Hell, it happened to me. We learn, grow, evolve. Life goes on.

David Brooks went on to discuss the ability of men to communicate emotions. Meaning Mr. Brooks projected his own inability onto every man. (To which I once again say, WTF!?)

It went something like this (I’m paraphrasing, not quoting):

Researchers scanned the brains of men while those men watched a horror film, then scanned those same brains when the men were asked to communicate their emotions. And you know what? The brain scans from the two events were exactly the same!

The knitting crowd behind me chuckled and clucked approval.

Once again, I have news for Mr. Brooks. There are a lot of men in the world who can communicate emotionally. I know that not all men are comfortable doing this, but some clearly are. It’s not necessarily a generational thing. I happen to be around David Brooks’ same age, and I have no problem speaking or writing what I feel.

Why does Mr. Brooks feel all men are emotional klutzes? I’m guessing it’s from everything he’s been through in his life.

If you put the two together – a divorced single dad raising his kids solo, forced to communicate emotionally (since there is no woman around) – you might end up like Clive Owen’s character in The Boys Are Back – a bumbling oaf who doesn’t know how to deal, and ends up eliminating all parenting and household rules. (I suspect Mr. Brooks would be in this category, along with the husbands of all those clucking and knitting ladies in the row behind me.)

Or take another divorced single dad who is raising his kids alone, and you might end up with someone more evolved – a man who can communicate emotionally. Someone who has heartfelt talks with his teen daughter about sex and dating, and shares emotionally tender moments with his son.

In other words, some divorced parents are more evolved than married wonks like David Brooks.

I can hear those knitting women gasp in shock. Sorry, ladies, but some men – perhaps a minority, but they do exist – some men communicate emotionally, without problem.

David Brooks might do well as a thought leader and opinion shaper to promote more positive images of divorce and of men when he speaks. What does society gain by hammering home the thought of divorced people as criminals, and men as emotionally bumbling fools?

Then again, what do I know? I’m just a divorced man.

Now then, can the prison guard please bring me my crack pipe? I’m done with this post.

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Divorce Separation – Living Together Under One Roof

dadshouse — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:03:41 +0000

My wife and I were married for 9 years and had 2 children when we first talked about getting divorced. We’d already been through three different stints of couples counseling to address various issues. But some differences between us were irreconcilable, and we felt it was time to separate.

Ten months later, I moved out.

We lived separated, under one roof, for nearly a year. Why so long? We feared how divorce would affect our children (age 3 and 7 at the time). We feared we might regret legally ending our marriage, then want to reconcile. In short, we feared pulling the trigger to end our marriage for good.

How was it living separated under one roof? Very difficult! But we survived. Here’s how we pulled it off.

Weekday mornings: I would get up early, eat breakfast, and head to work before my wife or the kids woke up. She’d have breakfast with the kids, and get them to day care and school.

Weekday lunch: I’d often go visit my youngest child in day care. We both needed that contact.

Weekday evenings: I’d come home first, pick up the kids from day care and after-school care, cook dinner, give them baths. Some nights I’d read to them and tuck them into bed before my wife came home. Other nights, she’d do that and I’d retire early. Either way, I went to sleep while my wife stayed up late.

(Let me say for the record, it was miserable having a wife stay out late every night. She wasn’t hanging out in bars, she usually worked late. But she did have a social life with other adults, something I sorely lacked. I guess there’s always one “fun parent” in divorce.)

Weekends: we’d take turns spending the day with the kids, sometimes leaving town without the other parent.

As for sleeping, we didn’t have an extra room, so my wife and I stayed in the same bed. Though for the amount we touched each other, we could have been on different continents.

A buddy of mine took a different approach to living separated under one roof while going through his divorce. He moved his family into a condo that had shared common rooms but a separate entrance for each bedroom. He and his wife slept in totally different ends of the condo, behind locked doors, which meant he could date and bring women home while living in the same place as his wife. Crazy, but it worked for him. (Yes, some single dads are womanizers and partiers. That doesn’t mean we all are.)

I will say, once my wife and I acted on our divorce, and I moved out, and we told the kids – our kids were happy that the tension in the house was finally relieved. None of us wanted our family to collapse, but we all wanted a more peaceful home.

If you liked this divorce separation post, you might also enjoy:

My First Girlfriend Post-Divorce

dadshouse — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:36:15 +0000

I thought my first serious post-divorce girlfriend was “the one”

I was wrong.

Head on over to the Hot Dads blog for a heartfelt post about dating after divorce:

My First Post-Divorce Girlfriend

Then come back and remind me to focus again on humor and sex… (or not.)

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When Sexy Texting Leads to Divorce

dadshouse — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:03:15 +0000

I earlier told the story of a Dad’s House reader who found a pre-paid GoPhone in his wife’s lingerie drawer. Turns out his hot wife was having a discreet affair. The secret phone had sexy text messages between his wife and her lesbian lover.

Dad’s House readers chimed in with advice – confiscate the phone, freeze financial assets, call an attorney, get the hell out of the marriage, pronto!

Recently, I was asked to tell the rest of the story. Here’s what happened.

Joe (not his real name) said his wife was away the night he found the sexy texting phone. He and his wife’s relationship was already ice cold, and they were mulling a divorce. Joe called his attorney first thing in the morning.

On attorney’s advice, Joe took the pre-paid cell phone and made note of the sexy text message phone number. (He already recognized it as belonging to a friend of a relation.) The attorney locked the phone in a safe in his office, and instructed Joe not to say a word about it.

Joe’s wife never let on that the phone was gone.

She must have figured she lost it at the gym, or someplace else, because two weeks later – while she was in the shower – Joe heard a cell phone chime in her athletic bag. He peeked, and found another pre-paid GoPhone full of more sexy text messages.

Joe took this phone, but his attorney said he didn’t need the evidence, so Joe put it back – in a different place. This time his wife noticed her phone was gone. She turned the house upside down looking for it. (She never admitted to what she was looking for). Joe said she was totally stressed until she found the prepaid phone two days later.

Meanwhile, the wife was pushing for full child and alimony support from Joe, and full custody of the kids. Joe’s attorney said with the sexy texting evidence, there was no way she’d get any of that. The plan was to confront her in court with the phone and sexy texts, in front of a judge.

The cheating wife tried to push things into mediation. Joe and his attorney wanted none of that. The attorney wrote a letter detailing all of the sexy texting evidence, and presented it to the wife’s attorney.

That was all the cheating wife needed to see. She dropped all her divorce demands, on the condition she would get joint custody of the kids.

Several weeks later, she moved into her own place. She and Joe now share half-time custody of their kids. Joe pays no alimony. His wife is still with her lesbian lover.

Joe said he wanted to thank Dad’s House blog and its readers for the advice and support. He said he pushed to have primary custody for himself because of blog posts he read here. Namely, he didn’t want to suffer having the schools and doctors send important information to his wife, and not to him.

His biggest take home message from Dad’s House readers was to not confront his wife alone. Had he done that, he feels she would have belittled him and cajoled him and co-dependently guilted him into something to her favor. He’s glad he was patient and allowed his attorney to do the confronting part.

Lesson to all you sexy texters out there: even pre-paid Go Phones aren’t safe, especially if you’re trying to cheat on a spouse and you’re dumb enough to bring the phone into the house.

Unless, of course, you subconsicously want to get caught.

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Dear Jon Gosselin, I Can Relate

dadshouse — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:33:58 +0000

Jon Gosselin recently talked to ABC News about things that led to his divorce. For one, Jon said he got tired of Kate Gosselin talking down to him and berating him. Jon said he finally took a stand for himself and stood up to her, knowing it might lead to divorce.

To which I say to Jon Gosselin – I can totally relate.

While the details of my marriage and separation are different than Jon and Kate’s divorce, some of the themes are the same. I too was married to a strong woman who spoke her mind, and I too eventually stood up for myself.

The power mom as CEO treating her husband as an underling seems a modern phenomenon. Remember the traditional couples of the 1950s? Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best acted them out on TV. While the mom was keeper of the house, the dad was head of the family and pretty much called the shots.

That was something I decidedly did not want for myself.

I wanted an equal partner. I found a strong-willed woman and got married thinking we’d run our household together. Unfortunately, things didn’t play out that way in real life. I wasn’t beaten down in the manner Jon Gosselin says Kate treated him. But I did allow my wife to be the stronger partner.

Over time, while there were tons of things I appreciated about my marriage (like our kids!), I realized I was not living life in a way I wanted for myself. I was doing things my wife wanted in order to support the life she pictured for herself. We weren’t equals in our marriage, at all. (Think Jon Gosselin can relate to that?)

And while I wanted a different life, Dad’s House readers already know I’m not a deadbeat or party animal. I’ve had 50-50 joint custody since my separation, and have remained an active and involved parent in my kids lives.

Jon Gosselin said he went through tons of individual therapy, and I applaud him for that. Not only that he sought help to get to know himself and change as a person, but for admitting publicly that therapy is something he pursued. It’s not a weakness to go to therapy. It takes courage to become more self aware and try to improve yourself.

While I think Jon and Kate Gosselin should stop filming their reality TV show (Jon and Kate Plus 8) since it gives a stilted view of what they’re going through and keeps their kids in a painful spotlight, I think this latest interview from Jon Gosselin is certainly good for the public to hear. Yes, there are two sides to every story. And with paparazzi-chased celebrities, there are usually even more sides than that.

But I appreciate that Jon Gosselin gave us a candid look at some of what he went through in his marriage and leading up to his divorce.

I can relate.

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Jon and Kate Gosselin – Is it Fair to Blog About Them?

dadshouse — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:15:55 +0000

After I was interviewed and quoted by CNN for a single dad’s opinion about Jon and Kate Gosselin, I asked and answered this question on my blog: where do Jon and Kate live? In denial.

My feeling was that Jon and Kate hadn’t even started processing the painful junk from their divorce, and it served no purpose to them, their kids, or the public, to continue their TV show. The public is not getting an unfiltered view of the grief of divorce, like they might get from the single parent blogosphere. They’re getting a polished view, with clips filtered and chosen by a producer for ratings. What will anyone learn from that?

A Dad’s House commentator immediately gave me grief. She said:

“Your highlighting another families misgivings and pain for your own blog growth and benefit. Oh…and you speak about your children on your “single dad” blog publically. tsk tsk put the rocks down …you’re surrounded by glass.”

I asked myself – am I judging Jon and Kate Gosselin for the choices they make? And what business does any blogger have in writing about their pain?

First off, I’m not judging Jon & Kate. I’m divorced, I’ve dated as a single parent. I know there are ups and downs, and plenty of mistakes to be made.

What I am doing when I blog about the Jon and Kate divorce is giving my opinion. I realize I haven’t walked in their shoes. If I had, I’d probably make the exact same choices they’re making. But the beauty of rendering an opinion is that I have experienced some of the same stuff they’re going through. I’ve been divorced almost 10 years. I’ve crashed emotionally to the lowest lows, and risen back up to some incredible highs. (No, not that kind of high. Where’s Dave? Dave’s not here!) I have some general wisdom to impart about single parent life.

Is my wisdom the prescription for Jon and Kate and every other divorced parent in the world? No! It’s just one opinion, and I throw it out there to initiate conversation and spark debate.

Part of the reason the public is fascinated by celebrity train wrecks like Jon and Kate Gosselin’s divorce is that we can look at the people impersonally, without our own junk thrown in the mix. How many of us actually know them? Not many. How many watch their show? A lot. Because we know something about them, we can ask each other for opinions. “What would you do in that circumstance?” It helps us glean insights and mold opinions of our own.

None of us has walked in Jon and Kate Gosselin’s shoes. But some of us are divorced. Some of us have dated after our marriage ended. Some of us deal with two-home living situations for our children. Life goes on.

I think Jon and Kate Gosselin would benefit from the tabloid media and paparazzi giving them a break. They need time to work through the emotional and psychological trauma of divorce. (Then again, Jon Gosselin is apparently in talks to do a Divorced Dads Club reality show with Lindsay Lohan’s dad. They seem to relish the spotlight.)

Should bloggers give Jon and Kate a break too? Nah. Look, I’m not trying to expose Jon and Kate for any lurid affairs. I’m simply trying to spark a conversation on how one might choose to go about life after marriage ends.

If pointing to a well-known couple fosters discussion, then hopefully it can be done without passing judgment.

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