Have you ever found yourself frustrated by someone else?
Continually?
Could it be that you are doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results, and then ending up frustrated when the other person’s behavior is no different?
Who do you have to call you on your bullshit? Continue reading “Who Calls You on Your Bullshit?”
When you get divorced you all of a sudden add new roles to your single parenting job. These are duties that you would probably not have had the opportunity to experience while still married. This is especially true for fathers of daughters.
When married the “girl things” were probably passed on to your wife to handle. Now, as the sensitive new aged single dad that you are, confusion, embarrassment, and often terror are a regular part of your day as your daughter’s increasingly feminine needs fall to you to figure out.
No one properly prepared us to help our daughters with these girl things. They often pop up unexpectedly. My goal with this post is not to give you all the answers, but to give you some things to think about ahead of time. Warnings that will help you properly prepare your already frazzled emotions.
1. Boys (or girls) Let’s start with an easy one. Continue reading “5 Scary “Girl Things” for Single Dads”
I knew that our new dog had been used as a breeder at a local puppy mill. She had been a new momma within the last few weeks. Her body showed it.
As we finished up the paperwork, and the kids took our five year old parent out to the car, the shelter worker leaned over to me and quietly told me something she had been holding back. Our new mom had not wanted to be one. She had killed her puppies. She had rebelled at the idea of being a parent and had thrown her kids around her cage, until all but one of her ten were gone. No longer a benefit to them the owners of the mill had given our sweet pup up to the shelter.
When we returned home I opened up an email from my ex to my daughter’s school and therapists, reminding me that we were having our own mother-child issues. Continue reading “Why do Some Mothers Reject their Own Children? A Narcissist’s Revenge”
Cover Image: By Motown/Tamla Records-photographer-James Kriegsmann, New York (Billboard page 13) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Did the Motown artists that sang about infidelity ever actually get cheated on?
I get it. You break up with someone and you go through different levels of sadness. But with infidelity it isn’t just levels. There is an edge to that type of break-up.
A break-up caused by infidelity requires…stages.
This post describes 7: shock, denial, obsession, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
The Motown artists seem to have never gone through any of those…or maybe they just got stuck in denial.
Take “I’d Rather Go Blind” by Etta James for example:
I would rather, I would rather go blind boy
Than to see you, walk away from me, child, oh, oooh
So you see I love you so much
That I don’t want to watch you leave me baby
Since separating from my ex-wife I have come to understand that she has narcissistic tendencies that I had never seen before. As I recovered from her affair and its fall out I learned to avoid interacting with her around anything involving my feelings.
However, it is much harder to avoid interacting with her when it comes to the kids. Over the last month my daughter has been living with me full time ever since her mother called the police on her. I have been doing my best to support my daughter and trying to help her understand how to talk with her mother.
On most days my daughter does not want anything to do with her. The reason she gives is that her mother focuses on herself, and does not apologize. My daughter is feeling the full brunt of her mother’s self-centered narcissism.
And like a fool I keep hoping that I can help my ex understand what she needs to do to help resolve the issues between the two of them. Copied below is an exchange of texts I had with my ex this morning. It is a snippet, a sample, of what a conversation with a narcissistic co-parent might look like. Continue reading “A peek into coparenting with a narcissist”
Divorced Dad 101 