Today I despise my ex-husband. I seriously do. After fifteen years of being apart, having new partners, new spouses and incredible family changes he has decided to talk shit about me to my daughter. Our daughter. He has trivialized the pain and suffering we both went through when we decided to end our marriage into two things: I didn't want to travel the continent with him in a motor home, and, I wanted to become a world traveler. The operative word here is "I." He has made the entire divorce about me and my selfishness. And my daughter has bought some of it.
She thinks our marriage ended because of me. Me, alone. Not him. There obviously is no "it takes two to tango" in his language genre.
What possesses a man, who has since remarried and acquired a new family, to trash talk after all these years? In my oblivious ignorance I actually thought we had gotten past all of that crap. I thought we were doing things that would make it less hurtful for our kids.
Maybe it is time for me to be frankly honest with my kids and tell them exactly why I couldn't stay in a long term relationship with their father. I have avoided that conversation for years. I always felt it was best to keep it out of the gutter. I gave them little snipets of information but never had a discussion with them about the intricacies of our relationship and why it ultimately failed. Maybe now that they are adults...and obviously listening to their Dad...they need to know.
There really are two sides to each story.
-Anni
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