{"id":260,"date":"2015-08-31T09:36:13","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T07:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/?p=260"},"modified":"2015-08-31T09:37:14","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T07:37:14","slug":"being-single-thinking-double-my-parents-divorce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/2015\/08\/31\/being-single-thinking-double-my-parents-divorce\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Single Thinking Double – My Parents Divorce"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MikeSaid<\/a>\u201cStraight out of left field\u201d so the saying goes and the day my mom called us in and told us she was going to ask my dad to leave, I simply had no idea why. I had never seen them fight or argue, I had no inkling this was coming or why. In a flash my dad was gone, one day I lived in the same house as him and the next I didn\u2019t, never to share a roof with him again. We visited on weekends; spending our time in a place we called \u201cdivorceland<\/strong>.\u201d It was trips to bookshops, record libraries, museums, pinball halls, restaurants and the occasional movie. I never had two homes, my own room or a second bed, somewhere to visit my father. The strangest thing is that I can\u2019t ever remember missing him, I am not certain he was ever really present before he left.<\/p>\n

Who really knows the impact that has had on me, my ability to form relationships, to trust? The one thing I am absolutely certain of is the impact it has had on my own relationship with my daughter. I will certainly explore my relationship with my father (or lack thereof) later on and how this two shaped me and my role as a father.<\/p>\n

As I hit the terrible teens I began to fight with my mom and of course threatened that I was going to \u201cgo and live with my father\u201d\u2026 boy was I in for a surprise. Turns out he wasn\u2019t as keen as I was; in fact, it was not going to happen. I am not certain if I questioned this at the time, but as the years rolled on, I began to question it and to some degree build up resentment towards him. No single incident in my life had a greater influence on my relationship with my daughter than this. I made a very conscious decision that the sins of the father were NOT going to be visited on the children and the children\u2019s children.<\/p>\n

Years later as a husband and a father I began to ask questions of him, I wanted a deeper understanding of his life choices. I wanted to ask him, no, I wanted to tell him how those choices had affected me. Although I got a few answers I never really got any explanation and certainly no closure and this unfortunately set the tone for my relationship with him for the future.<\/p>\n

Sasha spends approximately 12 nights of the month with me, we would both like it to be just a little more (that\u2019s a blog for another day) but one day when chatting about it she asked me how many nights a month I stayed with my father. I tried to explain that things were different back then, but I could see from the look on her face that she could not grasp the concept that since the day he left I had never shared a home with him and very little of my life.<\/p>\n

I have tried revisiting that day so many times, I have tried to understand those early years after the divorce, and I have tried to imagine the added burden placed on a woman in her early 40\u2019s who is suddenly saddled with raising three teenagers. Perhaps the added stress and strain was a major contributor to my next defining moment\u2026<\/p>\n

My mother\u2019s illness.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cStraight out of left field\u201d so the saying goes and the day my mom called us in and told us she was going to ask my dad to leave, I simply had no idea why. I had never seen them fight or argue, I had no inkling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,2],"tags":[20,21,8,5,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/daddyblogger.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}