Does guilt from breaking up your child’s family make you feel like you have to overcompensate? I think this happens to both custodial and non custodial parents. We all love our children so much we can’t help be feel like we need to make it up to them that their lives are not perfect.
When I first got divorced I found myself taking Hailey out to eat at her favorite places, going to movies, buying her things that she really didn’t need. All to try to make things better. My poor, poor little girl, coming from a broken home, not getting to see her Daddy every day. I chose the divorce, yes there were many contributing factors but ultimately I’m the one who said “I want a divorce.” I moved out, I took Hailey away from her Dad. Even though it was the best thing for everyone involved there were still many times when I felt I should have just stuck it out until she was eighteen.
I beat myself up for so long that finally I just had to stop. I was making myself sick with guilt and I wasn’t doing Hailey any favors either. Once I took a good hard look at why I got divorced and what I would have taught my daughter had I stayed I was able to stop kicking myself. Children learn what they live, little girls grow up to marry men very much like their fathers, this is not always a good thing. The worst thing I can imagine is for my daughter to be trapped in the same kind of marriage her parents had.
I left, and I have to accept responsibility for that and move on. I realized that by living with all this guilt I was teaching Hailey that I didn’t trust my own decisions, that maybe, I had no idea what I was doing. That was not the message I wanted to send to my child. In a perfect world we would all live happily ever after. This is not a perfect world and when we make a mistake we have to be strong enough to take responsibility and do what we can to fix it. That is what I did with my divorce. I hope to teach my daughter to be strong, to stand on her own two feet and to make better choices. Only time will tell if I’ve given her the skills she needs to be happy and successful and if I’ve done enough to minimize the scars from the divorce. Whatever happens, I did the right thing, for me, and for Hailey.