I feel really bad for all you guys out there who are going through this. Being a truck driver doesnt help the situation either, especially if you have a job where you’re away alot. I know that in the US, if a the court orders a specific visitation schedule, and you aren’t able to stick to it because of work, the court doesn’t do much to back you up when you ARE able to spend time with your kids. They just don’t seem to be sympathetic to the situation. The courts feel that if you really want to see your kids that you’ll arrange the time off with your employer. We all know employers don’t give a ■■■■ about your personal life, and aren’t willing to accommodate you. After a certain number of visits are missed, whether for work or not, the court is more apt to favor the mothers anyway.
It makes me wonder how many of these women were children of divorce themselves. I was. There was obvious hostility between my parents after they split. But they made sure we had equal access to both parents at any given time. They lived close enough so that we could just walk from one house to the other whenever we chose. And just to make a point here,… when they split, we lived with my father. That wasn’t by choice at the time, but after my mother got settled, we were given the choice, and 2 of us moved with her, and 2 stayed with my dad. It was the freedom that I had in choosing for myself that made me want to give my son the same experience.
My son’s dad does NOT always set a good example for my son. He’s a bitter, angry, resentful, mean man. He’s been in and out of jail a good part of his life, and uses threats and intimidation to get people to do what he wants… and seems to think that its ok to teach Seth the same. It’s a challenge to try to balance that, and to teach Seth that his father goes about some things the wrong way. So far, we’ve managed to do that without making his father out to be a bad guy. Seth has alot of his fathers personality traits, and in order to teach him how to handle these traits in himself, its sometimes necessary to use his Dad as an example, hoping he will learn something from his fathers mistakes. Even his father will do the same sometimes. But for every bad quality his father has, that I may have to point out to my son, in a positive and constructive way of course, I also have to point out his good qualities. No one is all good or all bad. And I loved him for a long time. It’s the qualities in him that I loved so much that I have to emphasize to Seth. And his main redeeming quality is how much he loves his son… and thats good enough for me!