Kids: The Collateral Damage of Bad Relationships

Kids, the Collateral Damage of Bad Relationships

Can we talk about relationships for a second? I’ve heard so many times that humans are not meant to be monogamous; although, that’s likely from someone that was just caught cheating. Is the constant want to be partnered because we are looking for our someone or because of the desire to procreate? If its only to procreate why was my first crush when I was 4 and why do relationships last long after baby making ages. I’ve had teenage drama relationships, adult abusive relationships and one healthy relationship. There are so many buzz words out there these days. Every ex is a narcissist; we spend our relationships discovering our attachment styles and striving to have the perfect relationship with the perfect person. The whole time we as single parents are trying to figure this out, our kids are along for the unfortunate and often heartbreaking ride. Kids don’t ask to be a part of our messy love lives; they don’t ask to connect with a person that is not their parent and then lose contact with them. Its completely unfair, and I don’t know how to fix it, but I’ll tell what I’ve learned.

I remember my first crush; his name was Christian. He was at least a couple of years older than me and I remember feeling very butterflies around him. He was the first boy I kiss when I was between about 5. I remember I was at a soccer game, he was hanging out in a car with a friend and he said he’d give me candy if kissed him. I kissed his cheek and he gave me candy. I also remember walking away and hearing him say to his friend “see?” I can only imagine that he had told his friend that I had a crush on him. Last time I saw him I was 6. I still remember him well and wonder sometimes what he looks like these days but wouldn’t even know where to begin to look on Facebook for him. Through elementary school there was the odd boy here and there I thought was cute but my first heart break didn’t happen until grade 7 when I was broken up with on my 13th birthday. The kid still had the nerve to ask if he could come to dinner that night. Which he did….so awkward. High school was much the same. Few short term boyfriends but for the most part it always seemed that the boys I liked were not interested in me, and the boys that liked me I was not interested in.

Having Stephen when I was 19, I stopped trying to date for a while. I had my first adult (serious) relationship when I was 22. The next when I was 28, then 32, then 40. I’m going to refer to them as the big 4. I think it will be impossible to talk about relationships without giving some details but for now, for the most part I’m going to keep things vague. If you know me you might know who I’m talking about anyway and which relationship it was. Very quick run down of the big 4, 2 ended because of cheating, 1 because of looming violence and all because of abuse and addiction. Before I knew what a narcissist or gaslighting, stonewalling, or cognitive dissonance was I would have been able to describe them to you perfectly. Seems these days everyone has a narcissist as an ex. I definitely do! Every ex of this person as well as other that know him would agree with me so we can’t all be wrong! Abuse from the others came in different forms. I’ve been cheated on, lied to, manipulated, gaslit, name called, put down in every area of my life, intimidated, coerced, threatened and assaulted. I’ve been physically, mentally, emotionally and verbally abused in the relationships with the big 4. That some heavy shit to handle and has taken, every time, more strength than I thought I had to leave, but I did each time. I am dealing with these things in therapy and sometimes feel very proud of myself for leaving, but you know what makes me cry every time I try to reprocess it? It’s that I wasn’t alone. Its that my kids experienced almost all of this with me.

Speaking as a child of a single mom that dated and a single mom that’s dated, I have perspectives from both sides of the coin. As a little girl, in my opinion, my mom chose men that loved and treated my sister and me very well. I didn’t have much a relationship with my dad but I do feel like when I was with him, I was very much a daddy’s girl. I look back now and wonder if the odd things I was going as a little kid was crying out because I didn’t understand why my dad wasn’t around anymore. When I say odd things, I mean several times I took a bite out of drinking glasses. Why on earth would a 3 year old do that? Times that I saw him, I always wanted to impress him. I wanted to look nice at the very least. Already trying to people please when I was 4. I do remember one time he was on his way at bed time and my hair was in curlers. I wanted the curlers out because I was embarrassed to have him see me like that. Why was my 4 year old brain already wired to want to look nice for a man (even if it was my dad). I was so young when the first relationship after my dad started that it felt natural to me call him dad. He very much was for the 4 years they were together. It was very confusing for me when they split. As a 7 year old break ups aren’t still not typically something the adults discuss with you, and so it was hard for me to understand why we moved across the country. I do remember asking if we were going to be seeing dad and if he was going to be coming to visit. I did see him twice after we moved. Once when I was 9 and once when I was 13. When I first met the next man my mom dated, I threw a huge tantrum in the back of his car when they picked me up from school. Again, this wasn’t typical behavior for me and I think I was just acting out based on my confused little brain. The next “step-dad” didn’t want my sister and me to call him dad even though we wanted to. He wanted to wait until he and my mom were married which didn’t end up happening. That was another 4 years. The cut off was not as permanent. For a while we didn’t see him, but that was because he married someone else. After that ended, he was back in contact with my family so I did see him occasionally until he moved. I talk on the phone to him every 5 plus years just to catch him up on how crazy my life is, hahaha. Once my mom met and married the man that she’s now been married to for over 30 years I had learned to be more cautious. I wasn’t going to jump to call anyone dad again. One reason was I was 17 at that point, but also, I’d learned that dads leave. I didn’t want this one to leave, so somewhere in my brain I figured if I didn’t call him dad he’d stick around. Obviously, that can’t be the reason why he’s still here or the reason things didn’t work out with the other but the track record was there and I wasn’t going to be the one to jinx it. He’s Papa, and everyone is pretty happy with that. He’s been an amazing Papa for 30 years! Even though my mom’s taste in men was exponentially better than mine it still really sucked to get attached to a “dad” and then lose him. It’s a hard thing for a kid to understand and for a parent to deal with when they are dealing with their own emotions around the breakup.

As a little girl and then teenager I wanted to have the traditional nuclear family. I wanted the husband and multiple babies with one man that I would happily spend the rest of my life with, grow old and watch our family grow through grand babies and great grand babies. I was going to meet him in high school and my life was going to be perfect! This is not what happened. Baby came first and then an attempt at a relationship. Then attempt at a relationship and 2 babies, followed by a marriage and 3 babies. Then finally a relationship with a bonus baby. That’s the big 4. All attempts, all fails. My kids watched one man after another enter our lives and then leave. Each time it was not my intention to bring an abusive man in that I would eventually leave but that’s what happened. Abusive relationships don’t tend to be quiet in the home even if they look great from the outside. There is not a healthy way of communicating through a disagreement. There are loud voices, awful names, broken things and lots of tears. That wasn’t just me and him either. Some of the abuse was also directed at the kids. Same loud voices, awful names, broken things and lots of tears. No one stays in a situation like that, that doesn’t have some good times. Abusive partners are masters at this. There could be months and months of terrible fights and sleeping in separate rooms, dirty looks, silent treatment, and its all forgotten because of a fun trip to the mall or a camping trip or even the promise of change. Everyone hangs on to those fun times and promises, but it never lasts the bad times start again. Once in one of these kinds of relationship, especially if you’ve started to live together, it becomes very hard to just end it. Living together changes everything. Now they have you, now you’re stuck. Thoughts in my head that there was no way out. There was no way that I was going to be able to manage paying for where we lived, on what I was making, alone. How was I supposed to work and find affordable daycare. Eventually the need to leave became so great I could see there is no other choice but I was still stuck. I knew when I wasn’t home the kids are being treated horribly, but how do I get out of this? I knew it was worse than I thought when the littles (which ever ones were the littles at the time) told me its ok if I left; that they would come with me. When the babies are telling you to leave its time to get unstuck. I’ve taken that leap 4 times. Only one of them was just a matter of telling him to get out without worry I was going to financially sink. Now I look at my kids faces, all 6 of them, and I see the pain I have caused with the men I chose. The men I thought were good men. The men I didn’t plan of getting into a relationship with it just happened and I hurt my kids in the process. What in the world would ever make me get into another relationship after the first and put a kid through that. I can’t answer that because I did it 4 times. All that I can say now is I’ve learned my lesson, finally.

There is another part of this that is a different kind of pain than losing years to an abuser or seeing the pain in my kids’ eyes; it’s losing the kid that wasn’t ever mine in the first place. I’ve been the kid that been lost to the “step-parent” but now I’m also the step parent that’s lost the kid. That’s a different kind of pain for everyone involved. When you love someone like your child, like your sibling and then they’re gone and you’re unable to, or not allowed to see them again, it hurts. There have been lots of tears in this house by everyone. I wonder all the time how she is. We wonder if she will remember us in years to come. I decided that it was best to let her go because I didn’t want to prolong her mourning or my kids by seeing her maybe one or two more times. If she remembers us in years to come, I hope she remembers the good time and I hope she remembers love and not all the sibling squabbles, because that’s how we’re remembering her. Even the squabbles seem trivial now and we laugh about them. We’ll never forget her and I see us having cake on her birthday for many years to come.

The idea of a healthy relationship, for me, was like the idea of seeing a unicorn, it just didn’t exist for my world. Healthy relationships were for other people or what I read about in articles or saw in movies and tv but we all know movies and tv aren’t real, so therefore, neither were healthy relationships. I started to think they were only possible in fairy tales and Rom Coms. I was the rule and I was never going to be the exception (If you know, you know). Then, I really started working on myself in therapy and healing all the parts of me that attracted unhealthy men or sought out unhealthy men. I started realizing I had worth and I desired to be treated with kindness and respect even when someone didn’t agree with me. And HOLY SHIT, I was allowed to have boundaries. That’s an abuser’s worst nightmare. How dare I get healthy. How dare I start pointing out all the things that I was no longer going to accept. I didn’t demand change from anyone but myself, but I was also clear that I was no longer going to stay in a relationship that I wasn’t treated according to my worth and that was toxic. That was me setting a boundary for myself for what I was willing to accept from a partner. I was not getting that! It was no surprise that the healthier I got the worse the relationship got as the abuser increased the dramatics that used to work to guilt me into feeling like everything was my fault. Feeling so undeserving of his love, feeling like I was the lucky one. Thinking I had to change to meet his needs to be a better partner. I wasn’t the problem, or at least not all of it and I was becoming wise to the manipulation, and the gaslighting, and I was calling it out. I’m sure you could imagine how well that went over. Finding someone that is also healthy, someone that has a secure attachment style, someone that has the ability to show empathy, kindness and respect, makes for an incredible relationship. If you’re thinking I’m crazy to attempt yet another relationship after all of that you’re probably right. I’d say my picker was broken, because it was, but I’ve worked really hard on that and continue to do so as things come up in therapy. Its also incredible to be able to have very hard conversations with someone that feels safe, hears me and reacts to things in a calm and rational way; someone that isn’t going to weaponize what I say to use against me later. It’s wonderful to be with someone that sees my value instead of telling me all the ways I’m failing, or I do not meet their needs, or is accusing me of cheating when I can’t get to my phone right away. It’s amazing to have someone take me at my word and to be able to trust his without any doubt. Yay me but, where do the kids fit in this time? Wherever they want. One of those hard discussions have been about all the kids included. The relationship that they carve out will be up to them and their boundaries will be respected. With them there are varied levels of relationships on both sides, from seeing and spending time together often, to not being in the same room yet. That’s ok! The whole idea is no more hurt. No more hurting adults, no more hurting kids. There is always a risk with love and relationships but with high levels of respect and communication the collateral damage is extremely minimized, especially seeing as this relationship has already stood the test of time in a friendship form. Honestly what “they” say about being friends with your partner is true. The same respect and honest, open communication we had as friends has translated perfectly in to a beautiful new relationship. One step, one day at a time. For the foreseeable future we will keep things exactly the way they are. Our lives are separate but together and it’s working great. So, yay all of us! Stay tuned, I might end up one of those movies or tv type relationships, because this time I was the exception!