Feeling like a Daddy

You know what? You will NEVER be able to answer that question, so you have to stop asking yourself.
When I was pregnant with my first son my son's bio-dad was NOT happy about it. He left when I was 7 months pregnant and never looked back. I found him when my son was 3 and he promptly signed over his rights. My son will never know him, thank god. He was a horrible, abusive, drunk, drug using fool that I stupidly got involved with. But my kid is GREAT! I often think to myself, "does he even KNOW what he is missing out on??" He doesn't care! He never will. And that's okay because I and my son are better off without him.
Look back on your relationship and remind yourself why you two are better off without him, and then stop asking yourself something that will NEVER have a good answer.
L.

Wow, so many loaded questions! Hind sight is a fantastic although useless thing, isn't it? It's very apparent that you and your ex and MANY MANY other couples together or divorced (me included) have DRAMATICALLY different values, priorities, etc....there is no simple explanation for how such two different worlds got together in the first place. My exhusband (still really weird saying that 3 years later) had a miserable childhood, both parents especially his mom had serious drinking problems...and yet when sober and not sick as well, he is a decent person. I felt like I could show him the beauty in life, in family. Whether he's sober or not, I am the caretaker in the family, he does not feel, or at least behave in such a manner that would suggest he feels like I do about our kids. He will be mad at me for eternity for leaving. In his mind, on a whim, I took his house, his kids, his paycheck, etc., in reality he traded all those things for another case of beer. That aside, he STILL has three amazing kids, he STILL has unlimited access to them, but he will not accept the idea that HE has to foster his OWN relationship with his children, it's still not apparent to him that he didn't REALLY have a close thing with them when we were together, and now I'm no longer the go-between, he doesn't even know them, and blames ME for it. When in fact there are opportunities everywhere for him to be close to them. It's very sad for him........not to suggest that they are completely uneffected but they have a REALLY nice life without him....Anyway, yes it is a mental illness for MY OWN ex, for some I believe it's just a difference in upbringing........Many men who are going to work and paying the mortgage and showing up at the occasional tball game may feel they really ARE involved. I am old fashioned in a lot of ways....it's lucky for your son that his MOM is the caregiver, that mom feels a strong sense of the importance of family...even in this day when most moms have careers, it's still mom holding it all together (sweeping generalization here), it is, after all, why WE'RE still having the babies. Hope this helps, I understand your sense of, oh well, this is the way it is....but it could be SO much better....Hope you are taking care of yourself mom.

He may have a personality that does not allow him to have these paternal feelings. Could be the way he was raised, could be he suffers from an attachment disorder, could just be a non emotional jerk.

You need to move on and quit putting your energy into him. You need to focus your own thoughts and energy on yourself and your child. You deserve to be happy and with a person that is a grown up with feelings. Your child deserves a mother that is happy and can move forward even with the hardest of circumstances.

Let the ex live in his little "Candyland" and let him suffer the consequences. You can love your child with all of your heart and your son will be a very fortunate child.

I am a child of divorce and understood and knew a lot more than my parents every imagined.. Once I was married and again when we had a child, I was able to look back and understand why they were each the persons they were and how hard it was for them to make the decision about their divorce. It was for the best and I have tried to treat it as a a learning experience of what not to do and also the things, I should do in all of my relationships.
I am sending you peace of heart and mind.

You'll make yourself crazy trying to figure out the motivation of someone like this.

I'm sure your son is, without a doubt, the MOST wonderful, handsome, sweet little creature on the planet. Think of it this way: It's your ex's loss, not yours!

Drink up all of that sweetness for yourself.

Don't drive yourself crazy trying to figure this man out, or understand him for that matter. Sadly there are MANY men (and women) who seem to have no problem walking out of their childrens lives. And I'm with you, I don't get in, I never have. My father was one of them. Although he and mother divorced she never told him he wasnt allowed to see us, she actually encouraged. He just didnt try. Well he'd pop up every couple years or so, but only for a few months, then gone again. Even sadder so did his parents, sisters, entire family. And they literally lived a city away. He died a few years ago very unexpectedly and needing closure I decided to go to the services. His own mother had no idea who we were. Pathetic really. And what I got out of it was this, how sad that this man had two children whose lives he missed completely, who were now grown with children and he didnt know them either. There were no pictures of us on his memory boards, no memories of us for his family so speak of, and there was no reason for it! So I felt sorry for him, and sad that people can be this way but they are. I still dont understand it, and I'll never know. But what I do know that is my children and their children will always know ME, and know that they are loved. And ANYONE who can disregard them like that, are not worth it!

There are no easy answers to your questions, S.. All the things that combine to make us who we are begin at conception, with many of our attributes decided by our genes. Of course there are deeply-rooted parental influences, too – what we grew up understanding as "normal" is what we usually continue to seek out as adults.

With that in mind, I have some questions for you. Why have you ended up with two men who don't make good fathers? (Could it be that your own father was not a model of good fatherhood?) Is it a mental sickness to stay in an unsatisfactory marriage?

When you can answer questions like these, you'll have a start on deciding whether or how to leave this marriage, and if you do leave, making a better choice next time.

You are extremely unlikely to get your husband to change. People don't change unless they want to, and the motivation for that is usually because their lives are too miserable to endure. So the best you can do right now is decide how painful these issues are to you, and whether YOU want to change. If you do, get involved with Al-Anon, or get a counselor if you can afford it, or even start with a few self-help books from the library to help you envision your options. You don't have to stay in this relationship if it's not going to work for your child.

I think you've got some great advice. There is really no sense in trying to figure out why your ex is like he is. That's who he is. The sooner you accept it, the sooner you'll get past the anger. I wish I could have back that whole year I spent trying to figure out my ex-husband. I could probably have developed a cure for cancer with the energy I wasted. ;-)

Questions I have for you that might spur on your own growth...

1. Someone else mentioned why you got involved with this man to begin with. I'd want to understand what about his personality felt familiar to me from my past. If he's as "bad" as you say he is, then I'd want to spend some time figuring out what is broken in ME that would allow me to choose someone like that. All changes start from within. That's when "good" men start showing up (once WE heal).
2. I'd want to understand why I got involved with someone who lives in a different country, i.e. is not physically with me day to day. Just to give you a different perspective. You choosing a man so far away means you chose to distance yourself from him. I know, I know... you wanted him to move to your country but the reality is that you "accepted" the distance by marrying him without him being here.

There's a lot going on here for YOU to work on, for you to discover. Stop making this be about him. Time to work on you and get some strong boundaries in place. I'm doing this work myself right now, so I hope this message doesn't seem too off the wall. These are things I've been dealing with myself.