The God Damned Regret

It seems I am, forever, regardless of intent and effort, destined to play the villain in the drama that is my ex-wife's perspective on our divorce. It's been some time since I've written about any of this. It's been my intention to never do so again. I want to close this chapter. But throughout my silence, the drama continues, and my avenues for release of the tensions are few. Mediation has helped immensely, as has a focus on limiting the daily demand I take on or distractions I allow, and as has taking to heart a few routine reminders I've setup on my task list that help me maintain a clear perspective, including "She will never forgive me" and "LIVE what you feel in your heart, DAILY.", one specific to how I want to manage my response to the sort of things I receive, like the message I received today.

Back in April of this year, after she dropped the kids off,  I received this text message:

I wish you just even 1/4 of the pain and devastation you have caused me by having to drop the children to someone whose values (or should I say lack of values) are the opposite of mine, a betraying piece of garbage who should have no access to or ability to influence the children, who has no right to be around them and influence them whatsoever. I wish you could feel the sickening pain of driving up to see your two cars parked together in the driveway and then delivering the children like that. I wish you even just 1/4 of the life altering daily pain and suffering you have and continue to cause me, with the most precious things in the world to me, the children you didn’t even want.

When we went through the divorce and the parenting agreements were made, one of the stipulations was that the custodial parent delivers to children to the home of the parent they're transitioning to. For the 3 years prior I always picked them up and dropped them off at their home with their mom. The home we own together still. I did so for many reasons including trying to make it easy for her when I was living all the way out in Santa Clara, and continuing when I was in an apartment, because in both cases they were staying there nightly. Never with me. And I was prohibited from having a court agreement for them to stay with me until I had accommodations for them to both have a place of their own to sleep. And when I did make the move to a house, and had the right to have them with me on a routine basis, the fact that I shared the house with her Brother's ex-wife was and remains a source of intense distain.

My response to this text was the email that follows, and it's very sincerely how I felt:

You’ll be happy to know your wish has been granted. It has been fulfilled for several years. 

You clearly do not realize just how much I have struggled deeply, myself, throughout this whole experience. If you think back to the movie “Magnolia" and Jason Robard’s portrayal of a dying man looking back on his life and lamenting his regrets, you’ll understand how I foresee my own future. I am filled with regret, angst and upset. It’s overwhelming, and I’ve been at the end of my rope for longer than you would believe. 

I expect you might want to reply that I don’t know how badly you’ve struggled. I do think I know FULL well. It is constantly in the forefront of my mind. I have and continue to try to consider your feelings and emotions as I struggle with having initiated changes that caused the pain you’ve seemed to be consumed in for so long. Being conscious of and consistency reminded of this, and seeing you unable to change or move past it, only adds to my deathbed premonitions. 

I really am sorry and sad that we have been unable to find a way to co-exist on more harmonious terms. I regret that you seem to see me with complete distain and resentment. I’m truly sorry too for the pain both our dysfunctional marriage and subsequent divorce has caused you. In hindsight I certainly wish I had managed things differently. But I can’t rewind. I can’t undo. I can’t start over. I can only try to positively influence the present and future. 

I feel bad about myself, all the time. You REALLY don’t want that. Even if you DO hate me as much as you appear to, even if you want nothing to do with me ever again, even if you will take comfort and satisfaction in my death as some divine retribution for the god-awful act of calling out what you yourself knew to be the hypocrisy and dysfunction of our marriage…., you should still want me healthy and feeling positive about life and myself…., for the kids and for my career maintenance too. Because, the day I die or lose my job due to my emotionally fueled performance issues, you and the kids lives will change dramatically and in very challenging ways. 

You are completely wrong about her. You have no idea how lucky you are that she has been so supportive and accepting of me and all my baggage and struggles. She’s not a piece of garbage, in any sense of the word. She’s been a friend in ways you could never appreciate due to your disparaging attitude and your black-and-while sense of indignation that she’s helped me or we have found support in each other. She’s given me a place to live and have space for the kids, she’s not some stranger to them, sharing the rental enables me to continue to be the sole financial provider needed to keep Panorama, she’s been supportive and accommodating of them, and to be blunt, had it not been for her being there for me through my own struggles, you just might be living without support or my life insurance, and the kids would be without a father. Like I said, you have NO CLUE how hard this has been for me too, and how lucky you are she has given me much needed support.

I think about your feelings constantly but do you EVER consider my own in return? Things that don’t go the way you want them to go are not inherently bad things for me or for the kids. Our home and marriage was dysfunctional for you, for me, and bad for the kids to see and experience. 

You need to think beyond just yourself for a change and stop being bitter. You need to count your numerous blessings. 

You and the kids still have a home on Panorama after all this played out. I provide financial support that covers the full range of monthly expenses except your medical insurance, including mortgage/tax/insurance. I increased support agreement $500/month after you sent me an expense breakdown (Nov 29, 2018) and asked me to do so. I give you more money when I can and I doubled your tax refund. I pay your share of the cell phone costs. I gave you my Netflix/Hulu/Plex access so you have options to stop paying for Cable. I’ve tried repeatedly to get you back onto the Apple account so you have shared control of their phones and free access to music and apps. I even offered to help with education costs for your career growth. 

Yes, I drug me feet going into parenting, the kids know this too, but as I’ve told you many many times since then, I’m grateful to have them and they mean the world to me too. They know it and anybody who knows me knows it too. I emotionally support them in every way possible. I am highly engaged in their lives. They mean as much to me as they could to you in every way. I love them like my own and I would not change anything about having them, or how it was accomplished. STOP implying otherwise. 

I try to collaborate with you on homework and grades and activities and responsibilities. I consistently promote them treating you with respect and kindness while you represent me in negative terms, with dismissive comments, attacking my character, my actions, my family, my integrity, and my choices. That’s deeply damaging to them. That's something you routinely insist that I should not do, yet you’re doing it? 

I would challenge you to find a better example of a more committed parent and a more generous ex than I have been. In the realm of ‘actions speaking louder than words’ my efforts stand out as exemplary to all but you. You instead choose to imply how awful things are for the kids and yourself because of my choices. Doing so serves absolutely no purpose other than to want to make me feel worse and worse. It’s not productive or constructive. It’s short-sighted and manipulative. And I am NOT the one that’s making any of this awful.

How many more years are you going to do this? How much longer are you going to blame me alone for everything that wasn’t working, for both of us, since day one!? How many more years will you ignore my sincere efforts, good intentions, and attempts to try and make things bearable for all of us? And what will you end up with, in the end, by doing holding onto this resentment?

I’m doing all I can to ensure the well-being of our kids and of you. I wanted a reasonable healthy rapport between us and I always have. I have not stopped caring or wanting something more functional. With all of the good and sincere efforts I do make routinely, instead of seeing me as this awful heartless malicious person, can't you try kindness and compassion in return? Even forgiveness for how things got to where they did? Would my being miserable and unhappy change our past and present, and would that make it better for you? It’s a losing position and doing neither of us or the kids any good. 

I won’t continue to tolerate and dismiss the way you’ve treated and presented me as an awful person. I need to protect myself from feeling as awful as you seem to want to make me feel for making decisions that were never made to ruin your life, but were made to save my own. 

We SHOULD be able to respect and honor our kids and each other, all we experienced and all the good feelings we once had, in a more positive manner. Regardless of any circumstances or choices we make as to how we want to live our lives. We should be able to have an occasional dinner with them as we have on rare occasion. We should be able to talk kindly and respectably to each other. We’ll both die soon enough. I don’t want to live the rest of my life at odds with you, or to be completely removed and disconnected in our later years. I never wanted that. I don’t want you taking resentment and anger towards me to your grave, nor do I want to spend any more time living with an unyielding supply of blame and regret.

That's a lengthy and personal email to share publicly, but I do so because I feel like this really encapsulated my feelings and called out how much there is to be grateful for and recognize as good. Including that they see me with somebody that cares about them and is a really good person for them to be around. Not at all the person she portrays her to be in her message and to the kids (which I've heard about as well).

I never received a reply. I didn't expect one. I just hoped some of it would settle in.

Today, the kids were to be dropped at 9am. Just before then, we took her her car to go get coffee nearby. I assumed we'd still be getting coffee when they were dropped so I left the door unlocked and was about to message them that we'd be back shortly and they should go on in, which they'd do anyway given my car was there still and that is the routine, when I got a text from their mom saying they'd be running late. So she/I returned home instead. The kids were dropped. And I got this message within 15min.

I have to say again, as I’ve shared with you before how upsetting it is to drop the kids off to you and . It wasn’t enough to betray and devastate me and the family as you have, you have to make me deliver the children to your front door to look at your cars together in the driveway and to send my kids in to spend their day with this person you betrayed two families with, who is not their mother and who doesn’t deserve nor should be in any position to influence or be around either of the children. 

I try to function each day by putting what you’ve done out of my head, something only tenuously achieved and by great effort. You take the scab off the wound every time you make me deliver the kids to the two of you to shove it in my face. I wish that you would be in the same position to feel it yourself. Then you might care. You went for 3 years picking up the children when you saw them, and then when you make your move to shack up with Aunt , you decide then that the kids must be delivered to your front door to devastate me further. I’ve taken it and taken it, there’s not been a single time that I’ve dropped the kids off to the two of you where I haven’t cried on the way home. I want you fully aware of the damage you have chosen to do and continue to do. 

No. she did not “have to say again”. She's said it and I’ve responded already. She is consumed with a fixed perspective maintained by her own sense of betrayal that is both inaccurate and unwarranted.

I’ve spent 5+ years trying so hard to get beyond all of this blame and guilt and manipulation. Yet she continues to harbor resentment for things she does not know or understand. I didn’t betray her any more than her own mother "betrayed" her father by leaving an unhealthy and dysfunctional situation in search of some happiness in life, eventually marrying another man, who she accepted as somebody she loved and was happy her mother had.

If I’ve learned anything through this whole process it’s that there is only one thing we have control of in our lives and that is our response to thing we have no control over. And the only control I have at this point is not responding.

I don't want to spend any more time living with an unyielding supply of blame and regret, yet nothing will ever change the fact that I'll be continuously reminded of the damage she feels I've so freely and maliciously chosen to do to her.