Hey I'm thinking of you too! Actually that's not quite true. I was thinking of you a couple of days ago and wondering how you were getting on (which was quite bad because I was sitting on Scrutiny Committee at the time) and that led me to thinking about my parents' divorce some twenty two years ago, and in particular wondering what my Dad was feeling at the time and whether or not I gave enough attention to where he was at back then...so actually, it would be more proper for me to say I was thinking of me :P
I hope you're feeling okay (as okay as is possible in the circumstances) and I want to offer you advice from the perspective of the child of divorcing parents.
It is important that you show your children that you're still the same Dad, regardless of whether you share a house or are married to their mother. That's already been talked about in this thread and I know you are doing exactly that. What may be less obvious (unless it is obvious to others, I don't know) is the important balancing act that you need to achieve between making sure they know you love them deeply, and making sure they know that you
can cope without living as a family unit.
I have very few memories of the day we actually left. Mum and Dad had been living in the same house but more or less totally estranged having begun the separation proceedings (you had to separate for one year before you could apply for divorce back then) almost a year earlier. Things were tense but 'civilised' and in many ways they did it textbook (my brother and I involved in the discussions of custody and basically given the choice, very careful to ensure we didn't blame oursellves etc). The key memory for me was when Dad brought me a cup of tea whilst I was standing in my room packing my bag. We said nothing about what was going on, it was like nothing was happening. As he went down the stairs he stopped for a moment and looked up through the bannister and the open doorway and then continued on his way. Up til then I had felt this strange mix of excitement (moving house is exciting, change is exciting when you are 12) and sorrow. But when I looked at dad I saw absolute understanding of what was happening and a deal of pain. All of a sudden the reality of what was happening struck me...we were
leaving him behind.
The moment passed, we all got through it and though Dad has never been one for sharing his emotions (or indeed showing it in ways people who don't know him might recognise:P) he never left me in any doubt that he was still my dad and loved me. But...and this is why the long tale, that feeling of having left him behind, never quite shook away. It's still there and I am now 35.
A lot of that is due to the way my dad is. But much of it is due to the fact that Dad didn't seem(to me when I was 13)like he would be able to be happy at some future point.
Hence the balancing act. It's a toughie...don't try to hide your pain totally, it just looks like hidden depths of pain and they'll be able to imagine worse than you can feel. At the same time, don't overwhelm them with that pain...they need to be able to feel that at some point their dad may be happy, that them and their mum leaving the house isn't leaving you behind in a dark and unhappy place from which you can't escape. Like I say, it's a balancing act. Make sure they know you love them, but that them moving out isn't something that will sink you. Don't try and pretend that you are happy or that everything is normal, because if they're older kids especially, they'll feel you're shutting them out (imo) but make sure they understand that this is because of the stressful situation and upsetting nature of such a life change, and that as the situation moves on, you'll all be moving with it and life will eventualy reach aneven keel and nobody will be left behind. This isn't stuff you can tell them, it's what they need to experience from you.
Don't know if that's helpful, interesting, useless or upsetting. I hope not the latter two
