Hi Neil,

I understand better now. What’s most clear to me and I believe to anyone who read your post is that you are a decent and honest person. In my humble opinion, the most important quality in a parent is honesty and you got it.

It’s almost impossible not to deprive your children of the same things you were deprived of as a kid. As parents we tell ourselves in the beginning that we won’t repeat our parents’ mistakes, but we can’t help it. It may be unavoidable. Maybe it has  something to do with the wiring of our brains during our own development. I don’t know.

You couldn’t have predicted that any of your choices would have affected your daughter the way they did. Marriages fail every day, people re-marry, start over. Each kid is affected differently. Some do much better once their parents are apart; other don’t. Most of us parents are just as wounded as we were when we were 10, and just as we did on the playground back then, we search out others to help us feel better about ourselves, help us believe we actually have things somewhat together, that we’re succeeding in life. All of your left turns have been about that, don’t you think? No matter what the age, we humans are motivated to get our un-met needs met, even as parents. You have only been doing what you as a human being is innately motivated to do. I’m not trying to convince you that you did all the right things. I’m just saying that anybody, including a really good person, could find themselves in your exact situation. So when you say I turned her whole world upside down and will have inflicted on her views of the world, relationships, parenting, love and god knows what that her innocent mind did not have to be corrupted by, I say Oh yeah, Neil? Ok, then I’m guilty of all those things too. And so is every other parent. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet is a TV show, Neil. (Did they have that show in the UK? If not, google it.) The reality is that every single day we parents are in the trenches fighting to not screw our kids up any more than we already have, and any more than our parents screwed us up.

When you were describing your dad in an earlier post, that’s the way I see my own dad. Exactly. And your mom, well, guess what…yep, exactly. If my mom had sat me down when I was 16 years old and honestly explained what was going on with her, I don’t know for sure but I think it would have made a very big difference in our relationship and my life. Instead I was confused and angry. If you explain what’s been going on with you to your daughter, apologize, and then be the best dad you can be every single day going forward, you’ll be healing wounds, both yours and hers. You’ll still make mistakes going forward but remember: every day is a new opportunity to do better than the day before, so keep at it, and admire yourself for doing just that. Those are always the best kinds of people, the ones who keep trying to improve, to be better people, and who never give up.

Oh and the other thing I’ll say is don’t expect things to go smoothly. You’re dealing with teenagers after all and you’re going to get hammered. No matter how many knocks you take, keep reminding yourself of your long-term objective. It’s the relationship’s overall trend, not the daily volatility, that you’re interested in, so don’t get distracted by the spikes and dips. Think stock market, Neil.

Are you considering walking away from this other relationship (the ‘pain’ part of your journey) because you feel your focus needs to be 100% on your daughters now?

B