Dear Neil:

I didn’t want to interrupt your exchange with Brandy but since there is a break in the exchange, I am posting today. I am aware that I replied to you early and that you didn’t respond to me. I am not posting again hoping that you will respond to me. My one out of two goals is to offer you something that I believe may be very helpful to you and most important, to your daughters.

I re-read your original post and will be basing the following on that first post as well as my understanding that you were or are still considering moving so to live close to your younger daughter so to have a close and loving relationship with her.

You wrote: “For as long as I remember, I’ve been managing.. the state of my mental health.. I overdosed daily on my self-medication of inspirational quotes… I’ve self-helped my way”. You didn’t mention anywhere in your thread that you have been managing your mental health, those “waves of darkness”, by getting involved with women quickly and repeatedly.

“My first mistake was my first relationship after the divorce. I met a woman .. after a reasonably short period, I moved in with her”. After that relationship was over and you moved across the country, you “embarked on worthless relationships” and then you “met someone and started a new relationship a year and a half ago”. Even here, on your thread, you were energized in that new-romantic- like relationship excitement with a member here, for a while.

“I’ve turned left instead of right too many times- all in the name of trying to regain happiness when in reality, all I’ve ever done is to take myself further and further away- both physically and emotionally from the true love of my life: my daughters”-

The major wrong turns, reads to me, is you jumping into relationships with .. basically strangers, women you just met.

“I met a woman my children didn’t like.. I moved in with her and her children: two girls!” –

Your focus was that new woman (and her daughters by nature of living with them all), and your daughters became a distant priority, “We lost meaningful connection and at times, I felt I was doing my duty… My close relationship with my girls was fading… their hearts were breaking”.

Here is what I hope may be helpful to you: if you do move to be closer to your daughter/s, it is very important for the well-being of your daughters that you do not repeat, that is, that you do not get involved with yet another woman.

If you do date, keep it separated from your daughters, do not tell about it to your daughters, do not have them meet. Let the woman know from the very beginning that she will not be meeting your girls, at least not in the next few years, and make sure it is acceptable to her. Otherwise, stop the involvement.

If you expose your daughter/s to a yet another relationship, that may cement that heartbreak they already experienced. Even if it is a nice woman that you will be dating, it doesn’t matter. It is better that you don’t move close to your daughter/s, then if you do move and then expose them to yet another relationship with another woman.

If any dating is likely to consume you and hurt your focus on your daughters, then don’t date at all, not for as long as your younger daughter is still a teenager who needs her dad.

“I am so insecure and have the most overwhelming feelings of worthlessness that is so strong to allow me to make the choices I made over something that is so precious to me”-

Be true to what is so precious to you, your daughters, your relationships with your daughters. Your worth is about you being true to what you value most, knowing that no matter how insecure you feel, how sad and lonely you feel, that you are true to the love of your life.

anita