Divorce is no cake walk. Parenting is not easy like pie, much less single parenting. And coordinating with the ex-spouse who displays narcissistic behavior forms the soufflé of misfortunes. And if she stonewalls, then that really is the icing on top! Every divorce dad I have spoken to, without exceptions, complaint about the ex’s resentment, open hostility and disproportional claim on settlement, support and even a literal pound of flesh! If the husband (or the wife) was the source of all things unhappy, then separation and divorce would have capped that well. But unfortunately, when there are kids involved, that well springs plenty. And this resentment simply overflows—through the child. Common behavior actually keeps resentment alive and well.

Keeping score. I remember coming home from a brutal work week when our daughter was less than one year old. After a 70-work week, I needed to sleep. But right at 6:30am on that Saturday morning, my wife came into the bedroom, flew the drapes open and yelled, “If I can’t sleep in, neither can you.” That was one of the defining moments which cemented my decision to look for an exit. Relationship is never about what you can get from someone; it’s about what can be shared. Nearly a decade after the divorce, my ex still fights over her days vs my days of child residency. My dispassionate response is ‘they’re just days and eventually our daughter will decide.’

 

It’s all good until it is not, and then everything is not good, because it never was. 

 

Passive aggressive. It’s all good until it is not, and then everything is not good, because it never was. The smallest things trigger the biggest fights. And when the reaction to something small is disproportionately large, you distrust the resolution because you know it is not permanent. My daughter has stumbled upon the same ruts I have with her mom. Mom’s irritations are often muted, masked in sarcasm and mocked gestures. But like a spark, it can ignite deep emotional pools of incendiaries. In such circumstances, everyone gets burned and trusts is vaporized since there was no warning system and the trigger so arbitrary. For this reason, my daughter doesn’t ask her mom to help with something as basic as homework. It seems small, but it is not. Our daughter is lectured for not understanding and her mom casts doubt across everything including her grades, the teachers’ abilities and even the school itself!

Refusal to take ownership. Nobody wants to be the antagonist in their own narrative and the target of discontent justifies their feeling and behavior. So, in my case, my very existence is actually the fuel for my ex-wife’s discontent. And my happiness, notwithstanding, is the source for her resentment. I never accepted responsibility for her happiness and I have long ago given up trying to convince her of that. But at the end of the day, her anger is her choice. I was not responsible then, and certainly not now. My only concern is that she is a mostly functional mother to my daughter. As our daughter grows up, she will disentangle her sense of self from us—especially from her mom.

My daughter is sampling different dishes her mom used to serve up to me toward the latter years of marriage. I am here to support my daughter and talk her through her thinking and her choices. She also has at her disposal, access to clinical therapists for truly thorny issues where discretion and privacy is necessary. But on the whole, I support her decision when they are made out of truth and sincerity. And incidentally, these are but two ingredients that can neutralize resentment, but only in huge portions. I once told my daughter that all this madness will stop when she decides it does. She slowly understands this.

As an only child, my daughter rarely got hand-me-down clothes or toys from cousins. And even if she did, it’s never quite the right fit, style and something always feels a bit off. So, she sure as heck isn’t going to accept hand-me-down emotions!