YOUR CHILD’S WEDDING: Remembering the Future in a Difficult Present
Right now, your child may be young – you may not be thinking about their future wedding. Perhaps in passing you’ll consider putting aside some money, but for the most part it’s not on your mind. That is way off in the future, if it ever happens at all.
Especially right now when you’re going through your own divorce.
Maybe right now your child(ren) seem like the only good thing about your relationship with their mother (or father). Everything else feels cloudy, or worse.
You know instinctually as you go through your divorce that you will need to protect your children. But from what? Perhaps there is a legitimate reason to protect them from your spouse. Or maybe you’re letting your own emotion cloud the situation. Maybe they are doing the same with you. It’s hard to not want to retaliate…
Right now, maybe it seems easy to make dismissive comments about your spouse, sometimes even in the presence of your children. Maybe you think they are too young to understand, but I bet they are listening.
Right now, it’s easy to focus on the past and a murky present and to lose sight of the future. But be careful. Because someday your child(ren) will grow up. And the way you handle your divorce will have an impact on them. It will impact their own relationships as an adult. It may impact their ability to hold down jobs, to be self-assured, to avoid issues with drugs and alcohol, and the stability of their own future marriages. The statistics show this to be true.
It will also impact you. A high-conflict divorce will take a lot out of you financially and emotionally, you will not be the same person as when you started the journey.
Every time you scream at each other in front of your children you are creating trauma, whether you mean to or not and whether you realize it or not.
Every time you use your children as a pawn in a divorce you are harming them whether you mean to or not and whether you realize it or not. (Often, this is done subconsciously).
It’s so easy to be caught up in the moment that we forget such things.
But someday your child will grow up and they will decide what kind of relationship they will have with each of you, if any.
And someday your child will likely get married (or get a big promotion/or have kids of their own/or graduate from college) and absent a restraining order, you will likely have to be in the same room as their dad (or their mom).
You should want to be in the situation where your ex’s presence does not ruin your enjoyment of that day. You should want to be in the situation where old wounds are healed enough that you do not in some way damper your child’s big day.
You want to be working towards your Happily EVEN After, not perseverating on a darkened past. Someday, you will want to really, really, really enjoy your child’s wedding. Even if your ex is there.
The path forward starts today.
Partner with Carl Taylor, Esq.
Ready to Find Your Happily EVEN After? Call Today at 609-359-3345 to Schedule a Confidential Consult (or click here to self-schedule online) and Receive a Free Copy of the 3rd Edition of my 200+ page book, Happily EVEN After: The Guide to Divorce in New Jersey.
