An MDN member tells of his journey that lead to a peaceful parenting arrangement post separation.
I have always been a hands on Dad, I love being a Dad and remember the excitement that came with finding out I would be for the first time. I took chunks of time off when both my children were born to spend time with them and help out etc. I was pretty hands on, bathing, bedtime, playing, nappy changes all that sort of stuff that many Dads these days do that our Dads never would’ve in the past!
The stress of having 2 children under 2 is a pretty intense one, for me and my ex-wife things started to come crumbling down under this. I am sure that it would’ve headed in this direction regardless but this pressure cooker environment really sped the process up. I recall sitting in a pub (Holliava in Richmond) with a mate prior to watching an Asian cup soccer match in 2015, I knew things weren’t great in my relationship and he was newly single and I probed him for information on what the single life was like in your 30s. He didn’t have kids but the experience nevertheless was important to me, he said something along the lines of it’s not that great. Try working out your problems as it’s a hard slog. I recall leaving that night and thinking I’m going to give everything to this and see if I can turn it around, if nothing else I owe it to my children.
I tried lots of things to keep the connection without compromising what was important to me. I’m not sure if that makes me sound arrogant or not but I got to a point in my life and realised that there was thing that were important to me and why should I compromise on them. If someone wants to be with you then they should meet you halfway, shouldn’t they? I remember googling to see what impacts separation can have on your kids, all of the advice I could see said that a dysfunctional household is not good for a kid to grow up in and they would be better to grow up with happy parents that were separated.
Inevitably our relationship ended, to be honest there was probably faults on both sides, we were together before we knew what we wanted out of life, all of those standard reasonings. The day we decided we both cried, I moved out and started my new life (back at my parents!). We worked out to split the time 50/50 with our children which I still to this day think was one of the most important things I’ve ever done. I later discovered the importance of what you first agree on is generally the default position for mediation/ lawyers etc. I remember it suddenly hitting me that I couldn’t tuck my girls into bed every night, it hit me like a truck. I was lucky that half of the nights I did but at the time it didn’t seem enough. For the first 2-3 months I didn’t do much, really avoided social interaction and put all of my time and energy into the gym, running and playing footy. I hadn’t played footy for close to 10 years but my best mate was coaching our 2s and said I should come down (I am not good at football! But I love it!). That was a real important distraction to me and to some extent it really saved me from spending even more time at home in a depressive cycle. I remember in the early days post separation I would smash myself at the gym and I was hardly eating to the point where I would nearly pass out after a session, this wasn’t healthy of course but I wasn’t in a great place mentally. As the year went on I got on Tinder and started going out with some of the young guys from footy and occasionally some of my mates but rarely as they had kids and wives so it was hard for them to all get out at the same time.
Getting back into dating was really nerve racking and scary, the first couple dates I went on I had no idea what I was doing. I am generally a quiet person when I first meet someone so I found it hard to really get a convo started with some girls if they weren’t going to at least meet me in the middle. As I moved on I worked out that if I just treated it like I was at work (I work in customer service) at the start then there is no real reason I should be nervous. I had my highs and lows and remember after moving out of my parents and into my own place sitting there one night wondering if I would ever find someone that I could live a life with or would I just be the single dad forever? I seemed to always find girls that were immature or had lots of baggage. I was lucky enough to meet my now wife not long after I had this real low spot.
Things through the first 6 or so months post separation with my ex-wife were up and down but generally they were ok. To me it was important to set some clear boundaries and expectations of each other. It was working pretty well. She met a guy and he seemed ok to me, pretty quiet sort of guy and didn’t seem like someone I should be worried about having around my children. I met my wife about a month or so after I first met him. I personally feel this was something that really stirred things up between me and my ex-wife. Things went downhill pretty quick, we were both trying to one up each other and that only ends up one way- in court.
Part of the one up type of confrontation we were running ended up in me having an intervention order out on me, it was served to me by our local police station. I had never once had a dealing with the police prior to this, it was alleged I was violent, unpredictable and on drugs. There is a protection rightly so for women in DV situations that means they put the intervention order on first and ask questions later. It was a very frustrating and scary time for me as I didn’t know what impact it would have on me seeing my children and it was handed to the school and they wouldn’t let me on school grounds, they also never contacted me about issues at school and I wouldn’t get notified by my ex-wife either. When it got to court they basically just said you can agree not to commit any family violence and we will have an agreement in place for 12 months, you can’t go near your ex wife or her house etc.. Which was confusing to me as I thought I was going in to profess my innocence, sadly they had no time for that as with no evidence (because there was none) there was no case. That 12 months came and went and it expired with no issues of course.
Just prior to all of this we had been in mediation and the mediator wasn’t accepting of all of my ex wives demands, in the end she just left as she wouldn’t agree to anything. After the intervention order was in place we had to do the mediation in separate rooms and it just didn’t work. The next session she cancelled and wouldn’t agree to go back. We get a letter from them that says they tried (she really didn’t) and they couldn’t find common ground. Once you have the letter you are able to go through the court process. After this I had engaged a family lawyer who was absolutely amazing and wrote to her on my behalf as I was still unable to contact her due to the fallout from the Intervention order. The correspondence from the lawyer got nowhere and we ended up in this world where we just coparented without communicating with each other at all which is obviously not a great world for our children to live in. Things went like this for a while and then we had some things we wanted -holidays etc and then we had agreed on a few things and then there was threats of withholding children for weeks so I pulled the pin and withheld them before they could be taken from me. This wasn’t my proudest moment but I had a genuine fear for my children’s wellbeing. This created a cycle of Intervention orders both ways this time and back to not talking at all or co parenting etc.
We were heading in one direction, court. I had engaged my lawyer again and we were preparing to head to court. Had all the evidence we needed and then lawyer said we could do all of this and it might still not work, you could lose custody in court. I really struggled with the idea of seeing even less of my children that I already did. I reached out to my ex-wife and pulled the hail Mary and said something like we had both done things we weren’t proud of along the way and could we just try and reach some basic agreements for now so our children wouldn’t live in this world where we were really angry with each other. I was lucky enough that she agreed to that and we were able to agree on more and more things over time to the point where we actually made our parenting agreement 4 years after we had separated.
These days I speak to my ex-wife regularly and she gets along with my wife really well and they catch up without me. We have the life we should’ve had from the start if we didn’t try to always go one better. My advice to anyone that goes through a situation like mine is don’t let the little things get you worked up, don’t take the bait and don’t send any bait the other way. Just be the duck, ducks above the water are calm and move around smoothly while their legs are working furiously underneath.
If you are going through anything like this, know that it can get better. You can get to the light at the end of the tunnel. Time heals all wounds. Love your kids and put your energy in to them instead of hate.
Something else to be aware of as a separated Dad- expect to be treated as the 2nd option, schools will always put the mum as the most important parent regardless of what you say to them or what you do. The world has come a long way but we are not yet at a point where a Dad could possibly be capable of being a responsible parent in the eyes of some. I have been informed by my lawyer that some judges still think that mothers should have majority custody as well.
If this sounds like a journey you are going on or in the middle of, I wish you all the best. It’s a scary time and I remember feeling like I was the first one to go through it with a lack of understanding or support. You aren’t alone and it will (hopefully) get better!