Community Chat

[LilacTree]

I divorced the father of my children in 1972 when they ranged in age from 10 to 6, four of them, all girls. We both married again right away, briefly. I never married again and have been single since 1975. The father of my girls lived in Chicago with his second wife, and they divorced a year after my divorce. He then met another woman and married for a third time. She is a flight attendant who has a large family in California. (We live in NJ.) Within a year or two they moved permanently to California.

My oldest daughter who does not speak to me (for many reasons, this is just one) continues to blame me because she says he was “forced into becoming an ‘absentee father’ because I divorced him.” My other girls do not agree, or at least they say they don’t. This has just come up again recently . . . 37 years later.

I won’t go into the reasons I divorced him (although I probably did long ago on this BB, I don’t remember). I do admit that being a single working mother raising four daughters did make our lives harder. However, I do not accept that I am to blame for his moving 3,000 miles away and not having much to do with his children, except for yearly visits and infrequent phone calls.

I’m looking for opinions, not blasting, but if blast you must, be my guest, I’ve heard it all before. Thank you to those who would give this some serious thought.