Something Different
Today I heard the news that a friend of mine took his own life because of immense stress he had endured for many years. None of this was necessary.
My friend went through a divorce many years ago and has two teenage children from that marriage. Subsequent to the divorce, his wife decided to do the unthinkable….to turn his children against him. For many years she badly disparaged him to his children and told many untruths. Children are innocent and they only believe what they hear. Children have such a limited life experience that they are sometimes not able to properly discern between truth and fantasy. The truth is…and not because he was my friend…that he was a deeply devoted, loving father who loved his children more than any other people on earth. He was always there for them as any loving parent would be. He also did not act in like to his ex wife’s vengeance.
Parents who go through this suffer the absence of having their children in their lives. They suffer the twisted words and beliefs that have been instilled in the children by the controlling parent. Many children will say such nasty things to the innocent parent as to cut like a knife. These words are devastating to the emotions.
Have you ever known anyone who has gone through a situation like this? I have! So here is the thing I don’t understand. When a parent decides to destroy the other parent through the children the resultant outcome is the parent is destroyed and so are the children. Children love their parents, and it is important that both parents be in their lives…especially if the ousted parent is a loving parent. What I will never understand is the lack of love and concern for the children’s emotional and mental welfare that the controlling parent subjects the children to with this sick behavior. Loving parents don’t use their children to destroy the other parent! Loving parents have their children’s welfare and their fragile hearts as foremost in their minds at such a traumatic change of life event as divorce is. I am 150% convinced that parents who try to destroy their ex-spouse are mean spirited to begin with. But to use the children to assist is nothing short of child abuse and reveals a total lack of love.
The reality is the children love and need both parents. The hurtful things the children say are instilled in them by the controlling parent, and the children don’t mean what they say. However, to hear a child say “I don’t want to ever see you again” is crushing emotionally to a parent. My friend had gone through this unnecessary pain for many years and he couldn’t stand it any longer. In spite of the nasty “I don’t want to ever see you again” comments that were the final crushing blow to my friend before he took his life, his children now are so distraught by their father’s death that they are not handling life very well. This is living proof that the children love both parents. To alienate a child form the other parent is beyond anything I will ever be able to understand unless it is for safety reasons.
Many people may be thinking about how selfish it is to commit suicide. It would seem that way, however, emotions are more controlling that reason and many people want to escape the pain…no matter how they have to escape. Yes, had he given it one more chance, it may have been the chance that turned everything around. There definitely are times in life that all reason is lost in the face of emotional pain. He had gone through this pain for about ten years.
However, his actions in no way negate the callous behavior of his ex spouse. Alienating children from a parent has got to be the most dramatic display of meanness any human being could exhibit and in its own way is child abuse. To abuse their own children in this manner is cruelty and testimony of a lack of character and love. I hope parents will think about the fragile hearts of their children before they resort to this kind of behavior. To move on and create a new life is by far a better and wiser route to life than to resort to the wasted time involved in trying to destroy another person. Just my thoughts…
