The Change Of Personality Of My Ex-Wife
This is going to take some time to write… so keep on updating.
I guess I have to accept that under normal circumstances I am now entering the time of my life when my previous generation start to fade away. Unless you are unfortunate to have been inflicted by the pain of war, a violent society, flukes or natural disasters of other kind midlife is the time for one to accept the growing reduction in the family photo shoot and the changing dynamics this has on everyone.
My ex-wife’s family were quite close and her father was put on a pedestal as the leader of the family. When he died the change in the family for all was quite dramatic purely because of his absence. He was a well educated and quite experienced, although old fashioned and Victorian in outlook. Yet his opinion and the direction he asserted on his children kept him in their thoughts, like a small character looking on at everything they did well after he had gone.
From a psychodynamic / Freudian point of view this was a superego that had given the family their rules of life and will continue to be that reference they will use for the rest of their lives.
When my ex wife’s mother died I begun to see a change in my wife. She went off the rails, had an affair and rejected me and the children, but apart from that, her personality changed. She seemed to move back to what was safe, the nature and personality of her mother seemed to be where she wanted to be. She is now more ‘prim and proper’ and asserts her children with victorian-like table manners they were not used to growing up in a more relaxed environment.
The change in her has been profound and permanent. I guess the safe-ness of the ways of her parents was a place to go when she was for the first time realising her actions were triggering others to make choices that she might not be able to control. The safeness of a victorian attitude, blinkered and stiff, enables her to make logic of her actions and the darkness that she knows full well she has forced onto her children.
But I feel it is only a plaster stuck over emotions that one day may have to be returned to. The plaster seems to be firmly in place. She rejected the thought of sitting in front of a counsellor to talk about her feelings of rejecting the children saying, “I only need my clairvoyant to guide me”, dangerously leaving someone else in charge of her direction and destiny as opposed to herself.
She recently asked to have a change in the sleep over rota for the children to visit her. Ever since she left the house she has stuck by her rule that she can only take one child at a time (unless her partner is not there) and that the dogs (she has created a collection of dogs, almost to replace her children) hold her back from being able to support her children with after school events such as Ballet, Gymnastics and other dance sports activities.
A thin excuse is all she needs but some honest truth is what would help her understand how much she fails her children by only deciding what she is capable of doing and using the price of petrol and the needs of her (and her partner’s) dogs as good reasons why she can not and will not support the children’s activities.
Filed under: Parenting, Post Divorce & Midlife Crisis
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