Hey, Girls? We Need To Talk...

After much deliberation, thought, and constant changing of plans, the time came for my wife and me to tell our two daughters that we were getting a divorce.  Originally, we thought we would tell them shortly before I left…not like the night before and then by morning I was gone.  More like a week or so before to let them get used to the idea.

As I told you in a previous “episode” (Making the Spare Bedroom Your Bedroom, Spare), it was an expensive proposition for me to move into temporary housing while I found something more permanent and because of that, I stayed in our house.  As if things weren’t tense enough, trying to keep our separation a secret from the girls was making it that much more tense.  Tense like a kid twisting a balloon and you’re just waiting for it to pop.   Getting the news out in the open could only make things a little bit better.  Like not getting first degree burns, just second degree ones.

Our girls were ages 5 and 7 at the time.  They were young enough so that long term, if we as parents handled it right, the divorce shouldn’t completely mess up their lives.  We decided that maybe it would be a good move (well, at least A move…I’m not sure there were any good moves in any of this) to tell them about the divorce and maybe get them engaged in it. 

Now by “engaged in it,” I don’t mean the girls choosing sides or watching me cry into my Keurig brewed cup of coffee each morning.  More like having them pick out their furniture and bedding for their rooms in my new place or driving by the house that they will be living in with Mommy.  We felt putting this out in the open and letting it sink in before Daddy left in about 30-40 days was better preparation.  Like I said earlier, there really aren’t any good ways to tell your kids news like this but there sure the hell is a lot of wrong ways to do it.  Despite what we were going through, neither my wife nor I wanted that.  “As unscathed as possible” was my mantra.

We sat them down and tried to relate our breaking up to the “break-up” our 7 year old had with her practically lifelong “boyfriend.”  This was a boy she went to day care with when they were three or so and they were together so much they decided they would get married. It was few months prior when she told us she no longer wanted to marry him and that they were just friends now.  When I asked why, she replied, “It just happens that way sometimes.” It seemed like a good angle to take with them and for the most part, it worked, but not as well as when we told them Daddy would be living in his own house where they would have their own room.

“YAY!  We get two bedrooms!”  The screams could be heard in the next county.  Perhaps we should have opened with that.

To say we were surprised at their reaction is the understatement of the century.  This was the moment we were dreading the most and here they were high-fiving each other because they’ll get two bedrooms.  There really wasn’t much more to say.  We couldn’t force them to cry over the news and we were sure tears would fall once we actually moved apart.  We either had the most well-adjusted kids in the world or ones still too naïve to the notion of divorce or a combination of both, which worked for me.

As of this writing, I am still living at home and it does appear that the girls understand that I will not be living with them for much longer.  I get questions like “Daddy, when you move into your new house, will there be a pool?” or “Daddy, what are you going to do when it snows at your new house and we come to visit?  You don’t have four wheel drive.” (My wife had the vehicle with four wheel drive and there were occasions where she came to the rescue because my truck got stuck). Those questions tell me that they understand what is going to happen but then there are situations like this:

I’m showing my youngest pictures of my new house and pointing out the living room, my bedroom and their bedroom.  When I get to the picture of the guest bedroom, she states, “And that’s Mommy’s room!” 

Okay, so she understands that Mommy and Daddy won’t be sharing a room but still had the notion that she would be under the same roof.  I calmly explained that I didn’t envision a scenario where Mommy would ever be sleeping in that room…although in my head, I was thinking if Mommy’s house, her mom’s house, all of her friend’s houses, and every hotel suddenly blew up simultaneously and it was the middle of winter so sleeping in her car wouldn’t work, that might be one scenario.  I wasn’t keeping my fingers crossed.

We are keeping a close eye on the situation…looking for signs that they may not be taking this as well as we think they are.  So far, the only sign we see is the for sale sign in our front yard and our girls anxiously awaiting their new bedrooms…two new bedrooms. 

Ugh…there go the screams of joy again.

Next time: A new type of pre-nuptial agreement