# What does it all mean?



## father-of-3 (Apr 25, 2010)

So this week I have begun to try to figure out what a separation would mean to me, my W, and my kids. It's a tangled web. I've been struggling with the family dynamics element of such a change for nearly half a year in my mind. I can't afford to move out, nor do I think I should be since I represent the discarded party.

This makes it so hard to think things out. The kids need their SAHM and their dad too. So at best a separation would involve cohabitating in the same house, possibly with my W spending some time at her parents as she has mentioned a few times. I have no family in the area myself. How would such a thing even work???

On top of that, I have been reading up on what it means to be separated in my state, WA. That is still an exercise in progress but I suppose a necessary one. Kind of depressing you know.

What I do know for sure is that I can't keep giving emotionally, physically, and financially all that I can muster, only to have it discounted and more importantly used as the main argument of why I am a bad husband. 

Part of me wants to say F that and turn the tap off. It would be effective but it's cold hearted and so against the grain of how I was brought up and how I have chosen to shape myself into my late 30's. 

Another part of me wants to fight to fix it, but every ounce of my being knows deep down that I will only continue to get bloodied hitting the same brick wall.

I look at it from the point of my kids, who are at the top of my world. They used to be #2 to my W who I have held as the centerpiece of my life. But within the last 6 months, I have made the transition to returning love to those that love me -- to those that deserve it. So my kids are now my drive and the thing that keeps me balanced. I know this is bad news for me in the long run, because kids will grow up as they all do and disperse to lead their own lives. That will leave me and me alone. But for now, I look at it from their end. It would seem to me that since both mom and dad both love them, have no addictions, violence, other mischief in the home, then separated legally or not should not matter much. Or does it? I have two daughters, 10 & 5, and being a man I really do not know what impact others have seen on their kids in a similar predicament. Is getting a separation any worse than them seing weekly that mom and dad do not smile at each other, do not hold hands, kiss, or sit side by side? I can write myself off I suppose, but mostly worry about them -- wanting them to have a better relationship than mine. 

Seeing them go through the same cycle would trump any accomplishments in my life.


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