Absent grandfather.

[RedRebecca]

My husband of 32 years left me 7 years ago.  It was so unexpected that I am still sad about it after all this time.  Since he left there are now 2 grandchildren which he is not in touch with.  I can't stop feeling such strong feelings of sadness when I see other grandparents with their grandchildren.  He would have been a wonderful grandfather as he was a wonderful father. 

[white knight]

Thankyou for posting redrebecca, welcome here.

It isnt uncommon, especially in today's split modern day family situations. My adult children wont see their grandmother , I wont see her, each child sees one parent and not the other. My adult neices havent seen their father for 15 years.

We all have choices in this life. Your ex husband has exercised his right to choose if he wants to see his grandchildren or not. Yes it is sad. Perhaps, if you know where he lives, your children can write him a nice letter expressing just that, that he was a wonderful father.

Apart from that, some basic contact from your children I suggest you dont dwell on this. These sorts of sad things in life will eat you up. I know, I spent many years being absorbed by this type of thing.  Children will "adopt" other older people to fill in the gaps....like my neices...they see me as a father figure.

[AGrace]

Hi redrebecca,

I wondered if I could explore the idea of still feeling sadness 7 years after your husband left? Did you get any form of counselling when this happened?  I can understand it came as a shock. In fact you can never tell how you will react in these types of situations. 

[geoff]

dear RedRebecca, we want to thank you for setting up this post, and indeed it is very sad, but both replies back to you are very good and if you could break them down and then reply to us.

I know how this feeling is as it has happened with me as I used to get on very well with my ex's family, nieces, nephews and even the in-laws, but now since the divorce I have no contact with any of them, and now her partner has just slipped in, taking my place, however according to my sons they don't particularly like him.

The concern here is that your husband could see his grand kids, so I wonder why he hasn't even tried. L Geoff. x

[RedRebecca]

Hi and thank you so much for your responses.  I did not have counselling at the time as I find it so hard to open up and talk.   I felt I had to be strong for my children.  This is really my first attempt to do so. My husband moved 100 km away and says he is hopeless at keeping in touch.  Initially my children were calling him but he just didn't make the same effort with them.  He does not like the father of the grandchildren, but no-one does. Having my own family meant everything to me, my mother died when I was 5 and I was brought up by my Italian grandmother.  She was a wonderful woman but a lot of my relatives did not except me as my mother was Australian.  My husband was a hands on dad and a real partner to me.  When my daughter left school and started work she started seeing a man without our knowledge who was 30 and in a relationship. My daughter was 19 and never had a boyfriend before.  He told my daughter, who was nieve not tell anyone about them.  Eventually it got out and caused a lot of issues. My daughter was not worldly enough to deal with.  She went into severe depression and was on suicide watch at one stage.  This put enormous pressure on me and my husband, who instead of helping me to cope put his head in the sand started an affair with a work colleague, 20 years his junior.  This  was going on for 2 years before he left, I was unaware that we were even in trouble.  One day I came home from work and he had left me a little note saying he wasn't happy and had left.  He had gone to my daughters work that day to tell her.  She was hysterical and was the one who was waiting for me to tell me when I got home that night.  He didn't to tell my son because he had waited for him to go on his first overseas trip 3 days prior.  I was in denial for a very long time and decided not to say anything for 10 months to my son who was overseas.  My daughter was also distraught and of course turned to the man we were hoping would not be in her life.  She became pregnant to him at 22 but he has been an absolute nightmare.  The abuse although not physical is verbal and horrific, hence she has lived with me with her children for the last 5 years.  As I said my family was everything to me, so destroying it, is so painful and destroyed me.  I don't want to feel the loss but I can't help it.  I am not one of those people who can move on.  From the very beginning my husband would just say, get over it.  Unfortunately I can't and it just gets harder and harder.