Divorced Father Misses Teenage Children

Reader’s Question

I am a divorced 36 year old woman with no children, who remarried a year ago. My husband is 47 and has 3 teenage kids, who are really respectful of their father’s decisions and life and have been kind to me. Anyway, he seems to be constantly distressed because he is not physically around all the time as he used to be, and that this may result in a failure of raising competent and well adjusted children.

I know he really loves me and that he is a happy man by my side, but it seems he is unhappy as a father, because he feels guilty and selfish of the decision of leaving their mother.

How am I supposed to deal with these?

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

First of all, if he has three teenage kids who are respectful of his decisions and life AND they are kind to you — he’s done a good job as a father! Following a divorce, everyone knows the situation with the ex-spouse will change. That is anticipated. What we don’t anticipate is the massive changes in our lifestyle that accompany a divorce. When Dad leaves the family home, he also leaves the physical presence of the children and their activities. While contact with teenagers can be pretty frequent for noncustodial parents, it’s often the informal contact that is missed — watching them or helping them do homework, listening to their chatter about friends/school, overhearing plans, and participating in routine activities such as meals and even shopping.

His recent remarriage also produced changes. While this remarriage was a very positive event in his life (and yours), it is nonetheless stressful. Be supportive and recognize that he is distressed about all the changes in his lifestyle — a totally normal situation. Encourage him to:

1. have more contact with his children,
2. open more high-tech lines of communication with them such as email, text messages, etc.,
3. recognize that this is a time to customize and create a new relationship with the children rather than grieve the loss of the old relationship, and
4. recognize that his kids are doing well and will probably be transitioning to a more adult-to-adult relationship over the next several years.

His distress is unlikely to be about you. Rather, it sounds stress-related and may include a bit of situational depression as well. When depressed, we often do a mental review of our life decisions — feeling bad for the decisions we made and didn’t make. Try not to take his distress personally but rather encourage him to work as a team with you to develop a strategy to have more input into the lives of the children.