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The Way Back
Some years ago
I dated a woman from a different country who learned she was
pregnant by another man. I stuck with her and raised the child
as my son. When the boy was six, this woman decided she didn’t
want to be with me anymore and left for home, on the other side
of the world.
I tried keeping
in contact with the boy and visited, though it costs quite a
bit. I also pay maintenance and try to “do the right thing”
by my son. The problem is I often feel I’ve been mugged
and taken for a ride. My friends and family certainly think so!
This leaves me
feeling very, very angry. Compounding my anger is the fact that,
while she has facilitated my visits to see my son, she shows
no remorse or truly apologized for what she did to me and to
him. Give me advice on how to get over this, get past the anger,
and make a life for myself again.
~ Stephen |
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Stephen, psychologist Fritz Strack
is famous for noticing an odd fact. People find cartoons funnier
when they are holding a pen between their teeth than when they
are holding a pen using only their lips. There’s a simple
explanation. The first method forces us to use our smiling muscles,
while the second makes smiling impossible.
In the same way,
you are clinging to ideas which make it impossible to be happy
with your life. It’s as if you are paralyzed, standing on
a road with three forks and you cannot decide which fork to take.
The first fork
is duty. It says you have an obligation to be a father to the
boy. The second fork is fear. It says you cannot be the kind
of man who deserts a child. And the third fork? It leads directly
back to this woman.
As a good-natured
person, if you harmed another, you would do one of two things.
You would repeatedly say you are sorry, or you would avoid the
other person altogether. But self-centered people don’t
think that way. They think in terms of advantage to themselves.
When good people
stay connected to selfish people, they turn their feelings inward
and feel bad about themselves.
You did not take
a father away from the boy; she did. And she did it twice, once
with a birth father and once with a boyfriend father. You ask
why you can’t get over your anger, but your real question
is, why isn’t she sorry.
You wonder where
her sorry is, but she doesn’t have a sorry. And she never
will.
There are two
problems human beings have in seeing reality. The first is viewing
the world in terms of their own needs, and the second is thinking
other people think as they do.
You have been
paying maintenance for a son who isn’t yours to a wife you
didn’t have. The boy is being raised around her and her
family. He is not going to point a finger at them; he is going
to turn out like them. You are not the father figure in his life.
You are more like a great uncle who shows up every now and then.
What you don’t
realize is there is a fourth path. It is the one which lies directly
behind you. It leads back to the beginning.
You were with
a woman pregnant by another man. You did not have a faithful,
caring woman in your life. She stands in the stead of the real
life you should have had, and you still haven’t broken up
with her.
Breaking ties
is not taking your anger out on the boy. It is making sure this
woman doesn’t collect dividends on a stock she doesn’t
own.
Remember what
Fritz Strack discovered. Some things in life make it simply impossible
to smile.
~ Wayne &
Tamara
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Authors and columnists
Wayne and Tamara Mitchell can be reached at www.WayneAndTamara.com.
Send letters
to: Direct Answers, PO Box 964, Springfield, MO 65801 or email:
DirectAnswers@WayneAndTamara.com.
Direct Answers
appears in newspapers in the United States, Canada, Australia,
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& Barbuda, Papua New Guinea, and Kenya. |
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 Direct
Answers Archive 2009
Direct
Answers Archive 2010 |
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