Holiday Heartache

When you have been with the same spouse or partner since you were in Middle School or even married for a very long time, holidays are hard after the breakup. Thanksgiving always started the kick off of traditions, twenty five years in the making. Since I started "going with" my ex-husband in middle school we had about twenty five years of holiday traditions. Some we created, some we inherited and others were thrust upon us by our families.

That first year separated I remember wrapping my childrens gifts at my parents house feeling a deep pit in my stomach. Realizing all those years of traditions would no longer be something we all shared together. It had been about six months since the official breakup. I had been forced to move in with my parents while my husband was living in our old family home, parading in an array of women.

He had a visitation schedule with our youngest daughter that entailed every Thursday and every other weekend Thursday to Monday. He may have used this right as a dad twice in those six months. I think it was too hard for him to take care of her and have to be home with her on his days/nights. However, Christmas Eve was his scheduled night with her and I had to force her to go.

My youngest had gone to my exes families Christmas Eve dinner and had called her older sister within about an hour and asked to be picked up. Things were just "off" and she wasn't comfortable there anymore. Leaving her mom and sister and going somewhere else somehow felt wrong to her. Her older sister and father had a terrible relationship, she hated her dad. The connection was missing, her family had been fractured. All the people they had spent the last six months protecting weren't there. Their grandparents and aunts and uncles talked terribly about me and the girls could hear and feel it.

On Christmas Eve my parents put all their presents under the tree like they always do. My gifts for my kids and everyone were tucked away in a spare bedroom because I wasn't real sure what to do. My mom knew by the look on my face that I was hurting and I was. My heart ached for the traditions of my old family, Christmas Eves with my husband and children. Luckily, the girls were 17 and 13 and the normal Santa traditions had long passed. My mom asked if I wanted to pile the girls stuff up in the living room and all of us open our stuff up together Christmas morning, like when I was a kid. This helped.

Children feel the loneliness and absence of tradition after a divorce their first Christmas.

Parents don't realize the effects their failed relationship has on their children until the holidays roll around. I was so extremely selfish in those months. I had a boyfriend and my ex had a girlfriend and the kids were just kind of "there". I'm not proud of this and my heart hurts for the stealing of their innocence by our terrible divorce and selfishness.

My ex hadn't put up a tree, he had kept our family ornaments in the basement in our old home. The girls were asking where their stockings were, where were their favorite ornaments. There wasn't anything I could do, in divorce, you have to wait for everything to be separated and final before you can take possession of any joint property. This included the kids ornaments, beds, toys and anything else that had been in the marital home when my ex had me removed.

I didn't try in those months to make anything easier, I was an active participant in the turmoil and animosity. All I could think of was winning and winning at the cost of anyone in my way. I had been hurt, my family shattered. That was probably the hardest Christmas I had ever experienced.

Since I was 13 years old, the same age as my youngest daughter, I had spent the holidays the same way. Christmas Eve with my exes family, Christmas Day at our family home with my family. There was no family home for me and the girls, my ex was alone with whatever woman he was dating in that moment. There would be no Christmas Eve with my exes family, my children had felt too loyal to me to celebrate with them. Obviously I wasn't welcome and they made no attempt to make them feel at home or console them either.

I have always heard the holidays have a high rate of depression and suicide. I didn't used to believe this until I had experienced this first Christmas as a dysfunctional divorced family. I know my children suffered and so did my ex and I. Everyone was suffering, so much so that you almost wish you weren't separated in those dark moments, almost. I think I went back and forth from sadness to anger and then to helplessness. It was such a dark turbulent time for me and now I'm sure for my ex as well.

It has been almost five years and that was the last Christmas my youngest would attempt to spend with her father. My oldest refused and hasn't spent a Christmas with him since we were a family. I find myself feeling sorry for him now, spending the holidays alone without his children, now without a granddaughter he hasn't met as well. I feel like I should reach out and include him in our new traditions. Until I remember, these are the traditions my now husband and I have worked hard at building to fill the void for my girls. I'm not as angry as I once was at my ex, I feel compassion for his lack of a relationship, the destruction of his family at his own hands.

I hope that in the future my girls build traditions and can learn from my mistakes. I hope they know how hard we worked to create new good memories to replace the absence of their biological family. I hope they don't have relationship issues in the future as adults that result from what my ex and I have done.

This holiday season if you find yourself in a similar situation, take the time to nurture your children. They are suffering as well if their family is separated and someone special is missing. No matter how angry you may be at whatever your situation is, consider the kids and how they are feeling. I failed to do this and will forever regret it and feel a little bit of sadness for that first Christmas on our own.