The WM Parenting Connection

By Stacey Celaya

One of the hardest things about being a single parent is having an adult relationship separate from your kids. The amount of obstacles and hurdles in your way are seemingly never-ending – and they don’t go away when you find that Mr. or Ms. Wonderful either.

When my kids were little I never brought any man that I was dating home. They had enough on their plate adjusting to daycare, babysitters and Mommy working all the time and I made it a point to only go out on dates on the weekends they were with their father. This was all fine with me since I had sworn of relationships anyway – I had every intention of dating and hanging with my friends well into my old age.

But then I met my now husband. My oldest daughter was 8 at the time and 11 when we got married. My other two were 7 and 4 when I met Rico. Taylor is the only one that remembers her father and me together and she had some major loyalty issues. She did not understand that she could love Rico and her father at the same time. Unfortunately, even as she got older she never quite got the whole “it’s ok to love them both” thing.

When she was 16 she decided she wanted to go live with her father in Texas. Until that point I had made it very clear that living with their Dad was NOT an option. While he loved them, and this I never doubted, he was not the most responsible of people and had trouble keeping a job, paying his bills and even living somewhere other than his parents’ house. But things between Rico and Taylor were difficult at best. She resented him whenever he attempted to parent her and she got angry with me when I backed him up. She was beyond miserable and her unhappiness affected the whole family.

Finally I agreed to let her try living with her Dad. This was by far the HARDEST decision I ever had to make. Had the rockiness of her relationship with my husband been the only factor, I probably would not have let her go. People don’t always like every other person and while I loved him and my other kids loved him that did not mean that she had to. But Taylor needed to know that her Dad wanted her. She had spent her whole life always trying to please him, afraid that he would just disappear if she didn’t. With all of his faults (and there are many) that was never something I worried about. But she did and that was all that mattered. So that combined with the constant tension and stress on our family caused by Rico and Taylor's unrelenting irritation with each other spurred me to agree to let Taylor go.

By allowing her to live with him I am hoping that will keep her from looking for whatever she needed from her father in all the wrong men in her adult relationships. Saying good-bye to her that summer broke my heart in a way that I never thought it could be broken. The ache in my heart lives with me everyday still. But as I said in a previous post, it is not about me. It is not about my pain or my sense of failure (right or wrongly deserved). It is about what is best for my children. Taylor NEEDED to go live with her Dad.

Fast forward a year and a half…and Taylor is about to turn 18 and a senior in high school. She has been accepted into the University of Texas at Austin and is planning on studying English and becoming an English teacher. She is thriving – incredibly enough despite her father. They still live with his parents, which amazingly enough I am grateful for because I know she always has her Grandparents around when he gets too involved in his own life. He lost his job about six months after Taylor went to live with him and is still unemployed – but Taylor’s presence has forced him to keep plugging away looking for a job.

He never quit understood that the young woman that I sent to live with him was just that – a young woman and not the 8 year old he used to take on the weekends. She was almost nearly fully cooked – but he didn’t see it that way. So he sat on her and to some extent I think he stunted her social growth. She has never been on a date – group or otherwise and she is not allowed to get a part time job to save for a car or college. These things frustrate me to no end. But along with allowing Taylor to live with her Dad, I also had to allow her to lie in the bed she made. She made a choice with the clear knowledge that she had to live with that choice – good or bad – for at least a year; then we could re-evaluate. Another tough thing to do as a parent – every instinct I have says to swoop in and save her – but doing that would only hurt her.

Incredibly enough Taylor sees her Dad with a clear view now. Her rose colored glasses have long since come off. There have been many, many conversations in which I had to remind her that he was her Dad and she had to love him anyway. I have offered on several occasions for her to come home if she really wants to. But Taylor is a tough cookie and in her words is “no quitter”. And I have to agree. She wants to stick it out until she graduates believing that once she moves into the dorms at UT she will have the freedom to grow and spread her wings. I think she is right.

Besides – I will always be here for her to help guide her flight to freedom and this is something I have made sure that she knows.

I Had To Put My Money Where My Parenting Mouth Was