Woman blamed her dad for divorcing mom and abandoning the kids — the heartbreaking truth came out when she visited him for a signature
It wasn't until she visited his apartment and saw a stack of documents that she uncovered the truth.
Divorce leaches the life out of a family system, and if the divorcing couple has children, it adds a painful bottleneck in their life experience that forever leaves an emotional scar. Children don’t know which parent to blame for the divorce, which ends up instilling a grudge against either of them, creating cracks within the family. One woman (@khaani102) found this crack filled within her heart when she visited her father’s apartment for a signature. For years, she blamed him for divorcing his mother. But as she relayed in a May 28 post on Instagram Threads, on that day, the truth unveiled itself and left her with a heart-wrenching sentiment.
Living in ignorance
Her parents got divorced after 30 years of marriage. Her father didn’t rebel, just packed his bags and moved to a small apartment in the town, while her mother stayed in the big family home. Her mother often complained that he just gave up on their life together. She and her sisters were filled with so much rage against him that they stopped talking to him, and excluded him from the holidays and family dinners. For two long years, her father remained like an alien entity that they had nothing to do with. Then unfolded an episode of great revelation.
Shocking revelation
Last winter, the author needed a signature from her father on an old car document. So, she visited his apartment, prepared to remain cold. “His place was almost empty. No TV, just a cheap mattress and a single chair. On his kitchen counter was a stack of legal documents and medical bills,” she described. In one moment, when he was in the bathroom, she pored through the documents, and there came a stunning truth knocking at her. The documents were her mother’s private psychiatric bills and credit card statements from a gambling addiction. The woman’s mother had been hiding her addiction from her children for a decade.
The divorce hadn’t happened because her dad stopped loving her mother, but because her mother’s gambling addiction had emptied his retirement fund. This was the final boundary he was setting up, which was the only way to stop himself from being put in jail for fraud. “He took the blame and let his children hate him so we wouldn't find out our mother was sick,” the daughter said.
Quiet suffering
A divorce has a deep psychological impact on both parties and their children, and it often turns into a blame game. A statistical report published by Avvo revealed that only 44% of divorced men blamed their wives for the divorce, in contrast to 64% of women who blamed their husbands. In most cases, divorced fathers reported significantly deeper drops in happiness and satisfaction than childless men. The more their day-to-day contact with children decreased, the more their life satisfaction sank on the graph, per Springer.
People who read the author's post expressed their disappointment and concern over her dad’s quiet suffering. @steadymakingmovess said, “These types of situations happen more often than people think!” @james_the_great remarked, “Wow. A prime example of how a man will automatically be guilty due to the social narratives we subscribe to. He suffered for simply loving into exhaustion and trying to salvage his sanity.”
You can follow @khaani102 on Instagram for more stories.
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