I Love You Elephant Much - Video gaming.....is it addicting or is it an escape

Written in 2010

 

Can the father of my two daughters please stand up! Please stand up!

How do deatbeat fathers earn the "the deatbeat" title? Is it tied to just the financial piece of it? I have so many other theories behind the deadbeat father syndrome. It can't be just because they're mad at their ex? It has to be a mix recipee of a little pinch of feeling inferior, a dash of lack of self confidence, and a "BAM" of insecurity! In my case the recipee also included a special dose of leaving their old life to start a new life with a whole new family, a family that already include children that do not even belong to him. His personality differs from one family to the next. He's one person with a total different family and a total different person with his own children. 

A deadbeat dad = lack of financial and emotional support. They loose their title and are willing to give up their daddy status from the only individuals that see them as their protectors, their heroes, their guides in their lives.

They splurge their money during social occassions, purchase gifts, go on vacation, yet, his children are waiting at home for that child support check to come in so they can continue living a stable life. His children are home awaiting for that call to say, "hey baby, I was thinking about you today." then have that type of conversation that he used to have with his kids.

These type of men lie, manipulate and lie some more until their own children grow up and see them for what they really are. But its a no win situation, because no matter what the children do or say, no matter how the ex tries to involve the father, he will never be the same with his children.  

Do these type of fathers ever recognize, do they even realize when they abandon their children, the emotional damage they are causing. A loss of a parent can become traumatizing, children begin to develop anger and depression.  What can become of these types of children? What will become of mine?

 

I am a mother getting over a divorce as healthy as I can get over it.  Its been a difficult process for not only me but also my two daughters, Alex and Jade.  Raising my children to become emotionally healthy young ladies without their father's physical and o emotional support was not a wish I intended. You may sondear who I call him MayHem, like the Allstate car insurance comercial where the guy represents mayhem each time there's a car accident.  Mayhem can be a bad storm where a tree falls in a car, or an angry teenage girl talking on the phone about her friend Becky kissing her boyfriend, then gets into a car accident. My personal favorite is when Mayhem, the guy, is jogging and representing a hot babe when a man drives right by her, not ficusing on the road, just focusing on the hot babe jogging, resulting in him crashing his car into a pole. That totally cracked me up! And that is a total representation of my ex-husband. I may also refer to him as scrooples too. I guess it would depend of what I'll be writing about. 

Mayhem is a man that I was with for about 9 years then married for 9 years and 5 months. But of course, he'll say "We were only together for 12 years. Meanwhile, when we divorced, our oldest daughter, Alex, was turning seventeen years old. You do the math. Anywhoo, we were quite young. Inlove, he was emotionally spoiled by his mom. He could never do anything wrong. She would say, "Not my son" ha... But her oldest daughter, the poor girl did everything wrong in her eyes. It was sad to see that this man was never made responsible for anything except maintaining excelllent credit and that comes from his father. Our life together was a learning curve. We had our ups and downs. But things really started to get bad when video gaming became part of his life. He isolated himself in this interactive internet game. For seven years he played between 10 to 15 hours a day. He was rapidly becoming addicted and became distant from us and his family. My girls and I started to eat dinners alone. Go to places alone. Our fights consisted of me making him attend his daughters functions, such as, their parent teacher conferences, concerts, plays, I mean, when we were married I left my home for one night to force him to face his daughter to either attend her father and daughter dance or have him tell her in her face why he was not going to go to her dance. He opted to go and she was so very happy. A father and daughter dance should be treasured forever. He was becoming controlling, selfish then he stopped talking to some of his family members, didn't really care much about his elders who were related to him and ill. He detached himself both emotionally and physically from his sister while distancing himself from most of my family and family functions. He was changing into almost zombie like. He was easily irritable that even the dogs triggered him. He took his anger on the dogs all the time. His routine was to grab a 12 pack of beer, sit in front of the television, hook up his keyboard and start his game. It was one of those never ending games. There was always a journey, a war, a skill he had to learn or a level he had to get to. His whole demeanor with all of us changed. His life was the video games. As for me, not understanding at the time on what was really happening, I began to focus more on work then I obtained two jobs. I tried encouraging him to finish his bachelors degree. He had told me he would but two years past and nothing changed. I then decided to return to school to complete my degree. Once I accomplished in getting my bachelo's degree, he and I spoke again about his interest in school. By this time he was studying for an exam for his job,to advance in his career. I supported it as much as I could. I even volunteered to help him study but he was too engaged in his video games. He was losing himself, losing interest of the real world and he was losing us. I then told him that I was thinking about returning to school to obtain my master's degree. That's when it all began.