Relationships Archives - Page 3 of 3

It’s expensive to break up

27/11/2016 By DO 4 Comments

I don’t think the expense of breaking up is ever considered when we are thinking about breaking up? If we did, we might try a little harder to stay together because it can put an enormous amount of strain on the hip pocket!

When we know it’s over or when we know this person we are currently calling a partner is not going to be a “life” partner, all we can think about is moving out and on and trust everything will be ok. It’s important to make sure that both people involved are ok and living arrangements and money have been considered fairly so no one is doing it unreasonably tough.

Over time things slowly return to normal (or a new normal) but the initial expense can be a real shock and i don’t think any of us expected or worked on a “break up budget” when we made our mind up to break up.

Who would have thought we need to have two of everything 🙂 Some people instigating the break up, tend to be quite generous and it would be normal to just leave with our clothes in a suitcase. If it is more of a fair divide? then half of all the living items needs to be repurchased. If you have kids, it is more beds,towels, crockery, table & chairs and clothes, toys, books and sporting equipment etc too.

Don’t forget the bond & rent of your new home becomes fully paid for by one (1) person, gas, electricity, food, insurances, foxtel etc etc all is now paid for solely by you.

There are ways to minimize the financial pain

If you know its coming and you have months to plan, start putting money aside and build an emergency fund, we all should have one anyway, even if you are completely happy and in love with you partner. You never know what can blind side you at 3pm on a Tuesday afternoon, trust me it can happen.

Once you have worked out the divide, write a gap list and and let your friends and family know what you need, your friends and family can bring you some of the essentials you will need to start again, this can help with your personal support by having supportive friends & family visiting you. Myer have a gift registry where they will list all the things you need, like, towels, bedding, glasses, kitchen appliances, cups, cutlery etc and as they get purchased, Myer will cross them off your list so no one doubles up on break up gifts.

You can also create a new bank account for the “start again fund” and send the account details to all your friends, family and Facebook contacts and ask them to contribute anything they can – the smallest amounts all add up. Don’t forget to personally thank every contributor!

I hope you never have to experience a break up, sometimes it is inevitable, this might give you some ideas to think about before you make that decision. Try hard to resolve your issues as it is much cheaper and financially better in the long term to stay together and work things out.

Filed Under: Finances, Relationships, Separation

Is this just egotistical, and can courts over rule?

17/04/2016 By DO Leave a Comment

Often we get asked interesting questions, so we nicely ask our professional friends of Dads Online to help provide answers to them. Remember this is not official legal advise as everyone’s situation is different, it is only an experts opinion based upon the information we have. All names and identifying remarks have been omitted.

Question: My 5 year old daughters last name is my name – mums name. However, last year, mum got remarried and wants to change the name to her new married name. I say no, as step dad has no rights to my daughter and isn’t her guardian. There is a long backstory of this behavior and thoughts from stepdad being forced on me. Is this just egotistical, and can courts over rule?

Answer: Its not egotistical, its is a very normal reaction that would upset most Dads. Theoretically, a court could decide in favour of a name change if there is a good argument for it. Depends on whether the mum chooses to initiate proceedings in the Court to try to obtain same. Your daughters name can not be changed unless the mum takes this action and is successful?

Filed Under: Relationships, Separation

Why it is important to know your children’s friends

21/02/2016 By DO Leave a Comment

One of the best possible ways to influence healthy friendships for your child is to be aware of and involved in them. There is a fine line between being involved and being nosy, you need to make sure not to overstep those boundaries and make your child feel as if their privacy is being disturbed. One of the best good parenting tips is to maintain a positive presence and protective shadow in your child’s life and in their relationships. You should aim to keep an eye on these relations to ensure that these friendships, which are so fragile at a young age stay positive and healthy.

Not only this but by maintaining a positive role model image in front of them by only allowing healthy and positive friendships for yourself also, introduce your child to your friends and show them the importance of you both being involved (to a certain extent) in each other’s relations and being aware of who is who.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to open your home to your child’s friends. Let them feel comfortable in coming over and hanging out with your adult supervision in the background, this way you know what they are up to and it is an excellent way to get to know these new friends. When they are relaxed and in the mood to talk, you can get to know more about them.

However be sure to note your child’s reaction when you are talking to their friends, some children may feel comfortable and happy that you are taking an interest in their lives and friendships however some kids may not be too happy if you are being over friendly and taking the attention away from them. Stay friendly but don’t overdo it and intrude on their time together too much that your child’s guests or your child themself feels uncomfortable. It is important to note that when you take an interest in your child’s friendships, you are portraying a healthy message to your child that their friendships are important to you also.

It is important that you learn the names of your child’s friends, this way you will be able to keep up with all the stories your child has to share with you about their adventures. Not only this, but once you get to know their names and a little more about them, you can list their contact details and their parents contact information in your family address book.

Whenever possible, at school gates or when dropping kids off at each other’s houses, try to get to know the parents of your child’s friends also. By working with their parents you can ensure that your children’s friendships remain positive for all and you will most likely find that you both share the same concerns and values. This is a great way for you to also meet new people and increase your social life!

By getting to know other parents, this is an excellent route to face and possibly fix any issues your child may be having at school. Such as difficulties with a particular subject, if you find both your kids are having a difficult time you could arrange for them to be tutored together of if there are more serious issues then you can both speak to a teacher to express your concerns.

If your child’s school is hosting an event, try taking the time out to attend or stay a little longer when you go to drop your child off. Ask them to introduce you to their friends and ask questions; get to know them better so you can get a better impression of who they are.

Although some children who feel they are growing up may want to spend more time with their friends and less with family, you can change their mind by inviting their friends along too on your family getaways. You can get to know their friends and your child will be more than happy to spend time with you also.

However if you have younger children who are more fond of going to the park or having sleepovers, allow them do so or arrange fun events and get-togethers for them where you can supervise. You’ll find you’ll be having just as much fun as they are once you help arrange games and movies for them.

When it comes to birthday parties you can arrange fun surprise parties for them by inviting all their class members, this is a great way to help your child’s confidence also and help them make more new friends.

If you ever see your child’s friends out and about, try to go out of your way to give them a quick greeting. Many teenagers will actually appreciate seeing a familiar friendly face, especially if they are working somewhere.

Your child is safer if you know where they are, who they are with and if you befriend the parents of your child’s friends too, they can also keep an eye out and make sure your child is not overstepping any boundaries you have set for them. Some teens can be prone to making mistakes such as participating in drugs or taking up the company of unsuitable company, so by keeping an eye on this aspect of your child’s life you can help them make the right decisions and guide them in the right direction. Not just your own child, but of any other younger children that you befriend, who perhaps feel less comfortable talking to their own parents openly about any pressing issues.

Filed Under: Fathering, Parenting, Relationships

How important is spending time together?

14/02/2016 By DO Leave a Comment

Extremely!…After receiving 85 votes in our recent poll, the results are in. The top reasons why relationships have broken down are:

Lack of time spent together
Infidelity
Money

Lets focus on “Lack of time spent together” in this post, the rest we will cover in a follow up later.

It appears that many partners have not provided enough time for each other, this in the end will cause withdrawal and a disconnect. Without time spent “together” how can one develop love and feel loved. Knowing this in advance hopefully changes the course for some people who may have had a tendency to work more and go out with their friends more rather than spend time with their partner?

It is obviously a recipe for disaster so the easy answer is – Don’t be the cause for your partners emotional discomfort or unhappiness, work at dedicating time together and you will reap the rewards.

Invest time in your friendship with your partner
Schedule time i.e. date night, date weekends
Share household duties i.e. cleaning, put kids to bed
Cook a meal for your partner regularly
Go to bed together early
Operate as a team
If you are off track, get help early.
Don’t leave it until it is broken.

Its very important to spend time alone together. Meeting each others emotional and physical needs is more important than meeting your children’s. Your children will not even realise (let alone remember) you have put them to bed early so that you can spent time with your partner. They wont even miss you if you get a competent baby sitter (all that carry on when you are leaving is emotional blackmail) Just Goooo.

You have to keep that spark alive to a certain degree. Do you remember when you first met? How you put things aside to be with each other. What if you brought along your children to every date…how boring! How long would that last. Make each other a priority and the rest will take care of its self.

Stay tuned for our discussion on Infidelity…coming soon.

Filed Under: Dads Health, Relationships

How to secure your relationship during the parenting years

17/01/2016 By DO Leave a Comment

Have you thought about your transition from Partner to Parent? Everybody will win if you get it right – YOU, your partner and the children. Lets not forget it costs way less to live together as a family than to live separately.

It’s so important to secure your relationship during the parenting years and be aware that relationships can decline once the children arrive. Its not only the parents that suffer but the children can be effected emotionally and academically too. Don’t worry, it’s not inevitable for all couples but you must enter parenthood with your eyes open, understand and accept that your life will never again be how you knew it.

There has been studies conducted on this topic to find out what couples are doing right and what couples are they doing wrong?

Couples were monitored from prepregnacy to when the children were in preschool, the findings were very interesting…

92% of the couples in the study described a gradual increase in conflict after having their baby. By the time their babies were 18 months old, almost one in four couples indicated that their marriage was in distress. This does not include the 13% who already had announced separations and divorces.

One stage is not harder on relationships than another. There is a cumulative erosion of satisfaction over time. Parents of school-age children experience less depression and personal stress than they did when their kids were babies, marital satisfaction continues its steady decline for most couples.

So how does a couple remain happy?

The key to marital satisfaction lies in how couples manage the decision-making process. It’s not whether the couples have problems, because every couple does. When babies come along, there are a lot more issues and differences of opinion to negotiate, and a couple’s ability to do so with cooperation and respect can make or break the marriage.

It’s also important for partners to hear each others outbursts without immediately firing back or engaging in blame. The person who said or did something thoughtless needs to make amends later. Saying, “I made that comment out of anger. I really didn’t mean it,” goes a long way toward repairing a relationship.

They also put some expectant couples in groups with trained leaders and found years later that their satisfaction did not decline.

Many people take prenatal classes, learning how to breathe during childbirth, but few give much thought to what the next 20 years are going to be like. Couples in our study joined the groups when the wives were seven months pregnant and met weekly until the babies were 3 months old.

The group helped them start thinking concretely about what life with the baby would be like and enabled them to talk about their ideas, worries, and confusion before and after the birth. Six years later, the couples who remained married and had been in these groups were far more satisfied with their relationships.

So what do couples fight about?

New parents say it’s the division of labor, the who-does-what in the family.

When children become school-age, the issues of money and spending time together then become the things they fight about.

And what about sex?

Sex is a good temperature check of how the rest of the relationship is going. If you feel hurt or misunderstood, or you and your wife are struggling over but not resolving issues, that affects how attracted, nurturing, and ready to have sex you’ll be.

The frequency of lovemaking declines during the early months of parenthood when mothers especially are exhausted, but we find that most couples’ sex lives rebound within two years. During that time, though, some partners may not initiate even snuggling or touching for fear that it will give the message that they’re ready to have sex when they aren’t. We advise couples to be perfectly clear: “I’m not sure how much energy I have tonight, but I’d love to hold you for a few minutes.” That enables them to have more intimate time together and show caring for each other.

Many new mothers talk about feeling unattractive after the birth. But while a few men find it hard to see their wives as sexual after having children, most husbands are supportive about their wives’ appearance.

What can couples do on their own to help their relationship?

Work on issues with your partner when you’re calm — not at 2 a.m., when the baby won’t sleep. Often after couples have had a fight, they’re reluctant to bring up the issue again. But if you don’t, it can linger and resentment can build.

If you argue in front of your kids, tell them later that you worked out your disagreement or show them that you did by calming yourselves down in front of them.

Make time for the relationship. You may not be able to afford a sitter or be ready to leave your baby, but you can check in with each other for at least 10 minutes every day. That can be done after you put the kids to bed or even on the phone while you’re both at work, as long as you’re sharing what happened to you that day and how it’s affecting you emotionally. The pace of life today is so frenetic that few couples do this. But marriages are capable of change, and small changes can make big differences.

Being aware of what can go wrong when changing from partner to parent and how it can be a mine field for new dads will hopefully make you acknowledge that the first few years will take patience, understanding and commitment from both partners to make it successful – don’t go in blind!

I heard when we get it right it can create happiness equate to the feeling of quadrupling your salary…says Harvard psychologist Robert Putnam. He goes on to explain…

Making a good friend is equal to tripling a salary. Belonging to a club can cause an increase in happiness equivalent to doubling a salary. And going on picnics three times a year is the same as receiving a 10 per cent raise. Lets quadruple our happiness!

Please share this post with anyone you know going into parenthood 🙂

Credit for this research study goes to Philip Cowan, Ph.D., professor of psychology and director of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California and his wife Carolyn Pape Cowan, Ph.D. Professor of psychology.

Filed Under: Lifestyle, New Dad, Relationships

Why are you being so rude to me…I dont know?

04/11/2015 By DO Leave a Comment

I’m learning very quickly about moody teenagers and trying to be tolerant, but I want to jump in a time machine and go forward 10 years because this is hell!
It seems like I cannot do or say anything that is right and any advise or solutions given feels like a lecture to them.

I understand that there are lots of hormones going on, our school had a night for year 7 parents and covered off areas around dealing with this change.

How to cope with teenage children:

Don’t buy into schoolyard arguments, the kids will work it out
Be a listener and be there but don’t try and solve their problems
Be encouraging and be there but let them work things out in there own time

Adults brains apparently have a hormone called THP which has a calming influence, In our teenagers this same THP heightens anxiety – of course it does 🙂 . I keep reminding myself they are going through many new experiences and having to cope with new challenges like: hormonal change, body changes, developing identity, pressure from friends, and a developing sense of independence.

I am sure they don’t like the moods either. I asked her once..

Why are you being so rude to me? She replied “I dont know”?

So I just left it and I understood she wasn’t meaning to be rude and she didn’t like it either. I could tell she knew it was wrong.

These reminders are my savior, Thank God there are times where she is calm, happy, respectful and loving otherwise I would go completely out of my mind! So I am just trying to roll with it, provide support and stability. Still setting ground rules for respect as I expect her to be respectful to all people. I pick my battles, remain calm and try to redirect the negative behaviour.

A couple of tips in this areas could be:

Pick your battles. If your teenager is basically behaving, ignore minor annoyances such as shrugs, raised eyebrows, or bored looks.
Sometimes, teens may be inadvertently disrespectful. (Again, their brains are developing.) Calmly ask about their intention — for example, “That comment came out sounding pretty offensive. Did you mean to behave rudely?

I know its a stage that lots of kids go through, she is a beautiful girl and has a kind warm heart. If she is rude and I do discuss it, I make sure I talk about the behaviour not the person. I’m always trying to affirm her worth as a person even as I explain why her behavior was unacceptable.

Through the next few years (OMG), I’ll always be involved and interested in her everyday life and be interested in her sport and activities. Even during the times when she is unlovable, I will still give hugs, words of praise, little note in her lunch box with words of love often, because they need it and want unconditional love to help them get through it.

I came across this YouTube video and it reminds me that sometimes they DON’T KNOW why they are being rude and we shouldn’t get upset or take it personally.

Filed Under: Children, Dads Health, Daughters, Kids Health, Parenting, Relationships, Sons

Missing childhood events can impact adult relations

01/10/2015 By DO 5 Comments

For many years my eldest daughter has not spoken to me and I don’t really know why? You do a lot of soul searching and try to piece events together to get some sense of her saying that she “wants to distance herself from you”

She has married and you guessed it, I was not invited to the wedding! No walking her down the isle, no spending time with her prior to the wedding reminiscing about life and the wonderful possibilities that lay ahead. No meeting her future husband or her new extended family, just shut out. I did not do anything that deserves this punishment.

My relationship with her I believe was loving but less than satisfactory due to the restraints that were put upon us. When she was only a little child of 2 years, the family court said I could only see her on every second weekend. Making the most of it, we were Melbourne’s biggest tourists. I kept myself available for that weekend. I didn’t seek out career opportunities because it may have had me working away from home, I didn’t take on a girlfriend because I wanted to be completely available to her. Those weekends seemed to come around quickly, it was 52 days out of 365 a year and I cherished every one of them.

I sought counselling in the early days to deal with the grief of missing her and coping with a non supportive mother. They told me “maintain your commitment and don’t argue, just be her knight and shining armour and she will realise you are a good dad and a committed one when she is older”. In the weeks between, I would send her a card or a CD single of what ever was a popular song for that fortnight, there must have been shoe boxes of them if they were kept? but I think the forces were against me from the start!

She very quickly had a step-father and two step sisters, an instant family versus a single dad every second weekend.

Looking back I liken it to getting in the ring with Danny Green, it was never going to go my way.

Separation from your child causes sadness, heartache, regret and shame, not to mention the belief that you’ve failed at one of life’s most important tasks. Never for one moment would I have believed that I would be rejected for no apparent reason or no explanation?

Confused and at a loss to understand why I have been cut out of her life, I went searching online for answers. It seems that instances like this are often rooted in issues that go back to childhood. Issues and feelings that were never dealt with during childhood such as a conflicted divorce which can cause pain and anger that can fester. Then a “triggering incident” occurs later in life, often leading to an argument, and then the child cuts the parent off.

The arguments that can trigger these events can be a little as where to have Christmas dinner? In my case it was over her inability to attend the theater which opened up a can of worms that I was never expecting.

It has been very hard for me to comprehend what I did to push her away, in my mind I chased her and Ive been available all her growing years (every second weekend) until late teens. However there are some critical moments that play a huge role in the ability to connect in the early years that may result in suppressed anger and disappointment.

Answers I have uncovered recently that I wish I had of known earlier. Questions like:

Were you there for their school plays?
Did you attend parent teacher interviews,
Did you help them with their homework?
Did you go to their birthday parties?
Did you take care of them when they were sick?

Knowing the answers to these questions gives me insight into how my absence could have contributed in her ability to walk away.

I was never avoiding my daughter it was the set of circumstances we were in, I regretted every day that we were apart.

My ex wife and I did not have a co-parenting relationship, I had to constantly fight for fair access even though there was a court order in place. At one point I was denied my agreed access so I headed immediately back to court and had it reinstated. This went on during the early years which killed any future healthy communication between her mother and I. Attending any joint events I felt like I was not welcome and I didn’t want my daughter to see that.

Regrettably I couldn’t attend her 21st, I was completely torn between going and not going. The anxiety I felt was overwhelming. Lots of old “so called” friends that deserted me like rats leaving a sinking ship were going to be at the party. I had become very distant and removed from that circle of friends due to our divorce. Even my best friend of 25 years sided with his fiance at the time and chose to distance himself from me. To attend what I perceived to be the “lions den” caused over whelming anxiety, I just couldn’t do it! .

I discuss my feelings in depth with my daughter and I thought she understood my position, maybe not… I cant help but think what is happening now could be part of that unresolved festering anger ?

I know that an apology may not heal all wounds, I did wish back then I had the chance. She refuses to communicate and didn’t return calls or messages after repeated attempts on my part, so I have pulled back. You can’t force someone to love you, at some point you need to come to peace with the fact that you did everything you could to be the best dad that you were allowed to be.

I will be the only father she will ever have. She has now had 2 children of her own, hopefully she will understand the undying bond between a parent and a child has and imagines what I went through as a separated dad seeing her sadly only 52 days a year.

Some of my reference material from my online sole searching has been from: The secret side of anger , Why adolescence don’t appreciate their parents , How to heal a rift with your adult children

Filed Under: Children, Dads Health, Daughters, Fathering, Relationships, Separation, Sons