<p>KW Mom–</p>
<p>Yours sounds like a difficult realization. If I may ask, since your children sound old enough to talk about this issue, do you? Can they articulate their feelings to you? Do they express a desire to re-connect with their father? If you could engineer the least-conflicted situation for that to occur, would you let it?</p>
<p>It seems that with your post you're also looking for insights and experiences for how to understand the other parent's point of view–"why do dads disappear?" Let me share a bit of my own.</p>
<p>I write from an unexpected angle on this matter. I'm in the midst of a "divorce" where my former partner's trying to minimize my contact with our daughter. Were it not for the fact that my daughter and I are already and extremely close, I'm sure my former partner wouldn't want me to have contact with our child at all. However, I'm not a "dad"; I'm another mom–my former partner and I are gay, and we have one daughter (birthed by my partner; legally adopted by me). So, I write understanding the "woman's" or mother's side of this tension. But as the non-custodial parent, I'm treated by the law as, effectively, a "dad," since the law tends to presume non-custodial parents are men. In short, I feel as if I can see both sides of the matter.</p>
<p>So here's my insight, from a non-custodial parent's point of view. </p>
<p>There have been times when I have wanted to pack my bags and head back to the hometown where my family once lived (I've relocated and sought out a job in the place where my former partner and daughter now reside, to be close to my daughter). The financial and emotional pressures placed on me by both the move and the state's divorce law have been so great I've felt like throwing up my hands and saying: "forget this. She left me. She doesn't want me around. She doesn't respect my role as a parent. The law gives me so few rights. Let me go back someplace where I'd have an easier time caring for myself."</p>
<p>As much as I love my daughter, my dignity and well-being must count at some point, too; or else, what kind of role model would I be to her? And yet, the tensions between my former partner and me–together with the stringencies of divorce law–compromise my finances and integrity so much that I sometimes long to be in a space where my best adult self can rise to the surface and live modestly (financially speaking) but free. </p>
<p>First of all, then, I imagine that Dads "disappear" not because they don't love or want to care for their children. They most likely do. Indeed, the image that best describes how I felt living at a long distance from my daughter was this: I walked around with a hole in my heart. It pained me more than I can ever say to be excluded from doing all the little things that make up parenting day-to-day. My own experience teaches me that some non-custodial parents probably give into or create distance between themselves and their children because they can't stand the pain of being separated from them. That sounds paradoxical–why cut off the connection you want and need?–but "disappearing" for this reason makes emotional sense to me.</p>
<p>My situation has taught me a second lesson on this point. Staying in contact versus "disappearing" probably reflects how some non-custodial parents decide to safeguard their integrity and dignity when dealing with their former partner. Now, I don't mean to say that non-custodial parents who cease contact with their children lack integrity or dignity. Quite the contrary. It's probably the best way they know now to preserve their self-worth. I know that's how I've felt when I've contemplated leaving the town where my child now resides. Perhaps that's the case for other non-custodial parents who "disappear"?</p>
<p>I hope my comments are useful to you. Thanks for opening the dialogue.
</p>
