The Beauty and Chaos in My Relationships While Becoming a Father
I remember flying back to Colorado from California to visit my family. My soon to be wife and I had been together now for about 2 months. It was a relationship that really progressed fast. We were texting back and forth, and I text her that I was going to stay a couple more days in Colorado. “Oh… Ok” is what I got back. I knew something was off. So I called her up and asked her what was wrong. “I’m so scared to tell you, and I wanted to wait until I picked you up at the airport… I’m pregnant.”
I don’t know how it was for you, or if you even have kids yet, but hearing those words was like jumping in a wormhole.
Becoming a dad is monumental… I personally think it’s an undertaking that is far bigger than anything you’ll ever achieve in this life. You’re at the crux of helping shape and care for a whole new human – Think of how many years that kid is going to live. Think of all the firsts she’s going to encounter, all the threats she’s going to face. And your job is to guide her through it, and teach her how to make her way through this completely unknown future. It’s really freaking cool when you think about it. And scary as hell!
And at the core of it all, you have to learn how to do this in the process. I remember the Dr. Spock (I think that was it) book, the Wonder Weeks book, the millions of different things I took in to try and prepare. I got through them like my grade school textbooks. Ready to take a test that week, but I’d be damned if it was going to stick with me much longer. I will say that I am thankful to have a wife who was so willing to dive in and sift through information about how to take care of our baby. That’s part of why this website exists, because she spent so much time looking for good answers to tough questions.
But there’s a piece to this whole thing that is just as important as raising the kid.
It’s about raising yourself in the midst of so much weight, so much exhaustion, and so many changes.It’s a process that doesn’t have a finish line, and the track is lined at least with bumps, but probably a few landmines too. I want you to know that if you’re in the process of tripping over those bumps, or maybe you just set off one of the mines, you can get through it, and you can get through with your family intact. I know because I’ve done it for over a decade, and my little family is stronger than ever.
As you might have picked up, my wife and I weren’t consciously planning to have kids, and we had really just begun to get to know each other. So when the baby finally arrived, we were a mess.
We didn’t have too deep of a support system built up either. We tended towards (and still do) trying to handle everything ourselves, and our families are in different states, so there was no reaching out to grandma or grandpa to help for a day. It was all ours.
I broke down in the first few months. There were lots of fights, my wife and I weren’t communicating well, and I didn’t see how I was ever going to do this whole thing without help. Eventually we made the choice that we’d move back to Colorado and stay with my family, while we figured out a new life closer to family that could help. It was a super gracious offer, and we were happy about the thought of having help in this undertaking.
If you want a metaphor for this time in my life, let’s say I tripped on a bump, stumbled into a pile of mines, and blew a hole in the earth that I inhabited for a long time. I thought I was making the right choice going back to Colorado. I was not. Which was one of my first big lessons on this journey.
Accepting help is one thing, but a different thing started happening around my family. They started steering my ship for me. They started pulling my wife and I apart. And I was so overwhelmed and out of sorts that I couldn’t see what was happening. Fortunately for me, I had a lightning bolt hit me in a moment where my wife and I had separated for a while. I realized one of the most important things to me.
Not because I let someone else take the wheel. This was my wife and my daughter I was about to lose. The two most important people to me. And I was going to be absolutely sure that I did everything in my power to get us through the problems we were facing. If you can make that really clear in your mind, it will give you a power that will help you face any challenge that comes up.
So all that said, we made it through that heavy time in our lives. And I learned that the little family you create becomes its own world, and you invite people into it who you deem worthy.
Let them be mad, let them hate you, and if necessary, allow the relationship with extended family or friends to dissolve. Nobody else gets to steer. If they can’t accept that, they’re not trying to help you, they’re trying to control you. I know the pull of family is strong, and our relatives can have a way of really activating our past and pushing our buttons. You can look at it all, and even understand that a lot of this comes from places of love for them. My family, I truly believe, was trying to help, or trying to protect me. But it wasn’t until I took back control, and got strong in my resolve to be the captain, even through the worst patches, that the strength of my new family really grew.
If it helps you at all, there’s still a couple of family members that I do not talk to. You’ll have to judge your own situation, but you are beholden to nobody, and if the space to think means moving away from people, don’t add any guilt to that choice. It’s a perfectly ok choice, even if it can be painful.
The other big piece of mental and emotional struggle happened in my relationship with my wife. The quick relationship didn’t give us time to really work out hardly any of our differences, and throwing a kid into the mix only amplified our anxieties, stresses, and with the added lack of sleep, we were a bit of a mess to put it lightly. Without going into too much detail, there’s many times I kind of thought the relationship was past repair. It’s an absolutely brutal place to be. Not only can divorce be a process hugely weighted against the father in our society, it feels like such a huge failure to watch the family you built start to crumble. There’s a couple things that were major changes in my mind and body that turned the tide for me and my wife.
First off was making a commitment to stop drinking. Alcohol helped fuel the instant connection we found together, and while fun, when I looked at it objectively, more fights tended to happen when the wheels were greased.
Right now I’ve really been enjoying Joe Hudson on Youtube – He’s got a perfect way of describing what our fights were: The shame hot potato. Whatever set it off just led to defending ourselves, attacking the other, and passing the shame hot potato back and forth. When my wife and I made the commitment to stop drinking, it was tough, but almost immediately the fights lessened. What’s more, you open up your life to a different direction. You don’t realize how drinking and socializing in that way can really color a lot of your decisions until you stop. We’re nearly 10 years without a drink now, and I will say that it was one of the best things I ever did. I won’t preach anymore – If you feel open to it, give it a try. Go a week, a month, and see how it feels. Keep a good track of the positives, and don’t just focus on how intense it can be when you feel like you want a drink. All stresses can be expressed and released in other ways, and often when drinking, they’re not truly expressed, but numbed into a manageable little ball you can tuck away inside you to fester and grow again.
Even though we did stop drinking, there were still very tough times going forward. The threat of divorce became a weapon for shutting down arguments. It’s a silly thing if you’ve experienced it… It’s sort of like, well if we don’t like each other in THIS EXACT moment then let’s just get a divorce. It just shuts down all the growth and expression that can happen in a fight, and you end up trying to put things back on an even keel, rather than get at the actual thing bothering you. Don’t play this game anymore. It’s a hamster wheel that just keeps adding new layers of hurt to the relationship.
“If you love something, be willing to let it go.”
I think it’s natural to want to keep the family together, but if you cling too tightly, you’re gonna lose control (bonus points to you if you know the song). A big change happened in our relationship when this threat came up, and I had the willingness to just say “Ok.” I truly meant it when I said it… I could see that we were stuck, and we weren’t able to actually resolve hardly any issues. Maybe the best thing was to split. It had to be better than what the relationship was at that point. We agreed, and in the interest of taking care of our daughter, we worked with each other to be there for her, while we both kind of figured out what we were going to do.
Eventually my wife came to me and we reconciled, with the knowledge going forward that this threat was not something either of us wanted, and we agreed that this would be a game we would no longer play. If you are playing this game at all (and maybe your threat isn’t divorce, but some other distraction from actually solving real problems and expressing needs) take a good look at how it destroys getting to a place of understanding in a fight.
I think there’s so many opportunities to address them before we reach a place of exploding. We just don’t because we’ve been programmed to fight a certain way, address our issues a certain way, and not actually look at our pieces that are unconscious and controlling our life. It’s tough when a relationship reflects back to you all these things you weren’t aware of. It definitely takes a strong man to see things as they are.
One last quick note, and this is just my opinion on things.
A relationship involves meeting the needs of two people. Those two things do not have to be at war with each other. Many things in this life, we make so very black or white. The world actually lives in the grey in between those two poles. What I realize more and more as I grow in my relationship, is that there is a way to reach the needs of both, without sacrificing a part of you. It’s adaptability, building systems, and above all communicating clearly.
Just say it. And communicate to your partner that you cannot read their mind, and you’d like them to be explicit in what they need.
I know this all kind of started about the journey to fatherhood and that it’d be more about raising your new baby. Most of the practical questions already have a lot of answers out there. From a logistical and practical standpoint raising a child is fairly easy to conceptualize – Make sure their needs are met, respond when they cry, and have as much fun as you possibly can so you can share the beauty of this world with your new baby… And so they can remind you again of that beauty through fresh eyes and experience. It’s much harder to accomplish all this when the adult pieces of stepping into a new role, creating a fortification around your family, and navigating a relationship that’s changing based on the fact that you and your partner are going through intense changes is also going on at the same time. That’s where I found most of my seriously painful challenges which changed and forged me into the version of myself that I am today.
I’ll end it there for now. Feel free to reach out if there’s questions, comments, or anything you’d like to send my way. Just like my wife is super interested in creating a space that pushes towards creating the best moms, I hope I can help create stronger fathers as well.
For a different look at my journey to becoming a better father to my daughters, and the support of yourself and your wife during the pregnancy and afterwards, check out my post Becoming Dad: Supporting Your Wife and Yourself to Become The Dad You Want To Be.
A few resources and ideas I’ve really enjoyed lately –
“Awareness” by Anthony De Mello: I love this book. And if you’re finding yourself lost in struggles, and unable to get at the roots of things, this could help you. It’s a spirituality book, but far different from the self help books and spirituality tropes you’ll find out in the world today. I find his stories and interpretations to be amazingly helpful at illustrating ideas that are unable to be expressed well with language. It’s helped me get present and also to see the dark and light inside myself more and more.
Joe Hudson The Art Of Accomplishment Youtube: He’s a coach to CEO for some of the biggest companies you know. He’s direct, pushes people to feel and get deep, and I’ve really found his style of coaching refreshing. Not afraid to cuss, not afraid to share his own shit. Good stuff, check him out.
Joe actually recommended a book called “Listen” by Patty Wipfler and Tosha Schore. As I write this, I have not finished it, but it has opened my eyes up to a new idea with my kids. That idea is that kids act out when they cannot think, and in order to think they have to have a strong connection with their parents. It pushes for listening, and also creating space and time to let your kid control the adventures you’re going to have. Like I said, I haven’t had a whole lot of time to apply this, but it seems to be working much more than yelling, or other discipline that we have tried. It’s a very interesting book to check out and add to your toolkit.
Ultimately, keep it up guys. Keep showing up. Keep having fun and connecting with your family. Keep your mind open, and keep getting better. Don’t let yourself turn into some crusty old curmudgeon who allowed life to beat him into victimhood.
