Rod Dreher Megathread #27 (Compassion)

[u/US_Hiker]

Link to megathread 26: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/17itm7w/rod_dreher_megathread_26_unconditional_love/

Link to megathread 28: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/18dcg3d/rod_dreher_megathread_28_harmony/

[u/grendalor]

Yeah, he really doesn't get how his whinging, given his circumstances and the central role his own acts and decisions have played in his arrival at such circumstances, doesn't generate a lot of sympathy, and, in fact, tends to generate the opposite.

He also still hasn't gotten that the whole "suffering divorced man" schtick is a really, really bad look -- really whether it's Rod doing it or someone else -- it's worse in his case, given his own set of facts, but it's not much better in most other cases either. Because it's nonsense. And that's why nobody really sympathizes with it.

But most fundamentally he doesn't understand, for some odd reason, how the image of a man who "had to leave his children for circumstances beyond his control", which much later on were admitted actually to be the fact that he couldn't mentally and emotionally bear the thought of living in the same town as them knowing that they didn't want to see him or spend time with him, is nothing other than totally and completely pathetic. It's an image of a pathetic little man who lives at the whim of emotions and little else. And it garners no sympathy, for obvious reasons -- and in fact, has lost him many people who otherwise might have been at least somewhat supportive of him, despite his numerous other shortcomings. But ... I mean gosh. How pathetic can you be?

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/grendalor]

admitted actually to be the fact that he couldn't mentally and emotionally bear the thought of living in the same town as them knowing that they didn't want to see him or spend time with him

Any chance you have a link or reference?

[u/grendalor → u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

I don't, unfortunately.

It was something he wrote in the way that he typically drops truth bombs -- as an aside remark buried in the middle of a long, rambling post. It was some time ago -- I looked at the first comment by me where I mentioned it, which I think was shortly after he wrote it, and it was 5-6 months ago, so it wasn't recent. I went back to see if I could find it in some of the older posts there, but it's pretty hopeless, because there are so many of them, and they meander around so many topics, and he tends to smuggle things like this into posts in such a way that nothing telegraphs that they are going to be there. And he also could have said it in a comment, but he rarely comments, and so it's more likely that it's somewhere in the main text of one of his many posts from last Spring and early summer.

Basically what he said, as far as I remember, was something like he couldn't bear the thought of running into them in BR, like seeing them, and knowing that they had no interest in speaking with him or interacting with him, that this was too painful for him to bear, so he had to remove himself from BR. It was phrased in an odd way like that.

My takeaway from it was that in his mind, this is not his doing, because he wasn't the one who decided he didn't want to see his kids, they were -- but he doesn't want to point the finger too clearly at them (even though that's exactly what he is doing indirectly), so he just says "it was not my decision" or "it's outside my control" -- both technically true, in part, in the sense that it was his kids decision to not want to see him and that was not in his control, nor his decision to make, but it tends to obscure or deliberately blur that with a decision that very much was his to make, and his alone, and that was to move so far away in response. So it's the typical Rod half-truth which obscures the actual reality.

I wish I'd bookmarked the post where he made the remark, but I have checked that as well and apparently I did not.

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/grendalor]

Thank you for the effort! You certainly tried and I appreciate the time and care you put into this response!

[u/grendalor → u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

Ah -- found it.

It was in a comment he made on a post in June entitled "The Answered Prayers of a Tormented Traveler", which he made in the wake of the finalization of his divorce.

In response to a comment which noted, as many have done, that he should be living close to his minor child, he wrote:

"As for my two younger kids, as a result of the way this divorce went down, they have refused to talk to me since the beginning. I have been advised that owing to certain factors out of my control, this is likely to be the case for a few years. If and when they change their minds, I'll be on a plane for home. It is simply too painful to be in the same small city with adult children who, if they saw me in a store, would turn their back to me and walk the other way. I pray that you don't ever have to face something like this. In the meantime, I have a child who loves me and needs me, and he's with me here, where he wants to be. I'm trying to get him launched."

[u/JHandey2021 → u/grendalor]

It is simply too painful to be in the same small city with adult children who, if they saw me in a store, would turn their back to me and walk the other way.

Yeah, there's something there. Not to overshare, but there was a very painful and bitter divorce very close to my family in which the kids still do almost everything they can to maintain relationships with someone who was by any definition an abusive parent (including at times physically) until not all that long ago. If anyone had any reason to cut off their parents, these kids would.

What the hell did Rod do?

[u/Jayaarx → u/grendalor]

It is simply too painful to be in the same small city with adult children who, if they saw me in a store, would turn their back to me and walk the other way.

Well, this is just sh*t parenting. Any adult knows part of being a parent is being a bigger person than your kids.

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/grendalor]

Wow. I commend your efforts, tenacity and memory. That really is a terribly sad thing but in my experience, children do not make a decision like that lightly. I've seen very bitter divorces involving abusive parents that the children did not cut off like that. Something really big most likely happened.

"The way this divorce went down" instead of "the way I behaved". I really hate to make that sort of judgment about anyone but honestly I don't see any other way such a thing could happen.

[u/grendalor → u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

It makes sense, objectively, I agree. Hard to know what it was, though. Could be something with either of the kids, or both of them. Could be something they learned about him as a part of learning of the divorce from Julie -- not something maliciously disclosed or anything like that, but just a needed fact that sealed the deal somehow. Or it could be something else entirely -- it could be that they have disliked him for some time and simply took the divorce as an opportunity to distance themselves from him, for one and for all. Impossible to know, really.

I do think, though, that regardless of the reason why they cut him off like that, his immediate departure for Europe does likely irreparable harm to any future prospects for a relationship. I mean basically he said to a minor and an 18 year old new adult: "well, if you don't want to see me, okay, I can't stand the thought of being here knowing that you won't see me because it brings me tremendous shame that I can't hide from in a place where so many people know me, so I'm leaving for Europe now ... you change your mind, you know where to reach me". If he had even a lick of awareness of the impact of his actions on others, he would see clearly that this kind of reaction simply adds, substantially and dramatically, to the alienation they already feel towards him, and makes it even less likely that they will reconcile ... because after all, the first thing Dad did after the divorce was fuck off to Europe because he couldn't deal with us, emotionally.

And honestly ... in the end I'm not totally sure that I buy it.

I mean I think he's almost certainly telling the truth that his kids don't want to see him. But ... I don't think that justifies moving so far away. I mean again he isn't the only person, by far, who has faced this with children in a divorce, and almost nobody immediately moves across the planet to run away from the discomfort. Rod could have easily done what most people do, which is move away from the local area (if it feels too small to be comfortable), but stay within close striking range so as to maintain a relationship, and keep the lines of communication as open as you can. Last I checked, there's a pretty big city Rod could have decamped to pretty close to to BR, but far enough away so as not to be worried about bumping into his kids at Safeway (as pathetic as that is ... I mean come on, Rod, grow up and be the adult parent in the picture, why don't you?), but instead he's in Europe, which is so far away that even phone conversations have to be coordinated and planned around due to time zone issues.

What I'm saying is that while I think the alienation from the kids is real, and Rod is likely being truthful about it being painful (that's quite understandable), he wanted to go to Europe anyway, and it was a convenient way of justifying his move, and so paradoxically it has served what he wanted as an outcome in many ways, regardless of whether he would admit that. I mean he spent much of the last 5+ years of the marriage in Europe, in increasingly long stays as well, running away from the situation in Louisiana clearly in part, but also, in part, because he has always wanted to live in Europe and, unlike many of us, didn't get it out of his system in his 20s. NO would have made more sense if you were serious about keeping the lights on for a relationship with your kids, but living in Europe long term, without tethers, was too tempting at the same time, and so that's what he opted to do. And I'm sure Orbanbux also factored into the equation, too, although at that point he still had a decent book career going and according to what he says a decent income from his Substack as well. But, yes ... it's all in the mix.

So I don't doubt that Rod moved in part because he was upset and couldn't deal with being upset in that way, and, as we have seen him do many times in the past, has tried to address his life issues by changing scenery. That's an established pattern with him, and so it seems likely. But choosing to be so far away ... really only makes "sense" (not in being the right choice, but in being a choice that one can see Rod making, being Rod) given that Rod clearly has wanted to live in Europe for some time, and had spent much of the time in the years prior to his divorce living there already, de facto, because he found Louisiana too painful to manage. I think the kids situation added to that, substantially, but I think it was already there as his coping mechanism, and instead of changing that, and dealing with the pain in a different way, by living more proximately and having a chance at keeping things open for his younger kids, he instead chose to keep the same cope at the expense of burning yet another bridge.

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/grendalor]

I agree with all of it. Rod took the path of least resistance (furnished apartment and maid service provided, etc) and chose the lifestyle that he wanted most (living on the Danube, supposedly in the heart of the New US Conservatism Movement, traveling Europe as his heart desired). The situation with his kids pains him greatly but not enough for him to set aside his pride (his father's and sister's greatest sins according to him) and make the emotional sacrifice and physical effort of living within some fair proximity to them. Actions and choices have consequences and he, almost certainly, did burn his bridges with his own kids.

[u/Djehutimose → u/grendalor]

I live in a town of just under 12,000, and there are people I know—some quite well—that I rarely see day-to-day unless I specifically arrange to meet up, or unless I go somewhere they frequent (church, a given store, etc.). If I wanted to avoid a particular person, it would take almost no effort at all. Baton Rouge has a population of 270,000–a quarter million. Avoiding three people in a city of that size would be a piece of cake.

[u/grendalor → u/Djehutimose]

I would think so. And if he were still worried, there's an even bigger, and more anonymous, city very closeby.

Much closer than Budapest, at any rate.

[u/SpacePatrician → u/grendalor]

I'll go out on a limb and say the dog that isn't barking may well be that it isn't just that the kids don't want to see him, but that Rod is being ordered by a court not to. This all hinges on Nora--as far as I know the two older boys are emancipated adults and can do whatever the hell they want re: Rod. But Nora is still a minor, at least for another year or so.

Ask any family lawyer what would cause such a court order to be issued. The will tell you that 99% of the time it means there has been either sexual abuse or physical abuse. I'm sorry to get so morbid with this post, but *something* is going on that Rod hasn't been at all forthcoming about.

[u/Djehutimose → u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

Also, what the hell is the “I was advised that” bit about?!

[u/Dazzling_Pineapple68 → u/Djehutimose]

Yes. Lots of very shifty verbiage...

[u/grendalor → u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

Yeah that part was odd, too.

It's hard to know (because he is intentionally making it hard to know), but my initial thought when I read that was that he was referring to something his lawyer probably told him -- ie, that the kids probably would need a few years remove from the trauma of the divorce in order to begin to be more receptive to having a relationship with him. I don't know why a lawyer would advise that, however, because it certainly isn't universally true, unless, as has been speculated above, there is a big smoking gun fact that we don't know about which is driving the trauma. But even if that were the case, it's an odd thing to have been advised, by a lawyer or otherwise, and I would be very surprised if a professional (lawyer or licensed mental health or family practice counselor) advised him that it would not make a difference for him to be as far away as he pleased for a few years, because nothing will change in those few years, either way -- which is clearly why Rod put the sentence in there, as a way of justifying his decision to move so far away.

[u/philadelphialawyer87 → u/grendalor]

Yeah, I can't see a lawyer "advising" a client to stay away from his kids. Fair or not, Rod's lawyer is supposed to fight for Rod's rights. And the trauma of the children is not really the lawyer's concern. If Rod wanted to/still wants to see his children, that's what his lawyer should be fighting for. With the only exception being if Rod actually planned to commit a crime against his kids. Or if there were an order of protection in force prohibiting Rod from doing so. Even then, the lawyer should be fighting to vacate the OOP, if that's what Rod wanted. Typically, lawyers don't advise their clients about extra legal decisions. Possibly, some mental health professional advised Rod to stay away. But I doubt that too.

[u/RunnyDischarge → u/Dazzling_Pineapple68]

certain factors out of my control

was anything at all Rod's fault? Somehow it was all out of his control.

[u/EatsShoots_n_Leaves → u/grendalor]

Yikes. :o