Guilt has a purpose I suppose. It helps our psyche maintain homeostasis. It helps us walk through life making sure that we are treating others as we would ourselves.Guilt, when not in check can run rampant through your life and you give away your power trying to make everyone else feel safe or "better" about what you have chosen to do. You also allow your mind to run rampant and imagine even more things to feel guilty about just so you feel appropriately laddened with baggage. You find yourself apologizing about everything from your reevaluation of yourself (whatever that turns out to be) to world hunger.
When I came out as a Lesbian, realistically I knew the huge upheaval that was coming. Was I sorry? Was I guilty for turning every one's life upside down? Yep. I felt guilty for not just keeping it a secret and living the rest of my life as a upper middle class housewife and forget about who I really was. I had so many commitments to and expectations from my children. To and from my husband, to and from everyone around me. Just the words "I'm Gay" sent the whirlwind that was my life into a sudden desolate wasteland with everyone standing there circled around me looking confused and betrayed and angry.
Then my husband panicked. He began acting as if I were somehow going to just disappear with my children off to, I don't know really. Some secret spot in the world where gay people abduct their children? He began to treat me as if I had less integrity as a parent or a spouse. As if being gay and moral cannot coexist in the same body. That it suddenly negates the 10 years he had lived with me and knew me and my actions toward others.
So in walks Nina the Overcompensator. I continually tried to reassure him that he was not going to lose his little girls. I bent over backward, to having have dinner with us at night before he would take them home to all of us going to movies on the weekends they stayed with me. He would call lonely and in an empty house and my heart hurt like hell for him. My fault, his loneliness. Nina the Over Compensator also walked into the lawyers office when the divorce began. I wanted to continue to prove that I was not a monster that I let my desire for his comfort over ride the rights I was giving away. Hoping somehow this grand gesture would be taken as such and never used against me.
I find myself in that very place now. My guilt has turned to anger. And desperation. The same desperation which I was so careful to tend to and ease for my grieving exhusband so long ago. He has a new wife now. He just doesn't need the inconvenience of the kids real mother. 48 hours every two weeks should be sufficient for us all to be together. He wants, he hopes that I just slip under the surface so he can get on with his shiny new life, with all the privileges and finances afforded those who live in that alternate universe which I suffered so.
Moral? Fight like hell to keep 50/50 joint custody of your children from the very begining. Go ahead and feel guilty for the life disruption. Drop the guilt at the door when you start wanting to prove to people you are still moral, fair, and still have the best interests of the children even though you are gay. Its ridiculous we should have to prove those things in the first place.
I no longer believe people play fair. I no longer believe that promises are worth anything unless they are on paper signed by a judge. Even then, as we speak, he holds my children against the court visitation rules. So let me be your cautionary tale. Did you just come out? Get over it, FAST! Start protecting yourself from every direction you can with a lawyer who knows what they are doing. Don't expect anyone to play fair. Chances are, they won't.