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When you have a major change in the home, you have to deal with the emotions of the situation. Dealing with the tears, not only your own but those of your children, can be a very difficult thing. You need to look at it almost as if you were dealing with a death. Because you really are experiencing the death of your relationship with your mate. You have to face the fact that there is a great loss for you as well as your children. You are losing your partner for whatever reason and you reasonably need to grieve that loss.

You have to make time when the children aren't around so you can go through that process without affecting them. You have to be strong enough to help them through this too. The only way you can do that is to give yourself a break from being the "rock" once in a while. Take time when they are with their friends or at their grandparents, to sit down and let yourself cry. In your heart you know that you will make it through this and things will get better but you have to let go of the past first. Crying helps you do that. This is not to say that in your daily life you won't have the occasional outbreak of tears, but it will give you some outlet and release to help manage your emotions.

Your children's tears are harder to bear even than your own. You never want to see your children hurting. They need you to assure them that both their parents love them. You have to show them every minute of every day that you love them and want to see them happy. Unfortunately you have to let them go through the grieving process also. They have experienced the loss of one of their parents, albeit not completely but they don't have them there all the time like they did before. Naturally, they will want to spend as much time as you will allow them with their other parent. You need to allow that to happen as much as you reasonably can. If you have to deal with the issue like I do of the other parent not wanting to be there, you will have to improvise. I include my brothers and other good male role models in my two daughters lives as much as I can. This way if the day comes that I will have a companion, they will know what a good, loving "man" will be like and they will not feel like they have missed anything.

Ultimately, you want to be there with open arms when your children need a shoulder to cry on. Let them know that things will be all right, if not right now then very soon. Tell them that you understand what they are going through. Be open to let them express their feelings to you and help them come to peace with the situation. Try not to make the other parent into the bad guy. They are very possibly hurting too, you just don't know about it personally. And that just makes you seem to be bitter and calus. You have to remember that your children love you both and when one is absent, they tend to be "Superman", at least to small children. If you can't find a way to communicate constructively about the other parent, try not to bring them up. If you can't avoid the topic, keep it factual.

Take it one day at a time and soon you will be able to replace the tears with laughter again. Life has a funny way of creeping up on you when you least expect it.

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