The Expendables – This Is Not a Movie Review

Like much of the UK, I too have been gripped by the BBC drama series Dr Foster. That dinner scene…pure television gold! The overtly voyeuristic invitation into the collapse of a pretty dysfunctional marriage sees the writers and the cast shove the ripple effect of marital breakdown so deeply down the throats of their audience. No other series which I have ever watched so blatantly, and with such escalating vulgarity, screams the collateral damage of the children affected by parents who will violently stop at nothing to strip one another of their dignity, worth, and ultimately any chance of recovering financially, and in many cases, emotionally.

Recent experiences have taught me that we as individuals are expendable. We are expendable in our jobs and the people we work for, expendable in romantic relationships and even expendable in friendships. Sometimes the world has a pretty sobering way of telling you that you just don’t matter. The ripple effect of decisions made by others are often overlooked or blatantly ignored so that the comfort of their echo chamber provides an invisible barrier which allows them to just “not go there”. It’s the ostrich burying its head in the sand. It is you and I making a decision but not wanting to face the reality of the damage caused to those we no longer hold any regard for…or those we love most in this world.

No other instance is so grossly untoward as that of children caught in the crossfire of those so blinded by their own agenda, their own deceit, their detest and their anger. In the series, the son is caught in the crossfire of his parent’s marital demise, so much so that he slowly wilts from the violent reverberations of the by-product of two, clearly, dysfunctional parents. All too often there is a winner and a loser; children become pawns in a game of chess where the king seldom wins and the paradox of the queen shouting “check mate!” deafens the young ears in her wake.  Watching Dr Foster highlighted the fact that the eventual outcome in martial failure is ultimately the same, but there are numerous roads one can travel to get there.  I’m not siding with either character, but a post I recently read summed it up perfectly. It reads: “I’m not against moms or dads. I’m against a**holes who use their children to hurt the other parent.”

This past week brought with it the most difficult experience I have had as a father to date. Holding my 7-year-old daughter in my arms as she sobbed, begging me for us to be a family again. I cried with her. I reassured her that all will be ok, and in her wisdom, she reassured me.  There we were, crying at the fact that our little family was no more…and hasn’t been for some time. Part of the solution was to call her mother, there and then, and over a speaker phone, the two adults reassured the thing they loved most in this world that she was loved and that neither her mom nor her dad will ever leave her just because the union of her parents did not work out. It was our choice to bring her into this world (with God’s grace and mercy) and our decision to separate; she did not ask for this, and that, in no uncertain terms, means that neither mother nor father should ever be expendable. I appreciate that not all relationship breakdowns can be amicable and harmonious; however I do believe that placing one’s children at the centre of one’s focus may realign what is most important when considering the possible collateral damage and the effect of those affecting ripples.