None of the above

After all that cogitation, my counselor and I didn't discuss any of the things I thought we would.  She asked how my month had gone.  I told her that I'd been writing as if in a journal every day this month (or almost).  I mentioned that I had thought about some of the issues related to Debbie, but that I had also come to the conclusion that yes, right now is not the time for me to be involved with someone romantically.  Then I started talking about the boys, and about how Son 1 is in the last stages of choosing a college to attend ... and we spent the bulk of the session talking about my relationship with them.

She asked if the boys know I love them and am there for them.  I said I'm sure they know I love them and I hope they know I'm there for them ... but there are certain questions I would never expect them to ask.  Relationship questions, for example.  Really? she asked.  Why not?  The sarcastic answer would be "Because obviously you've done such a piss-poor job in your relationship with Wife!"  But what I said was that I just kind of assumed they wouldn't want to ask those questions because I would never have wanted to ask my own father ... and that's largely because he pries so pruriently and incessantly that I had to build a wall of privacy to have any space of my own at all.

Before we finished, my counselor suggested one thing.  She said, You can always admit to your boys that you are still learning the job of father; and so you can always ask them, "Twenty years from now when you are looking back at today, is there anything you are going to wish I had done that I'm not doing? Or that you're going to wish I hadn't done, that I am doing?"  She added, You can even go so far as to say that there are a lot of questions you don't ask because you've been hypersensitized by your own Dad, but it doesn't mean you aren't interested or don't care.  And of course you don't have to say any of this if you don't want to.  But just remember that you can ... if you want ... and sometimes you learn things that way.

Good to know.