Competitiveness arises when you have a need to “prove” that the divorce wasn’t your
fault, that she was the one really to blame for the failure of the marriage. So you try
to show — to her, to the children, to your friends, and most of all to yourself — that you’re a better person and a better parent than she is. You try to be both a better father and a better mother than your ex-wife. You’re always comparing yourself to her, using her as a sort of measuring rod for yourself as you play your game of one-upmanship.
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To put it bluntly, being a parent showed me my failings. Or rather, being a single parent showed me. I never would have learned this lesson if my wife and I had stayed together and gone on as we were. It was only in becoming a single parent that I saw how much I had to learn and was kicked into trying to improve myself. It was painful. And frightening.
