This has a lot to do with it. I had a strange case of this where it was actually my mom that moved out, not my dad. She never abandoned us or anything, we saw her regularly, but first she moved across town, then about a half hour away, then about three hours away.
I wouldn’t say that I ever revered her in the way that is described in the OP but the way I think of my parents during that era is definitely different. I think of my dad as the hardworking domestic guy who cooked dinner and did the laundry. I think of my mom as the one that let me skip school to spend time with her and took me to the movies. Is it any wonder that I would come to the conclusion that my mom was the “fun” parent? My dad always did fun stuff with me but 90% of the time it was normal parent stuff. That figure was the exact opposite with my mom because she mostly wasn’t around for the boring stuff.
That was kind of how my 8-12 year old brain saw things, anyway.
Holy shit Maastricht…you know my step’s biodad? That’s pretty much him. Except he works for under the table cash (if he gets reported income the state “steals” a bit of it and funnels it to his ex) at a tattoo/piercing place from time to time. By all accounts he used to be a hell of a boxer, but he found the sucker punch at a bar much more gratifying than a ring match. A win is a win, no matter how you get it so why risk getting hurt? Like Manda Jo said, there is a lot of that in his son.
All I can add is that it took me a long time to work this stuff through. In my case I didn’t have any good substitutes, that didn’t help much. Your presence will likely help him sort it out a little more easily.
This is what I came in to say. I worked at a group home for troubled teens and I felt very sorry for responsible custodial or adopted parents. No matter the level of neglect and abuse, the natural parents were practically deified by nearly all my kids. The need for approval from the parent who “rejected” them, the “perfect” fantasy life an angsty teen imagines would be possible with the absentee parent, the cool factor of an adult who overshares and gives the kid his first sip of beer; a lot of conditions seem to contribute to the hero status that kids unfairly award absentee parents. The responsible parent who assigns chores and keeps the alcohol locked up just can’t compete with the cool peer/parent.
Always wondered if it sets the same kids up as adults to pine away for the attention of disinterested partners, too.
All of Troppus’ and Maastricht’s posts are good. I just wanted to emphasize the above.
Us adults have a lot of experience with the world. It’s going to take a kid a long time to figure out that one of his parents is a deadbeat. Heck, it will take a long time to even figure out what a deadbeat is. Kids don’t know about mortgage payments or health insurance and, as far as I can tell, they think money grows on trees.
When one parent (the deadbeat) is feeding a child his story of woe and the other parent is saying nothing, what’s a kid to believe? Once the kid finally figures it out, it still seems natural for him to defend his parent against ‘outsiders’, just like I would defend my family members.
He was in his mid teens when, I think, my step-son figured out that his dad’s stories weren’t always true and that he wasn’t the “most interesting man in the world.” Even so, he couldn’t just flip a switch from ‘love and adore’ to ‘hate’, and Who would want that anyway? Not me. He had to figure out how to feel about the fact that his dad was actually kind of a loser. I did not envy him that journey and couldn’t help him with it.