Good people don’t try to ruin lives. Good people don’t accuse the innocent of events that never took place at all.
This post is me, finally, reclaiming all these months of feeling helpless, hopeless, and powerless. I have chosen to vent my anger, to release what I’ve held in, not only because people need to know the truth (as important as that is), but also to get this out of my system for my own health. The kind of situation this is … it’s not going to end anytime soon. I have a right to my voice. If my ex-wife gets to lie in open court with impunity, if she gets to smear me as a big scary abuser to everyone around her with impunity, then at the very least I should be able to voice what I know and what I’ve experienced.
There seems to be an underlying belief regarding men in our culture now; a belief that men shouldn’t be parents. It stems from male hatred, of course. Systemic misandry. As I’ve said in the past on this blog, society always allows bigotry, it’s only the targets of bigotry that changes with the times.
I was recently divorced. The night my then-wife left me, she moved in with her parents again (which I’ll be eluding to many times here). Through the grapevine I’ve been hearing things my ex has been saying. I’ve learned of many of the people she has said these things to, and I know how they have reacted. Their reactions have all reflected my previous paragraph. Everyone who hears the lies my ex has been spouting wants to believe them, which is why none have questioned them, despite my completely lacking any history of mistreatment of others. It’s so easy, and so permitted, and often even encouraged, for people to hate men. The only time it is acceptable to be male is if you have more feminine traits than masculine. “You say he was abusive? You say he threatened you? You say he [insert any extreme accusation here]? Well, all these things MUST be true, because … he’s male!”
I now strongly, strongly discourage any and all men to ever get married, at least until our laws improve. The way the system is set up … you’d be lucky to keep your kid(s) if your ex-girlfriend/wife wants them all to herself. You’d be very lucky to have a fair outcome. I was lucky to have a reasonable judge. I was lucky to have a judge who had principles, and believed in fairness. I was also lucky to have a completely clean record. Whether male or female, I was very much expecting our judge to have at least some misandrist feelings. But men, do not count on luck. The odds are very much against you. At the bottom of this article, I will post links showing that it is actually very common for women to lie about abuse in order to win custody, and my case was no different. Women do this because it works. And if one accusation doesn’t work, they’ll try several, until something sticks. They’ll file restraining orders without just cause, and they may even try to fabricate evidence. I was also lucky that my ex thought her lies would be good enough on their own – hell, I did too.
I listened to the audio of my divorce trial recently. I was shocked enough having been there at the trial, hearing things said about me that didn’t have so much as a modicum of truth. The few things that did have some truth were warped beyond recognition, having may as well been entirely fabricated like the others.
My divorce did not have to go to trial at all. It could have been resolved many months previously, with both parties choosing to remain civil, and fair. At the end of the trial, the judge said she didn’t buy a single thing my ex claimed (in a very watered-down, gentle way). She granted my ex the things that our state laws required her to grant my ex, but when it came to the things our judge had the authority to do, she gave the right outcome. A fair outcome. I get to see my daughter half the week. My ex tried to reduce my already-scarce parenting days, but instead, it was her days that got reduced.
Here are some of the things our judge said about me when she was giving her judgment:
She said she found me to be “a very credible witness.”
She said I “acknowledged when [I] made mistakes as a parent.”
She said it was “very credible to call [my ex] for guidance” when I honestly didn’t know something about infant care.
Now, contrast these things with what she said about my ex:
She (in my paraphrase) called my ex a liar, regarding how my ex said she is concerned for her own safety and our daughter’s safety, even though my ex took absolutely no steps to keep either of them ‘a safe distance’ from me such as a restraining order, and she also never tried to interfere in my parenting time on my days. My ex, for a short time after leaving me, came into the apartment I moved into, either to talk, or to be there with our daughter during my parenting time … without any reluctance, without any safety measures. She knew it would have been unnecessary. Our judge said, “There were allusions to PTSD and abuse without any specifics,” contradicting her and her lawyer’s own SIGNED DOCUMENT stating there was never any abuse, and that for this accusation to suddenly appear, that made it “not seem credible.” Gentle language as always from our judge, but in my own words she was saying, “Abuse and PTSD? Bullshit!”
Notice my ex will face no legal repercussions for signing a document saying there was no abuse but then declaring on the stand that there was. Yet another reason women lie about abuse to win custody cases: They know getting caught in the lie won’t have any legal consequences. So, why not, right?
Twice, yes twice, our judge expressed disgust at something particular my ex said. I didn’t transcribe my ex’s exact words, but in essence, her statement was, “It doesn’t matter if our daughter sees her father every other weekend. I grew up only seeing my dad every other weekend, and it didn’t affect me at all. The time doesn’t matter, it’s the quality of the time together that matters.”
(First of all, for her to say it didn’t affect her is a heaping pile of denial, but more on that later.)
Twice our judge expressed disgust with that statement. She said, “I think the statement … was not a credible assessment of the situation, and not one that I thought made a lot of sense.” Later, she reiterated: “I was really concerned to hear the testimony that it doesn’t matter [how much time the father gets].”
That statement my ex made utterly fucking disgusted me, merely by how hypocritical it was. She wouldn’t even come close to saying that if she knew her time with our daughter was at risk of getting reduced to every other weekend, like she wanted for me. She wouldn’t even dream of saying that. But because she was so confident in total victory, she said freely and shamelessly, “It doesn’t matter how much time he gets!” ….I just cannot express how much that disgusts me.
I could detail and detail how the trial went. I could transcribe the entire trial. But instead, I’m going to talk about the fact there was a trial in the first place. There never was any abuse. My ex came into court with no evidence of any of her claims, because there isn’t any. She didn’t even bring in witnesses except her own mother, and even her mother didn’t make egregious claims against my character (that I can remember). Like so many other women like my ex, she knew she had no evidence and no credible witnesses, and therefore resorted to getting really emotional and insistent. There were no police records of abuse, because there never was any abuse. There was no surveillance footage of abuse, because there never was any abuse. We lived with her aunt and uncle at the time she left me, and for nearly a year before that. You know what her uncle said to me when he and I were talking one night, after he started to hear what my ex was saying about me? He rolled his eyes as he said, and I quote, “Michael, I know you’re not violent. If you were violent, I wouldn’t have let you live in my house, where my kids live.” And even if he’d never said that, that logic still remains. Not to mention, they would have come to court and given some kind of statement, or evidence, about some kind of abuse or erratic behavior on my part if there ever had been any.
That same uncle is also my boss. Yes, and he still is to this day. I’ve kept it that way on purpose for this specific reason. This is how far out of my way I have to go to prove my innocence. I’m 6’4, weigh 245 pounds, and I’m colored, so it’s not exactly difficult to believe I could be a threat, just from mere appearances. (My lawyer even warned me: “[Your ex] has no legitimate reason to do anything she’s doing, so she’s going to resort to, ‘Look at the scary colored man, judge!'” And he wasn’t wrong.) But anyway, for my job, not only do I work for my ex’s own family members, whom she sees regularly in her life, but I also have a live camera pointed at me every minute I’m working. So, let’s piece all of these things together…
- We lived with her aunt and uncle at the time she left me and we had lived there for the previous year.
- I work for said aunt and uncle, where they have hours upon hours of footage recording my every move.
- And no statement or evidence of physical or verbal abuse was provided by them for the trial. In fact, those two didn’t even show up to our trial. They didn’t show up, they didn’t give my ex any evidence ‘for good measure’ …. And I still work for them to this day.
These people aren’t stupid. If they saw or heard abuse taking place in their own house, they would have kicked me out, but they never did. (In fact, I later remembered they offered me to stay longer.) They would have done SOMETHING to keep me away from my child if I was a threat, or at the very least, would have tried to keep me away from their own kids. Did I mention I got an award for excellent customer service in 2018, tied for first-place with one other coworker? Did I mention I got another award in 2019 for being excellent at listening to instruction? These things don’t happen to someone who’s dangerous, or impulsive, or out of control. I’m a big guy; it’s not like I could easily hide it if I was the kind of person my ex has tried to paint me as.
What violent, erratic, impulsive person can hide their nature when living with relatives of their female spouse? People are naturally far more protective of women than men (goes back to why women lie so much about abuse and how they get away with lying so easily). Yet there was still never a single instance when her aunt or uncle needed to intervene in a violent situation, or call the police, or other. A person like that also doesn’t get awards from their job for being the opposite of violent, erratic, and impulsive.
When my ex’s bullshit was called out in court, and her parenting time got reduced instead of my own, she predictably chose not to give up. She went behind her own lawyer’s back to send a letter to our judge reiterating everything she already said in court. The consensus by all parties seems to be that this letter accomplished nothing apart from embarrassing my ex. She pretty much shot herself in both feet now. I doubt the state will ever take her seriously in the future because of all this. (But given my experience with human beings … who knows?) Point is, she desperately needs everyone to believe her lies, even though people are beginning to realize what a liar and manipulator she is.
It’s almost always impossible to prove a negative, but I damn near can prove this negative. I can prove that I was not an abusive husband or father. I am continuing to collect proof to this day, because I know this isn’t over. I haven’t let down my guard since the trial, because I strongly suspect my ex is just going to step up her game. Instead of just getting along, instead of allowing us both to co-parent in peace, I suspect she will only change her strategy. From my eyes, she doesn’t care what’s best for our daughter, it’s only about gaining as much as she can, regardless whose expense it’s at. Since my ex left me, I have recorded conversations and encounters she and I have had, and I am continuing to do so now. I will for the next many, many years. I record at least one video every day that my daughter is with me so that I can prove she is happy and healthy, and if I only record one video, it’s always at the end of my time with her. God only knows how long it’ll be before my ex starts making even more extreme accusations.
I’ve heard stories of mothers manipulating their child into telling a horrible false story about their father. I’ve even heard of mothers who put their child in harm’s way and then trying to pin that on the father. When you read the statistic that mothers, yes mothers, are 3x more likely to murder their children than fathers, it’s not very surprising. It’s almost as if (call me crazy) women are just as flawed, and selfish, and imperfect, and human, as men are. Society should really stop thinking of women as queens and perfect angels because it is far from deserved. Just one year ago, I wouldn’t have suspected my then-wife would be remotely capable of the things she’s already tried to do. But the more time passes, the lower her blows. At this point, I have zero expectations. I no longer expect her to be guided by any sort of conscience or standards. Some people just don’t have principles or morals. This is why I wouldn’t be surprised, and am preparing for, the absolute worst. Letting my guard down would be a mistake.
I. Did. Not. Deserve. This!
I do not deserve months upon months of terror over the high likelihood of losing my daughter (because I’m male). I do not deserve having a parasite sucking my financial resources, especially when I’m perfectly willing to split expenses that should be split, like doctor visits and even daycare.
I do not deserve being treated by people like our daughter’s pediatrician (the whole office, actually) like I’m a threat. I absolutely HATE being in their presence seeing fear in their eyes. Same goes with her family members, both the ones I do or don’t personally dislike as people. Same fear. My ex-wife has actually gone out of her way to program everyone’s mental state when they are in my presence… That’s beyond sick!
I have never been in prison. I have never even been arrested. I have never done drugs. I don’t even smoke pot or cigarettes. I very rarely drink. I don’t even party or have any tattoos. I have never been a violent person. I have never threatened violence upon anyone. I’ve never started fights. I very rarely even raise my voice. If I were to ever release the recordings of my encounters with my ex during all this, the one thing that’ll stand out most is the fact she has a hard time keeping her voice down, while I never so much as raise my voice.
So, again, to sit in court and hear someone I used to love say nearly every single thing they can to ruin my life … it’s absolutely sickening. If she lost our child, or got her parenting time reduced to every other weekend, it would devastate her, and she knows it, but she had no problem trying to inflict that upon someone else. Not just someone else, but a man she claimed to have loved, who never seriously wronged her. Was I a perfect spouse? Of course not. Nobody is. But I was good to her, no matter how difficult she was, no matter how selfish she behaved.
When my ex started this horse shit, the most I did was what any law-abiding, decent human being would do. I tried to reason with my ex, and when that went absolutely nowhere, I hired a lawyer. Apart from that, I pretty much just curled into a ball and waited for the nightmare to pass. Did it help that I got frustrated with her whenever she refused to be reasonable, when she responded to everything with, “Because I said so!” or, “Talk to my lawyer!” or didn’t even bother to respond at all? No. But I also have no regrets getting frustrated with her. It was a very human reaction to someone being immeasurably selfish and perfectly willing to destroy 2 lives.
Part of me believes she knew that kind of behavior is a sword that cuts twice in one swing. She gets to bark orders, refuse to be reasonable, etc., and if I dare to get frustrated or stand up for myself, she gets to point and say, “Look! See! He’s so abusive!” No matter what I do, it’s wrong. Again, I was lucky we had a judge who saw straight through all this shit.
Most mothers, good mothers, would kill (figuratively speaking) to have a baby daddy like me. A father who is utterly committed to his children, who doesn’t live on the street, who only keeps good company, who has no history of drug abuse, who doesn’t throw his money away on gambling or stupid hobbies, who devotes every possible minute he can to his children, who never has and never will harm his children, whose never gotten in trouble with the law, and is a big enough guy that his mere presence is enough to keep all the wrong types of people away from his child. Yes, I’ll say it: She got lucky. Instead of embracing how lucky she got, she instead tried to destroy me. She couldn’t resist the tempting prospect of free money every month, having our child all to herself, freeloading off her family, and trying out the next guy she wanted to try out. Worst of all, she tried to destroy her daughter’s father. Forget about the intent to ruin me as just a person … it’s unforgivable that my ex doesn’t care of the damage it would do to deprive her child of a loving father. She, of all people, should understand full well the importance of growing up with a good father.
During our trial, I did not draw my fangs. I consciously chose not to paint my ex in the worst possible light. Why? Because all I wanted was a fair outcome. I could have simply spoken my mind – all of it. I wouldn’t need to tell a single lie to make her sound like a horrible person. She did that on her own anyway, as the judge verbalized. I could have gone full-force against my ex’s stepfather, who I strongly believe is the REAL abuser in my ex’s life. Her daddy issues are so severe that she still won’t admit to herself what kind of person he really is. During the trial, I debated in my mind whether or not I should paint him as the despicable person I think he is, because I’m really not comfortable with my daughter living with him. But since I don’t know for sure exactly how extensive the damage he did to my ex was, I chose not to act as if I do. I just wasn’t there all those years. But oh did I want to say everything I’ve kept inside – every single thing I want to say about him. I still refrained. I refrained because I wasn’t there to make war. I have no love for conflict. I am NOT someone who needs to win at all costs. But my fangs will certainly come out if I learn that anyone in that dysfunctional family has abused my daughter in any way.
Yes, I’ll say it: I am a good person. I don’t care if that sounds arrogant. This entire situation proves it, I think.
Despite my being forced to deal with someone who wants to ruin my life simply to feed her greed … I still never did anything impulsive or extreme. Whenever she demanded something unreasonable, I wanted to make demands in return. I even called our county sheriff’s office twice, asking them if my ex could do anything if I kept our daughter for half the week against my ex’s wishes, and they said she could not, since no judge had ordered anything (at the time). Even after knowing I was in the clear to do what I wanted, I still didn’t. On our daughter’s first birthday, I even told my ex that I planned, yes planned, to keep her the entire day, all the way to her bedtime, and not let my ex have any time with her that day, and I still didn’t. It would have been the LEAST my ex deserved for all her shit. I could have been one of those parents who runs away with their child. Sure it would have been foolish in the long term, but that temptation was also there, because it was driving me insane that I felt so completely powerless in this entire situation.
After all the times my ex made unfair or ridiculous demands, I did not do the same. After all the times my ex made egregious lies about me, I did not do the same. After all the times she refused to talk things through and instead said, “Because I said so!”, I still did not do the same. After all the times my ex yelled (in proximity to our daughter), I did not do the same. I never raised my voice, I never raised a fist, and the police were never summoned for any reason because I never once took things to the extreme. I have no shame or hesitation to say I was, and I am, the better person in this entire situation. People who lie, especially making false claims of abuse, threats, and stalking, only do so out of desperation to win because they know they can’t take everything if they play fair. Good people don’t try to take as much as they can in the first place.
Not only did my ex try to take our daughter from me for the most part, not only did she try to steal our daughter’s childhood from me while wanting me to pay her to do so … but she also apparently wanted me to pay her for all the months leading up to the trial. And it gets even better: She quickly filed her taxes early in 2019 claiming to have been our daughter’s primary caregiver, just to get that sweet, sweet tax return of over a thousand dollars, despite the fact my ex was nearly incapacitated for much of 2018. She was pregnant with a huge bump, and she could hardly work and earn money, and then she gave birth, and then had to use what little energy she had to care for a newborn while I was at work. According to the law, since I was the one ACTUALLY providing for our daughter (paying bills, buying literally everything we had that wasn’t gifted, etc.), I was the one who earned ‘caretaker’ for taxes. But my ex just had to have that too. That doesn’t quite piss me off nearly as much as the fact she actually claimed I didn’t do anything to help out after our daughter was born.
Take, take, take. Lies, lies, lies. What the hell did I ever possibly see in this person??
Lies were invented to give people what the truth cannot give them. The truth, in this situation, couldn’t give my ex anything she selfishly desired.
Fathers who lose their children, or meet some variant of that fate, are 10x more likely to commit suicide. Whenever I think about that statistic, I just think of how my ex wouldn’t give a damn if that was my fate. I’m certain she’d see that as the ultimate victory. And it just disgusts me even more. Anybody who is willing to ruin someone’s life when they haven’t done anything seriously wrong … they have no limits to how far they will go, and they are not mentally capable of regret or shame.
If I was absent for 86% of my daughter’s childhood, like my ex wanted, and on top of that I also was forced to pay her to do it… Or worse, if the state believed all of my ex’s lies, and decided to lock me up or something for all these horrible things, where I could no longer see my daughter at all … If like many fathers, I just couldn’t take it anymore and offed myself, do you think my ex would have spent one minute feeling ashamed of herself? Would she have had the decency to, eventually, tell our daughter the truth of why I was no longer alive? I think we all know the answer to that.
To anyone and everyone who wants to think I am the one lying here … go listen to our court audio. It’s public record, so have at it. Hear it for yourself. Hear my ex take literally every opportunity when she spoke to also speak ill of my character. (Calumny at its finest. No nuance, no uncertainty, no hesitation, just outright attacks on my character nonstop the entire time. Despicable behavior EVEN IF she were telling the truth. Good people at least attempt to give a person some benefit of the doubt when they haven’t been seriously wronged.) Then listen to what I said. No aggression in my words, or even my tone. Seriously, court was my opportunity to have my own victory. Court was my opportunity to say everything I wanted to say, to the state, about the kind of person my ex is and/or the kind of person her stepfather is, and/or the kind of people her entire stepfamily is. Court was my opportunity to strike. Court was my chance to destroy her, with lies or the truth. Logic told me that I HAD to fight just as dirty, or else I’d lose my daughter. And I still resisted all of it. You’d have to do some ridiculous mental gymnastics to circumvent what’s obvious here, just to keep telling yourself that I’m the immoral one in this situation.
Listen to the public record audio. Listen to the encounters I recorded with my ex. Watch any footage there is. Even go as far as to ask my ex-girlfriends how abusive I was, and they would laugh at these accusations. Our text messages were right in front of the judge during the entire trial, and she was reading them the whole time, not to mention the fact WE (my lawyer and I) were the ones who brought in all the text exchanges as evidence, not my ex. Pull up any text, and all you’d see is me attempting to be diplomatic, or being frustrated that she wasn’t. So, to all the people who want to see me in a bad light, there’s ample proof you are ignorant and misled by someone who has no legitimacy and thus has resorted to every lie she can think of. She didn’t leave me because she had to – not even close. She left me because she wanted to leave me, to have free money, to have our child all to herself, and to be with a certain someone else, but didn’t want to look bad to everyone else in the process.
My daughter loves me. I can see it in her eyes whenever she is with me. I’ve recorded a lot of footage of that as well. I know she feels safe with me, and values my presence. She always wants to be held, she always wants me close when she falls asleep, she always wants to goof around with me, she always wants to sit on my lap whenever we’re watching a cartoon.
I desperately want to know how all mothers like my ex … like my own mother … I really want to know how the hell they can live with themselves. (Some experts claim 1/10th of the population are sociopaths…)
What does a good mother look like? A good mother wants what is best for her kids above her own selfish interests. It should be her selfish interest to want what is best for her kids.
A good mother, IF the father of her kids wants to abandon them, would express despair over the situation. She would say something like, “Why doesn’t he care? Our kids need him, and all he does is avoid them… How can I change his mind?” (If that’s the situation, of course.)
A good mother, if the father wants a relationship with his kids but refuses to spend any money on them for food, or diapers, or you-name-it … a good mother would plead with him and say, “Please help me with the things they need. We could split expenses like clothes and food if you want? Or we could try a different plan?” (Again, if that’s the situation.)
I’m not talking about specifics here, I’m talking about a good mother’s general attitude toward these kinds of situations. General attitude and behavior. A good mother tries to keep the peace, to work together, and to make the father a better father if he’s actually careless. A good mother always leaves that door open. A good mother never gives up trying to do what’s right. A good, caring mother who truly wants what is best for her child wants her children to have a complete family, to have both parents to look up to, to live in a healthy and stable household, etc. What has my ex done? She started talking about leaving me after we had an insignificant argument about the fact her relatives have no regard for our privacy… Yes, that’s what started it all. That’s what started this entire divorce process.
I had thoughts that our marriage wouldn’t work long before my ex-wife left me. But I actively chose not to act on them. I made vows FOR LIFE. Marriage is not a trial period. You find a way to make it work, damn it. Even after I was starting to see my wife as someone who never truly grew up, from the fact she bought coloring books, collected a massive amount of funko pop figures, and her total inability to admit fault, I still chose to find a way to make it work. Leaving her wasn’t an option. My point is, this entire situation was her choice, not mine. It was never going to be mine. I was willing to do whatever it took, for the sake of my vows, and especially for our daughter.
Shortly after we got married, she started working at a new place, and at that place, she met a guy. A guy she couldn’t help but mention once every other month or so. “He showed me this song,” and, “We talked about this movie,” were the types of things I heard every so often, every other month or so, ever since we got married… All from this one guy. Since we got married. I also found this guy in her search history. I am convinced (though I admit this could be inaccurate) that the primary reason my ex-wife chose to divorce me was to be with him, or to at least make there be a chance to be with him.
But upon realizing her family would never accept that reason, she decided to provoke me, messaging this other guy she’d been obsessed with for nearly two years (even after they stopped working together), and messaging him in front of me, knowing it would upset me, and openly, outright stating she didn’t care how it made me feel. And then after all this, proceed for months to paint me as every horrible thing she can think of. Whatever she could to cover up her true intentions. She ditched her first boyfriend (of 4 years, whom she sneaked behind her family’s disapproving back to be with, and lived with). She ditched him like it was nothing, starting her relationship with me, sex and all, less than one week after leaving him. Back then, we even had a discussion about how cold I found that. (Of course I admit I wasn’t a saint in that situation, either. I was newly in love.) So, am I surprised to learn this guy she met after we got married is now more actively in her life? Not one bit. I’m not surprised one bit. She blocked me on Facebook to conceal his presence in her life now (and I think a couple other reasons, too).
There’s something I really, really want whoever reads this to keep in mind, and it regards my ex-wife’s aforementioned first boyfriend. The entire reason I was able to meet her, fall in love with her, marry her, and then regret marrying her, was because she couldn’t stand her family anymore. She moved approximately 25 miles away from home to live with her first boyfriend because she desperately didn’t want to live with her relatives any longer. When we first got together, she could hardly stop talking about all the things wrong with her stepdad. I’m not bringing this up to further emphasize the kind of people she was raised by, as important as that is. No, I’m bringing this up because she went from desperately wanting to get away from her relatives (seeing them only when dogsitting), to wanting to live with them again, now with a child of her own, and still lives with them to this day. Suddenly, oh so very suddenly, she was okay with living with them again. Interesting.
When was there a TRUE attempt to make things better? To improve herself or our marriage? Never, at any point in time. Not then, not now. Nothing but war and a desperate thirst for victory. Never a true attempt to keep our family together, never a single attempt to reason with me, nothing. We only started going to marriage counseling after her family told her to try that first before quitting. She didn’t even think of marriage counseling first. And when we were at counseling, she insisted (and I mean insisted) that we only talk about things that happened long ago that we already resolved. Intentional sabotage, just to give the illusion counseling couldn’t work.
From an insignificant argument, to provoking me, to choosing divorce. And upon choosing divorce, immediately (I emphasize: immediately) assumed she deserved and would have sole custody, and pushed for me to see our daughter only 2 of every 14 days, and of course, pushing for that free money every month. I can actually prove this. She wanted and pushed for these things from. the. very. beginning. Not once did she ever even need to plead with me to stay around, or be willing to do my part to support our daughter. The entire reason our case was … a case … was because I had to fight, fight, fight to remain in my daughter’s life. Something most mothers would kill (figuratively speaking) for their baby daddy to do, I fervently always wanted to do, and she fought AGAINST that. She has actually convinced herself that supporting our daughter, and giving her free money, are the exact same thing. She cares nothing for more reasonable ways to co-parent, like splitting necessary expenses, or each of us doing our own financial part while our daughter is with one of us … No, she wants free money and free money is literally all she can understand. No co-parenting, just being a parasite on me, and using the law to do it.
Good mothers … no, I’m going to start saying true mothers… True mothers have a trait that they can’t fake. That trait is sacrifice. True mothers will drop their ego, drop their grudges (if they have any), drop their selfish interests, and drop anything else they need to, IF they truly want what is best for their children. That’s what I mean by the examples I gave a few paragraphs ago. They will plead for their kids’ father not to leave, if he wants to. They will initiate discussions on how to make things work out, instead of only trying something when outsiders tell them to. These are behaviors and actions that cannot be faked, which is why my ex, despite being nothing but an actor for over a year now, cannot do these things. In my strongly, strongly-held opinion (and I believe this as if it’s objective fact), she’s not a true mother at all. Her love for our daughter is a possessive love, not a motherly love. The way guys love their Xboxes or new car. She sees our daughter as a ticket to everything a girl could want: free attention, free housing, free food, and best of all, a Get-Out-of-Responsibility-Free card. She’s just a self-absorbed little girl, in the body of a mid-20s woman, who saw an opportunity after she got pregnant, and acted on that opportunity.
Does she work a job? I don’t know, but probably. Does she do chores around the house? I also don’t know, but probably. She’ll do these things, and so much more, just to keep up the act, for as long as it takes. But if the moment ever came when she knew she didn’t need this act anymore, you’d see the act drop immediately.
She doesn’t strive to be a good person, she only strives to not appear bad. Image above integrity.
My ex wouldn’t have turned out this way, or at least to this severity, if she herself had been properly raised. But that subject is for another time.
The AUDACITY to lie in court about my willingness and devotion as a father. It’s truly staggering and utterly enraging. For all the times, when we were together, that I tried to comfort our daughter when she cried, and she told me to stop and hand her over. For all the times, when we were together, that I asked if there’s anything our daughter needs that we didn’t already have, and her response was no (because her family over-provided us with baby supplies), but she STILL lies directly to me and to the court, saying that I was never willing to provide anything. Not once did our daughter need anything and I refused to provide it. Not fucking once. I frequently asked, and I was always willing. Sometimes, I’d come home and find something for our daughter that was completely new, and on at least once instance my response was, “You said she didn’t need anything…” I cannot adequately describe how much it pisses me off that my ex even thought about spreading these kinds of despicable falsehoods.
Like I said, anything it takes to win.
I’m more and more convinced by the day my ex was planning this entire situation long before she actually left me.
She always has another excuse. Never any shame, never any sense of wrongdoing. No matter how egregious the action, she will still see herself as a flawless angel, and do everything she can to make the people around her see her as such, too, no matter how many lies she has to tell. Nothing is ever her fault. In her eyes, she’s a perfect person, a perfect mother, and was a perfect wife. THAT ALONE makes me fearful – no, terrified – of the fact she is my daughter’s other parent. A complete lack of humility and empathy and principles is extremely dangerous, in my eyes, especially when it’s your job to raise another human being. Is she going to continue to try to make our daughter love her more than me? I have no doubt. Is she going to prioritize how much our daughter adores her above properly teaching her anything? I have no doubt. Lately, she’s been teaching our daughter these stupid, stupid hand gestures that wannabe rock stars make. She never did anything remotely like that when we were together; she didn’t even listen to rock music. Yet, lately she dyed her hair black, started only wearing black clothing, and is teaching our daughter these ridiculous hand gestures. Why is that? Can’t say for fact, but I have no doubt in my mind it’s because of this new guy she’s wanted to be with since she and I got married. He looks like a wannabe rock star, and his appearance is exactly as I described. Is she trying to make our daughter also like him more than me, and even trying to shape her personality to more match his? I wouldn’t be surprised. Can’t say for certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Our judge’s order only covers until our daughter turns 5. That’s the main thing that has me convinced this isn’t over. I will be forced to keep fighting just to be a father. Around the time our daughter turns 5, it’ll be this situation all over again. More of the same, and probably greater than ever. It’ll be more of a situation that doesn’t need to happen, a situation that can be prevented by some simple, civil, easy discussion. But that’s not my ex. She doesn’t understand discussion, or especially compromise, and I learned this about her long before we separated (I just didn’t think it was this severe). For her to do anything – anything – that she doesn’t want to do, it has to be forced … just like many of our judge’s very necessary orders at the end of our trial.
My ex knows she’s surrounded by cowardly sheep, who will never speak honestly with her, or question her ludicrous stories, or especially ever put a line in the sand. Her mother, in open court, admitted that even if my ex didn’t pay rent at all, there wouldn’t be any consequences for it. And I have no doubt my ex already knew that full-well. She knows damn well what she’s doing. And like a sociopath, she doesn’t care whose life she ruins in the process. Not mine, not our daughter’s. From all the attorney fees, to the “child support” (can’t put enough quotations around that), I can’t afford things like a car. How easy do you think that makes it to see my baby? And of course, my ex-wife is fighting to make “child support” even greater. When I’m already making barely enough to support myself and my daughter when she’s with me … my ex not only demands free money, but that the amount be even much greater than my lawyer determined it had to be.
My daughter only has a father still because her father fought his hardest to still be her father. Recall my long list of things I’ve never done, like being in prison or even being accused of anything heinous… Yes, someone like that still had to fight this hard to keep being a father. Have I made mistakes? Absolutely. I’ve even made one terrifying mistake because I assumed something and I should not have relied completely on that assumption. But I know I’m not a bad person. I know I can admit my mistakes. I know I allow myself to learn. I know I’m not a bad father. I know for damn sure that I’m a committed father.
Links:
Vlog from Sydney Watson about Women Lying to Win Custody
