After six years in a miserable relationship he knew he had to leave, but how could he risk never seeing his child again?
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“DADDY, DON’T LEAVE! DADDY!”
Those screaming, child-like, pained words being wailed to me, as I looked at him with tears in my eyes, will always be carved like a glacier in my mind, left for generations to come. To always make me remember the decisions that I made, decisions that changed my life.
I was 22-years old when I fell in love — L-O-V-E — Lost Overall Vision on Everything. I thought that this was the way life was supposed to be. That I needed to find somebody to adhere to. Unfortunately, that person also felt the same way, and we had a child, my son. Now I’ve not regretted my son, but our relationship was horrible. We didn’t belong together, his mother and I. We were very conflicted people, on both counts. Had our own issues to resolve. Maturity was still something that we were both reaching for. It wasn’t a solid relationship. Yet, I got her pregnant …
… I knew that my life, as well as the life of my son, was never going to be a happy one if I stayed in the position that I was in.
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I proposed, but we didn’t go through with an engagement. We stayed together for six years. Six long, miserable, years. During those six years, I didn’t cheat on her. I didn’t stray. I saw that the relationship I had with her was not great. Shoot, I can’t even count the number of times we separated during those six years that we were together. I stayed with her for the old-fashioned virtue of “Get a girl pregnant, stay with her, raise a family.” That was a poor decision, because for those six years, I was a prisoner in a gulag of my own making.
The relationship was always argumentative, combative, uncomfortable. There were periods of time, days, weeks, when I wouldn’t speak to anyone in the house. Except my son. It was bad. Very bad. In the last year of our “relationship”things were getting even worse. Longer periods of not talking. More arguments. More disconnects. My son was four-years old.
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I was working for a major retailer, and made a connection with someone who I’d known for years, while we were away on a business trip. Within a week of coming back and making that connection, I knew that my life, as well as the life of my son, was never going to be a happy one if I stayed in the position that I was in.
I got into my car and I drove off only to pull over, not even a half mile down the road, decimated and in tears. I had just abandoned my son.
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I tried. She tried. We were oil and vinegar. We weren’t meant to be together. The day I made the decision to leave, was the hardest day of my life. At that point in time. I was 26-years old and I told her that I was leaving. That I was no longer going to stay with her. There was a lot of anger. There was a lot of venom that was spewed. She repeatedly told me I’d never see him again. Her mother was there, telling me the same thing. Calling me a worthless piece of shit. I was a horrible human being for leaving my child. My son sat there crying. Saying, “Daddy don’t leave. Daddy, don’t leave.”
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I hesitated . Really I did. At the end, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to go through with it. Because of my son’s tears, because of my son’s pleading words. But the stereo sound of hatred, spewed towards me because of my decision, helped to push me out the door. I got into my car and I drove off only to pull over, not even a half mile down the road, decimated and in tears. I had just abandoned my son. I had just walked out on my relationship with his mother for the last time. I didn’t know at that point what the future held for me, for him. I cried uncontrollably for a couple of hours, thinking that I had just become a person that I never wanted to be. I had just become somebody who abandoned his child. At least that’s what I thought.
As the days went on, I was able to connect with my ex, and set up a schedule for us to visit. I was able to see him. That actually began a schedule where he came to my house every weekend, Friday through Sunday, for years. Until his teenage years when he started to become his own person. He didn’t turn out badly. When I started to again see the reasons why I did this — for my own well-being, my son’s own growth, and his mother’s betterment, without having somebody be argumentative all the time — I came to grips with who I was and my decision.
I left because I saw a glimmer of a new life, a better one for myself and my son.
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With this other woman, I wanted to stay emotionally unattached from anyone else, until I had resolved in my own mind, what this separation, this breakup, this abandonment, meant to me. I left because I saw a glimmer of a new life, a better one for myself and my son. I didn’t want to ruin this new thing with haste. I courted that woman for six months, and asked her to marry me. We were married within the next year and a half. I’ve now been married almost 16 years. I have two beautiful daughters with that woman. I look back at the decision I made, the difficult decision to leave my son, in tears at that point, and I know it was a difficult one to make. To be honest, that “butterfly effect” could have taken a different direction. I could have stepped on it and gone in a different direction, stayed with her, I don’t know where I’d be right now.
I do know where I am today. A happily married man with three wonderful children. Two with my wife, and my 21-year old son, who turned out great, because he had those “households” (plural) that gave him an insight into the person that he could become.
Never separate who you are from who you could be. Remember, they’re one in the same. I denied that for a period of time. I eventually found that who I was was not the person who needed to be in that relationship. My son needed a father who would stand up for him. Leaving him was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced — crushing — but the path that I followed gave him a better life overall.
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Photo: Getty Images
In the beginning I was a little bit shocked. How hard must it be for a child seeing their parent leave. But then when the story went on it showed that it was the right thing to do. If it wouldn’t have been the right thing then you would probably not be in a good marriage now and yeah, you son might have suffered in a household full of conflict!
You fell in love with her at 22, got her pregnant, stayed for six long miserable years, then left her and your four-year-old son when you were 26, for another woman.
You didn’t stay for six long miserable years, then. The math here is screwy. And you cheated your way out. I get what you’re saying, about the plural households being “good” for the child — but I think you should set aside funds now and offer to pay for his therapy, when he comes to need that in another ten years or so.
Yes but this is the 2000s. All that matters is that he’s HAPPY, right? No sacrifices even for the people you create of your own free will.
While it doesn’t sound at all like the kid needs therapy, at least not in relation to the parents’ divorce, the timeline is confusing. He said near the end something about an older sister, so maybe that’s who she was pregnant with and they had two children together?
Spineless would have been the one who would have stayed in such a terrible relationship. You had the guts to leave. Staying and not doing anything is much easier than breaking up. I am sure that it felt like you were abandoning and betraying your son and your decision was extremely difficult. But you followed your instinct and intuition instead of giving up to fear. You ended it for the sake of all three of you. In the end your ex got a better life too. I wish I left my ex sooner than I did…
While I get that your relationship was unhappy, you gloss over the fact that you left her for another woman who you married only 6 months later. Brutal. And yet you seem to imply that the “venom” spewed was proof of why you were leaving. You should have left when you were unhappy, not when you made a “connection” with someone else. That must have been very hard for her.
Exactly Casey, I have no respect for man or woman who finds a replacement and then uses them as the excuse to do what should be done without cheerleaders.
1) he waited six months to start dating her, they didn’t get married for another year and a half
2) sometimes it takes meeting someone else and connecting with them to realize you have other options, that you don’t have to settle for someone who very clearly isn’t right for you.
If only more men going through this kind of hell could follow this man’s path instead of staying “for the children.”
Hi Rob, Understand that I was involved in my sons life and still am to this day. From the age of 4 to 16 he was in my home 3 days a week (of course less as a teen). He never wanted to leave his older sister and mother. His mother and I were toxic. Though being with another person, and his mother finding her own happiness, our son found a life filled with 2 households that loved him instead of one that was devoid of love. Had the situation been abusive or negative, the outcome of custody would have… Read more »
Thank you for sharing your experience. It is very inspiring. Gives me hope that I’m doing the right thing for my kids. I really hope I can say everything turned out well in 17 years from now, justo like it happened to you. God bless.
I would not have called you spineless, but your piece left a gaping question unanswered and that is why the assumption was that you had to abandon him to end the relationship. Every case is different, so maybe there are good reasons why your ex needed to have primary custody, but if fathers are ever going to be 50/50 parents, we can’t have that be the default option.
Spineless. You’re lucky it turned out the way it did. I know that life. I fought for and got my son’s. ..dudes like you make it harder for the dads who are willing to fight.
Each of our stories are different and each of our struggles is different. I think we do a lot of damage to ourselves and each other when we presume to know what would be best for other men. I’m going through it right now and it is not easy. Yet, I have a lot of respect for Sean who did the best he could in a very difficult situation. Would you or I have done something different? Maybe. But, we weren’t there.
It was difficult for you, however, you did it for your own sanity. I have known some divorced women who keep calling their ex-husbands and kept nagging at them on anything and everything. They were pretty abusive to their ex-husbands and were also abusive to people in the workplace at all.