When I was 21 I was dating a women who was desperate to leave her dysfunctional home. She was 18. About 6mo into the relationship she stopped taking the pill without telling me and ended up pregnant. I was kind of a fuck up at the time with no career and hadn’t done anything but a couple of semesters of community college. I didn’t want the kid but when she said she wanted to keep it I tried to step up. The kid was born and we moved in and tried to make a go of it but I aspired to go to school and get serious about following my career dreams. She was having none of it. Our kid was slightly special needs with a not too severe learning disability. She wanted me to just start providing which I was in no way at a place where I could. So it didn’t last. She ended up getting full custody with me getting every other weekend and I had to pay her $450 a month in child support which was more than half of what I made at the time. I ended up moving in with my parents, finishing school and starting a career in an industry adjacent to my dream industry which seems pretty damn great at the time.
When that kid was about 3 I reconnected with an old girlfriend that became my first wife. A couple of years into that marriage, when my son was 6, he came to my house for visitation and while getting him into the bath I discovered that his entire bottom was one big, dark bruise. His step father (his mom had gotten married too) had “spanked him” for not cleaning the bathroom up to his standards. At 6 years old. I immediately called the cops and eventually got full custody of him two years later with his mom having every other weekend and her paying me child support. I suspected eventually there was more abuse including possibly sexual. Visitation was sporadic for her. Within two years she stopped all visitation and any child support payments and just wasn’t in my kid’s life anymore. My wife was very supportive and a great step-mom. We eventually had two kids of our own soon after.
My first marriage ended right at the 7 year itch when I was 35. We had just had our second child, (they were 4 and 2 at the time of the divorce) I had gotten a vasectomy and we had just bought our first house when she dropped the bomb. We tried therapy after she first threatened divorce which ended up just being me sitting and listening to her list of grievances while the therapist validated her and I just sat and took it. Unfortunately she had a friend in her ear telling her she should “find her happiness” which took our very real but relatively routine and surmountable problems and made them insurmountable. Luckily we remained amicable enough that we went through mediation instead of court and I got 50/50 custody. As for finances, other than dividing up assets, I didn’t have to pay her alimony or child support. I was devastated at first but dove into the new world of online dating and on my second date met my 2nd wife (she was very attractive and 21 at the time) about 6 mos after the divorce was final. It was around that time that my ex-wife apologized for wrecking our marriage and gave me Dr. Laura Slessinger’s book, The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, with many passages highlighted as part of that apology. Reading those passages was very much a mia culpa on her part because it highlighted the issues we were having. It was as if Dr Laura had written it about us. Unfortunately for her and our two kids it was too late. I was already serious with my new 13 years younger girlfriend. And I had come to realize I wasn’t all that happy in that marriage anyway.
My new girlfriend and I dated for about a year and had a lot of fun. But I got to the point where I was really falling for her and tried to break it off. The vasectomy weighed on me. I didn’t want to rob her of having kids in the future. Her response was to tell me that I wasn’t allowed to make that decision for her and that she wanted to stay together. Two years later, we were married.
We were very happily married for about 5 years. True love. Around then my oldest son who was by this time an adult got into trouble online (swatting) that ended up with him being sent to jail and eventually prison. I was blindsided. I was devastated. I was struggling. And my wife was angry, mostly at me. I felt so alone. It destroyed the “very happily” part of our marriage. But it didn’t destroy it. But those were some very hard couple of years.
Two years after our life was upheaved by my oldest going to prison she told me she was pregnant. Yes I had a vasectomy, but it’s not uncommon. You even have to sign a waiver acknowledging the distinct possibility of conception as part of the vasectomy process. So I believed her when she said it was hers. I didn’t really doubt it. We bought a house. Painted the baby’s room together like some tv montage. Kiddo #4 was born. I was happy! For the next few years we had a normal marriage full of ups and downs that never quite returned to the fairy tale honeymoon stage the first 5 years were. During that time the pandemic hit and I was furloughed from the job I loved and her business she started the year before struggled. I helped her and her business partner financially to keep it afloat by pulling some money out of my 401k. Being stuck at home with her full time revealed to me that things weren’t as happy or normal as I thought. Cracks appeared. Intimacy died. Coldness crept in. I chalked it up to the pandemic. I started worrying about our finances and the mortgage and looked for a new job. Which I got in exactly the industry I always dreamed to work in, making nearly twice as much as my old job, but with less hours. The pandemic was petering out. Things were looking up.
The day after Christmas ‘21, when my youngest was 6, I caught my wife at her business partner’s house when we were supposed to be packing for a trip to visit my sick uncle. When I confronted her she spilled it all. She had been having an affair for three years with her business partner. They were going to tell me after New Years so it didn’t ruin my holidays. How thoughtful. She left the next day and moved in with her sancho. Needless to say I was completely blindsided. I discovered via the iPad she left behind that it was just one of many affairs over the years. I suffered severe PISD (post infidelity stress disorder) and went to therapy for the first time. I was a wreck. And what’s worse it made me doubt that the son I was raising, that I loved so incredibly, wasn’t mine. It ATE at me for weeks. I knew I didn’t care if he wasn’t. It wouldn’t change how I felt, but not knowing just ate at me and made it so i couldn’t spend time with him without intrusive thoughts destroying my time with him. So I got a DNA test and as you might have surmised he wasn’t in fact mine. Which means the cheating happened when I was at my absolute lowest when my oldest was in trouble with the law and I needed the most support. It didn’t change how I felt about my youngest one bit, but it did quiet the intrusive thoughts. I decided to frame it to myself that I CHOSE to be his father. He is essentially my adopted son. (That said I also would never judge a man who couldn’t or wouldn’t want to do the same. What was done to me and my kid was pure evil. But every man in that situation has to make that decision for themselves. I just happen to love that kid too much to be able to image a life without him.)
My 2nd wife at least had the decency to feel guilty enough to once again agree to mediation and I once again ended up in 50/50, no alimony and no child support. We sold the house. She got pregnant a month after she moved out so her new kid was born while we were still married (but I’m not on the hook!) and married the piece of shit.
I ended up selling the house, got a new job in the same dream industry, making even more money and moved to a beach front apartment, right on the sand. Go to sleep to the sound of the waves every night. I’ve lost my dad-bod weight. I have been traveling all over the world. And dating has been going well enough even in this hellscape.
And as an update, I grew to be good friends with my first wife while coparenting our two kids. She’ll even watch my youngest for me sometimes.
My second wife is now in a shelter for abused women while she looks for a new place and my youngest is with me full time because her marriage fell apart, go figure. Turns out her soon-to-be ex husband is an abusive asshole. Which I knew when he was just the business partner she’d come to me to bitch about. I recently had a bday party for my kiddo on the beach by my apartment and invited his mom. paid for the whole thing. I can say it brought me great joy to know she’s been reduced to a group home while she was in my apartment using the bathroom during the party. I taught all my kids that success is the best revenge. And it really is.
Anyway posting this here because I kind of need to vent and be seen.
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