Dear “You”,
Before now, after a bit of introspection, I was ashamed to talk about our ‘situation’ — it seemed embarrassing, all that we had gone through and the craziness that ensued our separation.
I’ve reached a point in my life where I am not going to sugarcoat or cherry-pick my past. Things are what they are and if more people were unflinchingly honest regarding their mistakes, more of us could connect as humans, as parents, and more young women like myself would be encouraged to leave abusive partners or living situations that are toxic and unhealthy for themselves and their children. Maybe another woman (or man) is in a similar situation and wants to get out. Maybe they need to know they’re not alone. So here it is.
My ex-husband hasn’t seen our son since I told him that I wanted a divorce about two and a half years ago, roughly February 2020. I tried to kick him out but he refused to leave, so I took myself and my children and left. I never wanted to make anyone homeless but the way he was treating my kids, especially my daughter, was unacceptable. I chose to believe my daughter and I will never EVER choose a man over either or both of my children.
Eventually, through court proceedings, I got full custody of both of my kids as well as ownership of our shared condo at the time. He then proceeded to stalk me for an entire year down here, before finally giving up after multiple police interventions (I was forced to get a restraining order for stalking which is still in effect). Not once did he ask to see his son nor contribute a cent to our son’s wellbeing. The only time he talked to me was to try to interrogate me about my dating life, beg for money or threaten me saying he was going to file for visitation unless I got back with him.
This would alternate with pleading, kind texts and calls begging me to take him back. Fast forward to October 2021, all of a sudden he goes quiet. I knew he was back in PA and I assumed he was living with his friend Trevor and working for that friend’s Dad’s company. He can’t be self-sufficient at all and they were living in a house his friend’s parents bought. Turns out I was exactly right. Also turns out he started seeing a young woman who became pregnant with his child. They were not dating nor bf/gf but this was still his daughter and I think he knew it. He lied to this young lady and told her he had had a vasectomy at age 22, yet continued to talk about our son. He’s not the brightest bulb, since we had our son when I was 24–25 and he was 26–27, so how could he have had a vasectomy?!
The young woman then messaged me about two months ago asking me about his whereabouts and telling me about her child. We began talking and became friends. He blocked her and hid from her during her entire pregnancy after telling her he had the vasectomy. She just gave birth to their daughter two days ago. She is 100% his child in my opinion, she looks like my son. Despite all he has done, we STILL gave him an olive branch and offered him the chance to be in both of his kids’ lives. We didn’t want to involve the courts but asked that he contribute something to the welfare of his children and we attempted this via multiple avenues of contact.
Nothing. Radio silence. So, we did what we had to do and filed. I still would prefer to work it out outside of the courts.
Kids need their fathers. It made me sad and angry because Pat knows how important it is for both young boys and little girls to have their Daddy. He was super close with his father and had an amazing Dad so the fact that he was given the opportunity to be there for our son and hasn’t taken it is beyond me. It infuriates me because real men like Ryan, who died far too young at barely 23, would give anything to be a parent to their child. It also makes me angry that he went and had another baby when he can’t even take care of his first!
You have no business bringing other little innocent lives into the world when you already aren’t providing for your first and only son! I hold no qualms towards the mother of his daughter-she has provided for their daughter and she also has an older son from a previous relationship. Even though they never dated/weren’t committed, she still tried to give him the chance to be there for her baby too and I respect that. We are friends as I said.
Finally, the last thing I will never and can never understand…how do you create children and just not care about them at all?? He tells all manner of people that he ‘loves his son’ and that I’m the devil, lies and says he sees his child but I won’t let him post pictures. Let me assure you; this “man” has not seen his son in over two years despite me making every effort for him to do so. As soon as he realized he wasn’t going to threaten me or coerce me into being with him, he left.
It shouldn’t matter if you’re with the mother or not…you should ALWAYS want to be there for and love your child regardless of your relationship with their mother! All these deadbeats with multiple kids and baby mamas have the same lame excuse…”his mom wouldn’t let me see him” or “her mom is crazy and I don’t want to deal with her”. Guess what? The courts are going to give you 50/50 joint custody or a ton of visitation as a father unless you’re like a serial killer or something, then maybe supervised visits. If you don’t see your kid because you have to be around the mother/her family, then you’re just as much a deadbeat as the rest of them and if anything, that’s worse. You HAVE the chance and choice to see your baby and you CHOOSE not to! That is heartbreaking for the child and unfathomable to me.
We as women carry our babies or adopt our babies and love them from the moment we know they’re in our belly or we know we’re going to take them home forever. Many men/fathers love them before they’re born too or as soon as they see them. I cannot wrap my mind or heart around KNOWING your child is out there and not seeing them, not hearing their little voice or having their little fingers wrapped around your hand. If the dad had custody of my son, I’d be calling every day, FaceTiming before bed every night and seeing them as much as humanly possible. I would be providing everything I can to make sure my babies were straight and had what they needed. I can’t imagine going fishing, going to hockey games, to the beach and doing things for myself and thinking only of myself while not contributing a single cent to my kids.
Not only does he NOT contribute any money, he has STOLEN money from me for years when we were legally married. Tens if not hundreds of thousands, gone gambling. I was such an idiot and young when I got with him-I was still grieving Ryan. It was the biggest mistake of my life to marry Pat but I will NEVER EVER EVER regret my son.
I know I can look my son in the eye years from now and tell him I always tried to get his father in his life and that I tried to get him to do the right thing. That I went to court and made sure he was held responsible for his child. To his Dad if you see this, what would your Dad think? He was a good man and father. Your Mom? Same with her. She was a great woman. You were not raised this way! You had and have a wonderful family and amazing parents-so what gives?
What will you tell your son and now daughter? One day, YOU will have to answer their questions and I hope you’re prepared because regardless, they’ll figure out the truth for themselves. TIll then, stop having babies! You cannot even take care of your firstborn and now you have another? You need to play it safe if you’re going to have sex. Do not be selfish again for a moment’s pleasure and sire another child that you can’t and won’t support. That being said, you WILL take care of these two. I wish you would be in their lives but that’s on you and your conscience. What you will do is contribute and the law states you have to.
To other women in my situation or a similar one, don’t hate the other ‘baby mama’ or mother of the child. She isn’t your enemy. She’s a mother, too, just trying to support her babies as best she can. Think before you start drama with each other. I hate the terms ‘baby mama’ and ‘baby mama drama’. It’s so disrespectful in my opinion. Mothers are warriors. Much of the drama is created because of the actions of the deadbeat, whether the deadbeat is the mother or father. Remember if she comes off as angry, jealous, bitter it may just be that she’s hurting and that she sees he’s having more kids and he isn’t even helping with hers. Or if she’s the new one, she may be broken hearted and coming to terms with the fact of what you already know: he will not be there for her child, either. I think a lot of the new mothers come in thinking their child will be different for him but it’s not true. If he doesn’t love the child he already bonded with, why would he suddenly change for a child he’s never met and a woman he isn’t committed to? Give him the chance to be a father but if he doesn’t take you up on it, then do what you have to do as a woman and as a mother and go to the courts. No one wants to invite the court into their family but sometimes we don’t have a choice.
To Pat I say this: I know you’re not going to be involved with your new daughter or your son. I genuinely and wholeheartedly hope you prove me wrong and if you do, I’ll be glad. You said you loved our son/your firstborn but you haven’t seen or held him once in almost three years. The last time you saw him, he was in diapers. This year, he’ll be FIVE YEARS OLD. You’ve lost out on hundreds of memories, dozens of milestones and I STILL gave you the chance to be there. You missed your daughter’s birth and I’m 100% sure you’ll miss all of her milestones too. That’s on you at the end of the day, again. You can ‘hide’ and block us all you want but just know this: you can’t hide from the truth and the truth is that you’re responsible for your son. I don’t have to be your wife for you to be a father and I will never choose to be with you again but that shouldn’t have stopped you from being there for him. You WILL provide for him, by law, and once paternity is established for your daughter, you will for her too.
I’ll be honest, I was pretty angry when I found out you were having another baby. Not out of jealousy for you (good Lord no) but because you had the audacity to be so reckless, careless and stupid and bring another life into the world when you already had responsibilities that you completely forsook and were neglecting. Now you have DOUBLE that and you STILL are being so cruel by abandoning the pregnant mother of your child and hiding from your duty and responsibility as a father.
I was angry for my son, because he now has another kid that needs you and he already doesn’t see you or get anything from you and now has to share that and I’m angry for your daughter, because daughters especially need their Daddies and angry for her mother, because to be pregnant and not with the father is hard enough but to have that ‘man’ (really a boy) ghost and ditch you and deny your child is unspeakably harsh. You knew that was your baby and you lied and said you had a surgery you never had to try to evade responsibility. That is sick in my opinion. I don’t resent the baby and never will-she is innocent in all of this as is our son. I am angry with myself for choosing a father like you for him and angry at you for continuing to have children when you have zero intention to be a parent.
Whether you choose to be there for them physically and emotionally or not is up to you.
What I will make sure of is that my son knows it is through no fault of HIS that you weren’t there. There may come a day when he knows another man as his Dad, despite you being his father. I know the same for your daughter because her Mom is like me, strong, loving and determined and some real man is going to want to be there for her and your daughter Olivia, too. I’m grateful our son has my Dad and maybe one day another Dad will be there but for now I’m happy on my own.
I don’t wish any ill on you. In fact, the opposite-I wish you would get your act together and get your life together so you can be a dad to our son, because he deserves it. You were there for the first 2.5 years of his life and he needs a Dad. My Dad, his PawPaw has been an amazing Dad to him and been there where you failed to be. It isn’t the same but it’s good enough and I’m very thankful.
I hope you wake up. I hope your conscience kicks in and you see this. I don’t care if someone shows this to you, in fact, I hope they do. You need to see it. You need to hear it. You need to grow up and be a parent.
You don’t know your son loves Spiderman as much as chocolate. You don’t know his love for music and dancing and how he’s got moves for a white boy. You don’t know how he loves to cuddle and gives the best and biggest hugs. You don’t get to hear the twinkling sound of his bell-like laughter or see his big green eyes, with thick lashes, smiling up at you in the morning. I feel sorry for you. You’re missing out and you must have a very sad and lonely life.
But our life? It’s full of love, joy and the amazingness that comes with raising little humans. It is the greatest gift I’ve been given, becoming a parent, and I’m making the most of every single second of it.
From “An Open Letter to an Absent Father” (by: Samantha Irvine)
“I don’t hate you.
I used to. I used to wish I’d open the paper and find that you’d overdosed or been killed. I held so much hate inside of me that I couldn’t see anything else except the bad that you had done. I used to find myself up at 3am, breast feeding my son, thinking of how you were most likely partying, or taking care of another woman’s children, and I felt rage inside of myself. I was so blinded by this rage that I couldn’t do anything else except hate you. I wasn’t mad for what WE weren’t; I was mad for my son, and let me tell you, there is no feeling that can mirror a mother’s rage when someone has wronged their child.
I don’t know exactly when this stopped. I can’t pinpoint a specific day or a certain event where I just stopped hating you. It was a mixture of events and days that blurred together out of exhaustion, that lead to me pitying you, and then to me forgiving you. People listen to my story and they think I’m crazy. After all, I left you, I CHOSE to end us, but you’re the one who abandoned our son. You’re the one who never tried to be a father. And one day, I just realized that I pity you. I got to see his first everything. I’m the one he cries for when he’s hurt. I’m the one he cooed at 2 in the morning when he would wake up to eat. He runs to me when he falls down at the playground, he runs to me when I pick him up from daycare, and he screams to me that he loves me everyday. He sings to me and tells me I’m his best friend. I was at the hospital when he had surgery, and I taught him how to do pee pee standing up at the potty. You’re missing all of it. And I pity you. You don’t even understand how sweet he is, and how loving he is. He is the most caring person, and let’s face it, he gets it from my side. From you he has the cutest button nose & big puppy eyes.
Then my pity shifted into forgiveness. I forgive the fact that I’m alone raising him. He has turned out to be what has saved my life. I was forced to grow up and to get my shit together. I was thrown into a world where I was up 20 hours out of 24, where I was ecstatic about a new sippy cup purchase, and where I HAD to make plans for my future. I forgive the fact that you’re a shitty person, because it’s made me a better mother. I love him twice as hard and I will give double that to make up for everywhere you lack. Everyday I wake up and look forward to bettering myself for him. I have something to look forward to because of him, and he has an entire life ahead of him with endless possibilities and limited disappointment because of your absence.
I feel sad for the inevitable feelings of sadness and doubt that he will have about himself because of you. My only goal is for him to have a happy life, and I don’t think I could’ve given him that if you were part of it. You will never better yourself. You will never amount to anything. You’ll will always be wishing and hoping for something better, and it will never come. You know this, and I know it’s part of the reason you stay away.
I know you will most likely never read this, but on the off chance that you do, thank you for my son. He is the love of my life, and without you, there’d be no him. I pity you for not experiencing the greatness that is him, and I forgive you for the privilege of raising him alone. Please don’t mistake this for excusing the fact that my son has no father. I don’t forgive this, and I’m sure he won’t either. That’s something you have to live with and will have to face when your life comes near an end. I hope it tortures you the way it tortured me for years, and the way it will most likely eat away at him. You deserve it.”
- *I think this is a great excerpt; the main difference in how this young woman and I feel is that I do not ill-wish you. There was a time when you were stalking us that I wanted you to know how it felt to be paranoid, to come out of your house in the morning with the kids ready for school and see your car just gone from its parking spot — the panic, the calling around for a ride. To go to get in my car, see the sun catch on something underneath my tire. It was a nail, four inches long, perfectly positioned upward so that when I backed out of the spot, it would go in the tire. Could I prove it was you? No. Did I know it was you? Yes. You vehemently denied it later on, but we both know you did it. I wanted you to know what it felt like when I was reversing away from you, yet you still ran after my car and threw yourself on my windshield. I was already driving and couldn’t stop or pull over because I couldn’t see where I was going. You had a vindictive crazy smile on your face and said “you’re going to jail and I’m going to tell them you hit me with your car.” All of this while your son was asleep in the back seat. Luckily for me, security had witnessed you jumping onto my vehicle and so I was not charged/arrested. Additionally, the police officer noticed no marks, bruises or cuts on you and was suspicious of your story, since you were the one always calling 9–1–1. Had they not witnessed it and believed me, I have no doubt I would have been arrested. Had the cop been less sympathetic and less intuitive to your nonsense, I would have been. I’m angry that you took off with my son for two days after hitting my brother with my car. You literally ran him over, he went up and over the hood, and he was taken to the hospital with an acute fracture of the spine. Because he had a record, they believed you and not him. You left the scene of the accident, all witnessed by neighbors. You took off with our son in the car after hitting a PERSON. I am angry that you had ZERO consequences for all of these actions. Mostly because you manipulated the officers and again, made sure they knew my brother had a record, so he was automatically deemed untrustworthy. These are all FACTS — my brother has corroborated every event. But did I want you to feel how I felt? Yes. Did I want you to know what it was like to be working or come outside and take your kids to the playground and see you hiding in the forest-line near my house? Yes. Did I want you to know what it felt like when you were folding laundry and saw you idling outside my family’s house? Yes. Is it okay that you showed up to my daughter’s school and sat in the parking-lot for hours till they called the police? No. It isn’t. You may have stopped those behaviors, but you left me traumatized. I don’t trust people now like I used to. I resent that. I don’t feel as easily relaxed and that old paranoia comes creeping in time and again. When you moved to PA, you continued the texts, the calls, the social media-badmouthing. You only stopped when the young woman told you she was pregnant and you went underground. I suppose then — when it suited you and helped you to evade responsibility — you suddenly wanted to be ‘peaceful’ and ‘quiet’.
It’s too late for that. While I don’t wish you any harm, and while I do want you to get your act together, I also am ticked off to the fullest extent. My son is four years old, five in December. He now asks where his Dad is — I showed him photos of you. You want to know the four words he uttered immediately?
“Is my Dad dead?”
I assured him that no, you were not dead — you just lived in another state for work. Luckily, he saw photos of himself and his sister and moved on from the topic. But I know it is not anywhere near the last time he will ask that question and more.
For this reason, I am angry.
Like the woman in the article, I ended it with you. Some people may say, well why’d you leave him if he wanted to be involved when you’re together?
Here’s why: I shouldn’t have to stay in an unhappy relationship with a man who was being emotionally abusive to both me and my children just so he will be a father to his child(ren). I will not show my daughter that it is okay to stay with a man (or woman) who mistreats you to ‘keep the family together’. I deserve better and so does she, so does my son. I will not show my son that it is acceptable to speak to women this way — callling them the b* word or c* word, telling them to shut up, calling them fat. Then gaslighting them and saying that’s not what you said, you misheard, or begging for forgiveness on your knees.
When I left, you literally went down on your knees. “Please” you begged, “please don’t”. It made me more angry and more determined to leave. You only wanted to try when everything was ending. I had given you chance after chance to prove me wrong.
All of our relationship problems aside, it boils down to one simple truth:
I should not have to be your wife for you to be a father to your children. \
51% of America is divorced. Millions of people coparent with their exes — they move on and get remarried, or stay single. They have other children. They move on with their lives. That is part of being an adult. But they still take care of their responsibilities.
I am not a perfect mother. But when you had the nerve and gall to refer to me as a ‘deadbeat’ on Facebook, I had to laugh.
Who is feeding your son? Who reads him six to eight bedtime stories a night? Who scratches his back till he falls asleep? Who is taking our kids to Disney World, making amazing memories? Who knows his favorite show and character, his fear of bugs, his love of Spiderman and spiders despite that fear? Who knows his favorite dinosaurs and how he loves to help cook and clean? Who knows the way he likes to draw and color just so when he does art? Who knows he will never take a nap but will always go to bed by 7? Who knows that he is an amazing share-er and the pickiest eater? Who knows that he gives the best and longest hugs, the most incredible compliments? Who knows how he loves to dance, sing and is musical beyond any toddler I’ve met before? Who taught him to swim, who practiced those swimming lessons with him? Who takes him to his doctor appointments and school? Who picks him up from school? Who pays for it all? Who invests not just the money but the time and effort every day to make sure he brushes his teeth and hair and that his skin is protected from the FL sun? Who knows how he loves to build things and how he’s picking on his sister one minute and protective of her the next? Who knows his favorite colors, the shoes he wants to wear depending on where he’s going, how he always wants to share with strangers and that he loves being outside every second of every day but it also a homebody?
And a millon other things besides.
Who knows all this? Not you.
You haven’t been there since February 2020. That’s almost 3 years now.
I’m mad you had another child because you already can’t give the one you do have the attention he deserves. Now you brought ANOTHER baby into the picture who will want for a father. She doesn’t deserve it either. But she’s innocent in this, same as our son.
We are adults and we made the choice to have kids. The difference between us is, I stand by my choice. I will NEVER regret it.
But it does mystify me that you loved our little boy for the first 3 years of his life and then just up and disappeared. How can you go from seeing him every day, seeing him every morning and every night, hearing his voice, feeling his hand in yours, his arms around your neck — to nothing? Zilch?
With your daughter, you weren’t there for the pregnancy. Nor the birth. Nor her first breath. But you were there for all of that with your son.
How do you form that bond and then just go on living like he doesn’t exist?
How do you abandon a woman — dating her or not — that you know is carrying your child? You may not have ever met your daughter, but you know you have a tiny little helpless girl now. She’s beautiful. Innocent. Perfect. Just like our son. Yet you show even littler interest in her.
Our kids are worth more than that.
We are worth more than that.
We as mothers are doing what we have to do. We don’t have the option of being sick or doing things we want, frivolously. We have two children to take care of, each of us.
When you make the choice to have children, you don’t have the choice any longer to think only of yourself.
You may not be there for our son, but I will be. You may not ever meet your daughter, but I’ll love her. I’ll be there for them both — and your daughter’s mother — because they deserve it.
I hope you wake up and grow up. I hope this letter reaches you and I hope it maims your heart and shakes you to your core — I doubt it. But I hope so.
There’s never anything impossible for God. Maybe he’ll reach your heart and maybe you’ll do the right thing. You never know.
What I do know is this: our children are not a right, they’re privilege. Parenting is a privilege. And I intend on making the most of this gift and privilege by giving them the best life possible, from start to finish, till I am no longer on earth. They will NEVER be turned away by me — and I will always be their rock.
I make that promise not only to my two children but your daughter and her mother and brother. We are family now.
To any woman or mom going through this, know I do not regret my son nor do I regret leaving Pat. This was the best choice for both me and my children. I know Dads are important in a child’s life and I will NEVER impede his father from being there for him as long as he is safe, sober and stable.
I hope you read this. I hope you see it and I hope it guts you and I hope it becomes motivation to change and become a father. I am almost certain that won’t happen-but I could be wrong.
The thing is, I know you’re capable of it. You took me to every last one of my doctor appointments when I was pregnant with my son and let’s be honest, that was a LOT because I was a high-risk pregnancy due to having a septate uterus. You took off work and drove me. You made sure I had my prental vitamins every day. You were not only there for me but for my daughter who was becoming a big sister. You weren’t a bad person. You had your moments but everyone does. You were there when our son was born. You held him on your chest and slept with him, changed his diapers, fed him and loved him. You watched him take his first steps, say his first words. You played with him and watched as he went from walking to running, first tentatively, then with eagerness. You loved both of my children. When we came to FL, it was good at first, But things changed. The little things I noticed before became more apparent. Without my family around, you did more things that weren’t acceptable. You didn’t have as much help, so you became more frustrated/angry. You took it out on them and that was not okay-it was why I left. You begged me not to leave but I had given you every chance to prove yourself and you didn’t take it.
Just like now. Despite ALL this, despite what you put my daughter and son through and me through, despite stalking us, despite being emotionally cruel to Ella, I gave you the chance to be a better man and be there for your son. I know you CAN do it-you HAVE done it before. You were a good Dad. But you didn’t want to be a Dad if you couldn’t be with me.
The thing is, you don’t get a choice once you CHOOSE to have a baby. We all know how babies are made and how to prevent it. You chose to do this and now it’s time to own up to that.
I don’t think you’re evil or a psychopath. I do think you’re incredibly self-centered and immature and need a serious reality check. What will rock-bottom be? I have no idea. I hope it isn’t too bad but reality is going to come knocking, because you have two children to support now. We all have good and bad in us-what matters is the part that you choose to act on.
I really do urge you to act on the good part of you. The part that knows how to be a good Daddy and a good man. We will never be a couple but you will always be my son’s father. Act on the part of you that loves him, that was there for him. Be his Dad. Be a man.
That being said, I will never allow you “off the hook”. You’re a parent now. It’s time to grow up and man up.
Time to be a father, ready or not.
Like
Comment
Share
