he has a wife now. and a daughter. a family that he chose to stand by, unlike mine.
and its... harder than i thought it would be. he hurt me so much. all i ever wanted was him. i just wanted to be with him and have his baby and make a family. i get so jealous sometimes of dawn n ashley n vickie n aaron n thelia, even. i wanted what they have...
i forgot that stamping emotions down and pretending theyre not there doesnt make them go away. so when i talked to him, it brought a bunch of them all back up again -- the anger, the hurt, the remorse.... i know i was wrong, too. but then i sit there on the phone with him and just let him mindfuck me the same way he ALWAYS did. hes still the same goddamn person. and he makes me feel like the little girl i used to be.
i let him convince me i was the reason he walked out on us. i let him convince me i should feel guilty and sad because it was my fault i missed out on the chance to be with him. and, being totally honest, both with myself as well as everyone else, i wasnt nice to him. i did some things and said some things that could never be taken back. awful things.
but two truths came to me today. the first one is the most powerful: animosity toward me is a TERRIBLE excuse to walk out on your kid. he took out his anger at me on aidan by ditching him. aidan didnt ask to be brought into this world, and he DESERVED for his father to be there for him. it was WAY worse of jake to ditch his kid than anything i could have said to him, especially since aidan was just an innocent baby.
the second one is simply this: i started doing some remembering of my own today. (jake was actually the one who reminded me of some of the terrible things i did to him... but i know i was simply mean then. i was horribly depressed.) and i remembered WHY things went down the way they did... jake was mad about aidans last name. (i gave him my moms last name, not jakes.) but i remember promising jake aidan could have ANY name he wanted to give him -- if he was going to make an effort to be part of his life. and he wasnt. yah, we talked some. but by the second half of my pregnancy, by the time he turned 18... he was already pushing ME away. he was not returning my phone calls and he was not answering when i called him. maybe because he knew i wanted him to come back to me.... maybe because he had already found someone else... maybe (and this is my theory) because his parents were turning him away from me. things were hunky-dorey till i pressured him to tell his family... and the REASON i finally chose to give aidan my moms maiden name is because HE wasnt making any EFFORT! i wanted aidan to have the last name of someone i respected. thats why i didnt give him MY last name.... i have no respect for the name. at the time, i didnt have that respect for the lessman name or the men who carried it. because i was mad about being pushed away myself. and... just maybe aidan got my moms maiden name as a retaliation....
but the fact still remains that no matter the reason for the downfall of mine and jake's relationship, aidan DESERVED to have his father in his life, and JAKE made the choice to dip on him. i would NEVER have kept my son from his father. NEVER.
last night i cried. a bunch. i was feeling the way he wanted me to feel: guilty and sorry for myself. well, i am empowering myself now and i dont feel that way anymore. and he will never be able to make me feel that way again. i have to remember, in whatever future dealings with him i have, that he is a scorpio: a MANIPULATOR. and hes damn good at it. at least with me... he always was. i am still hurt, and i am still angry, but now that ive found him, i refuse to allow that to interfere with whatever relationship we may be able to build between him and his son.
this is from a blog i posted on my myspace page, but i wanted to share it with all of you. i was hoping for some opinions. im kind of upset about the whole situation.
heres the history: my son aj is 3. shortly after i got pregnant, my sons father , who was 17 at the time, moved to california with his family. i had yet to find out about the pregnancy. i, of course, called him and informed him of the situation. we decided i was going to keep the baby and he would move back to colorado when he turned 18. we talked forever, all the time. we would stay up all night long playing pool on the internet, being on the phone and just... hanging out. then he told his parents, at my suggestion. after that, there were no more 5pm to 5am phone calls... he barely called me at all. and if i would call... if i COULD (i wasnt allowed to call his parents house, just his grandparents) he wanted to be all silent and not really talk, so the conversations would last about 5 or 10 minutes. so i was hurt n stopped feeling like he wanted me. after aj was born, j was 18 and still nowhere near on his way to moving out here. we talked 2 or 3 times... on the day my son was born, once a few days later, and i think once about a month later. after that, i never heard from him again. i only had the number and address for his grandparents house and he had moved away. i admit i got slackery and didnt look very hard for him, but i was always findable.
now my son is 3. he understands the concept of a dad and is confused. i dont know how to handle the questions i know are coming, the same ones i answer everytime i meet someone who finds out im (gasp!) a single mom: where's the dad? followed up with: does he know he has a kid? (the first answer has always been "....im not sure..." followed by, "of course!" anyway, i would prefer to not have to answer these questions for my son. i dont want to see the pained look on his face when he finds out he "doesnt have a dad." i want him to have one. so i paid the money to get the unlisted numbers in cali where i thought he was. i found his parents. he called me from an unknown number later in the day and we had a conversation. btu he didnt give me any way to reach him but an email address. do you think he doesnt want to be part of aj's life? he seemed, on the phone, like he didnt think aj shold have to be without him anymore either... i told him i think they both deserve a chance to get to know each other.
but he wants a paternity test. i understand the reasoning but i dont think i should have to pay for it when i already know what its gonna say. but... what if, not having the results of a paternity test, because he cant or doesnt want to pay for it either, inhibits them from getting to know each other? should i pay for it just to get the show on the road? ive procrastinated this long... i dont want to wait anymore for aj to get a chance to know his father. if he doesnt want anything to do with my munchkin, he should say that so i know where this is going... so i know if im sposed to accept it and figure out what im going to say to my son, or if i should look forward to aidan getting to know the other half of his dna....
wow thats long.... sorry. i understand for anyone who chooses not to read it. lol.
i think you can get some states to do one as part of CS proceedings. also, maybe you two can split costs? if you don't go for the ones that are admissible in court you can get away with just paying about 100 bucks each. that can be alot of money but it might be worth saving up for or something if you need.
sorry things are so rough. i know what it's like whent he past comes back and slaps you in the face.
I'm sorry he's being like that, you're cutting him an awful lot of slack. It sounds like a lot of what went on between my ex and I. He didn't tell his father until after I was five months pregnant, and things went very sour after that (and they were already bad)
You should not and do not have to pay for a paternity test. Go to your child support enforcement agency and tell them. See if they can help you. Email him and tell him you're setting up a paternity test and you need his phone number or address so he can get the paperwork.
You seriously need to stop cutting this guy slack, and stop letting him off. It doesn't matter what he said on the phone, actions speak louder than words. While he was saying he wanted a relationship with your son, his actions left you no way to contact him, and left your son no way to see him. That's shady and nothing that went on between the two of you makes it okay.
I was a single mom for four years, I'm not single anymore but my SO is not my son's biological father. It does not break a kid to hear "you don't have a dad." My son knows that I made him with someone else, he knows the guy's name (even if he doesn't remember it at the moment, I don't hide it when he asks) Until he was four and able to understand a little bit about where babies come from, I told him he didn't have a dad. He accepted that. Lots of kids don't have dads or any kind of father figure. It's not unheard of, and it's not wrong.
We often stress out about this stuff a lot more than our kids do. The first time my son asked my ex's name I hesitated. I didn't want him to start asking where he was and why we couldn't see him. But then I told him, and do you know what Matt did? He said "Okay." and went back to playing.
Dads are only as important as the emphasis you put on them. If you're putting a lot of emphasis on the fact that he doesn't have a father, he's going to be confused and wonder what's going on. If you treat it like it's just a normal part of living, he'll realise it's not the end of the world.
in most states if you apply for a dna test and it comes out to be theirs, they will have to pay for it. but that is only if you do not go through a private organization and instead go through the courts in your state.
i think the most important thing you said is that you might have done some things you wish you hadn't but it does not mean he has to take it out on your kid. it is good to realize that huh? irregardless of what happened between you he needs to be a man and own up to his responsibilities.
From hte tone of your post, it sounds like you're feeling like you haven't done your best to get a relationship going between your son and bd. But that's not your responsibility whatsoever. If he wanted a relationship, he would have found you. Chasing bd down and trying to force a relationship doesn't work, and chances are you paying for a paternity test isn't gonna make him all of a sudden be there for your son.
I have times when I feel guilty for moving out of the province while bd was in jail, leaving no forwarding address. Then I think, oh yea, he knows the province I'm in, my first and last name, my number has always been listed. HE'S the one who hasn't bothered, so why the hell should I feel guilty.
Kids do a lot better without a father than with one who will always disappoint them.
I agree with a PP. It all depends on how you deal with it. If you're okay with it, he will be.
yeah, i know its not the end of the world. up until now, hes just understood he doesnt have a dad. but now he sees all his friends with their dads (im the only single mom i know) and is watching movies and reading books with dads in them, and he is beginning to understand the role a dad generally plays, and hes getting confused. it has never been a big deal before, because he is loved and he knows it. he has his gramma and his uncle and me. but i know its almost time for the questions to start. and im scared. im not sure i know the right way to answer them.
it is not my intention to try to force any relationship on my ex. and yes, if he really wanted to know about us, we were always very easily findable. but he is found now, and i am giving him an opportunity. if he rejects his opportunity, we will continue to live life the way we have, with a few uncomfortable questions along the way. i have not served him cs papers yet because i didnt know where he was and i have been being a slacker. but part of the reason i wanted to get ahold of him is because it is time and i wanted to let him know. i guess i didnt even need to do that, but i thought it was nice. i certainly hope they can help out with the paternity test, because i really dont think i should have to pay for it. j was the only person i was sleeping with, he is the only possibility and if one looks at pics of him n looks at pics of my aj, you can see it. the eyes, the face structures.... so very much the same.