I have a child with an incredibly horrible and self centred man. If we didn’t have DS, I would have breathed a sigh of relief at ending our relationship and never seeing him again. As it stands, I have to see and speak to him constantly.
When I first fell pregnant, everything was fine until the mid to end of the pregnancy. He started being emotionally distant, gaslighting me, and generally acting very off. I started having some strange symptoms which I got checked out, the doctor mentioned having an STI screening which I didn’t feel necessary but agreed to anyway. He had given me chlamydia. In the last week of my pregnancy, I had to take antibiotics to throw the infection off before DS was born. When I told him what he had done, he made a joke of it and said I’d probably caught it somewhere else. He is the only person I have ever slept with. He also gave me high risk HPV, which led to abnormal cells in my cervix which I am currently undergoing treatment for.
He dissapeared after this, but insisted on maintaining near constant communication with me. If I didn’t reply to his messages fast enough, (while parenting newborn/baby DS alone) he would send passive aggressive messages like ‘clearly you don’t ever want me to spend time with DS’. It also turned out he had been using multiple dating websites and sex websites throughout my pregnancy; and not using protection.
He also had two other relationships running parallel to ours. One of the women had a young child with him - who was around 9/10 months old when DS was born, so must have been a newborn when I fell pregnant. We were spending every day together at that time, so he can’t have been there for either of them for weeks 
He seemed regretful when DS got closer to age one, and we planned a little celebration for his birthday. On the day, his dad did not show up. He then blocked me, and said he’d been called into emergency work. He then disappeared for 6 months - turns out he was dating a 17 year old (he was 33 at the time) which is why he didn’t come to DS birthday and cut contact. He abandoned his other children too, and blamed the mother/s. Eventually the 17 year old must have gotten tired of his relentless cheating, as she broke up with him. She didn’t even know me or DS existed - she made contact with me at one point and I really felt sorry for her, he had given her STI’s and she had to take her mum to the sexual health clinic with her to get treatment because she was so anxious and upset
A few weeks or months after she dumped him he initiated contact with me and wanted to see DS. This was two years ago. Since then he has seen him consistently, on a near daily basis, and he pays a reasonable amount of money towards him. However, I just can’t shake my disgust at what a deeply horrible person he is. I have never met anyone quite like it - it has never been tit for tat, it has solely been him being vile to any women or girls he is involved with. He seems to solely date teenagers - I was 19 when we met, so I suppose by 21 my appeal was wearing off to him 
I haven’t ever told anyone all of this stuff as it’s embarrassing and horrible. I hate that he will now be in my life forever (unless he abandons DS again, which I suppose will always be possible..) and I hate that I have to rely on him to do his share of the parenting or i would be unable to work or have a social life. As nasty as he is, my life did become considerably easier and more pleasant when he stepped up financially and started caring for DS. With no family support, before this point I was genuinely with DS 24/7 for two years straight, except one occasion when a close friend watched him for two hours.
I just wanted to get off my chest how shit it is to be trapped into dealing with someone like this. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost several years of my life to it.