For anyone wondering why lone parents had children with their no-good exes to begin with:

[HerBeatitudeLittleBella]

I can't speak for everyone else, but I had children with my ex because I genuinely had no idea what a loving, normal, functional relationship was, never having experienced one. I didn't know how normal people behaved in relationships; and so when I met someone who behaved with extreme abnormality, it felt familiar to me and for a long time, I didn't recognise that it was abnormal.

It was only as a result of having children, that I began to question my own upbringing. Which led me out of denial and made me realise that my own relationship was abnormal and that my XP and I were unwittingly repeating damaging family patterns and role-modelling a crap relationship to our child. And that if I couldn't change it (which I couldn't, because my XP refused to recognise that we were not conducting an emotionally healthy relationship), then I had to leave it, in order to give my children the best possible chance of not experiencing the same disadvantage in adult relationships that I had laboured under.

OK? Will that do you? Is your curiosity satsified now? Or would you like some other LP's to come on and justify to you why they had children with their exes? And when you want to moan about your partner, please bear in mind that no-one is going to ask you to account for why you have had children with him, if he's such a PITA.

[N1]

ok

[aseriouslyblondemoment]

I'm not taking sides/defending
but also posted on the maintainence thread which is still very much on going
but it is someones POV/experience
that's what forums like MN are for
regardless of what we think of another member and their posts(and i too have given it back)
we can answer in an adult fashion
and for the record i am now actively avoiding threads which i know will make me rant
and have started the light hearted dating/fit available men one which lots of singles identify with and laugh about.
i am not knocking serious issues here, i have many of my own similar to other MN-ers,
but am so glad that i can come on here and share and post on the trivial things in life
it really lightens the load
and makes me smile.

[Quattrocento]

We all have lapses of judgement

I'm lucky that mine are confined to handbags, shoes and briefcasese. I have inordinate numbers of all three. See I keep making these lapses of judgement ....

[TheFirstLiffey]

N1, you say that your x accused you of being abusive and controlling.

You believe that these claims were unjustified, but you haven't lived in her shoes. You haven't lived with you. You really can not be the judge of what life with you was like.

My x would stand up in court and swear blind he never abused me or controlled me. But he did, and he doesn't see it, will never see it.

He has exactly the same mindset as you, exactly, The "She was not allowed to have any power or control over anything that affects me, and, she was not allowed to leave me" mindset (but I bet you would have been allowed to end the relationship).. and now, she must PAY for her insubordination with poverty. The only power you have left over her, to (you hope) make her struggle financially. It's at the expense of your son's childhood, but you consider this payoff worth it. You see no alternative, you haven't for a moment seriously considered an alternative. And I'm not only talking about money or contributions here. I'm talking about your distorted mindset, attempting to let it go for the chance of a happier life for yourself.

[HerBeatitudeLittleBella]

Quattrocento, what do you mean about lapses of judgement? I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. What have handbags and shoes to do with the subject of the thread?

[HerBeatitudeLittleBella]

N1 I too have detected the tone of a classic abuser mindset from you. If a bunch of strangers on the interweb picked up loud and clear the same message my ex picked up from me, I would be examining myself very carefully. But I want to be honest with myself and gain insight into my behavoiur and motives, I don't know whether you do.

[N1]

10 years ago, I was naive, quiet and passive. It's being hard (some perceive hard as abusive) and very determined that got me to where I am now. I have little intention of changing or looking at myself.

[HerBeatitudeLittleBella]

You would do well to look at why you were naive and passive. That is as dysfunctional as being abusive and is often simply the other side of the coin.

Why are you so afraid of trying to understand yourself?

[N1]

It's not a fear of understanding myself. I know what I am capable of.

I could work myself out of debt if I focused only on that, but if I moved back into higher earning again, the CSA would steal the money from me and give it to the ex, who would use the money to fund any possible tactic to try to drive a wedge between my son and I. If I wanted to maintain the contact time that I and my son have, I would have to take matters back to court (again) and in turn loose my job.

I do accept that things are not good or ideal, but its the best I can make of a bad situation.

Ex's attitude is usually "don't talk to me, talk to my lawyer". Recently this has changed.

Fortunately for my son, he (through me) gets to know all of the paternal family and most of the maternal family. Ex seems to be pushing them away (long story). I didn't see the maternal family for 4 years and when I did, they were over the moon to meet and see and hear updates about my son.

Ex's attitude is along the lines of - if you don't dance to her tune then push you out. I refused to dance to her tune when she left me so she tried to push me out of her life (nothing to bad with that, but she tried to push me out of my son's life and that's where all my costs came from and also shaped me the way I appear to be.

The people who know me personally might disagree with some comments by people who don't know me, but you could say the same.

I am not trying to divert from the topic.

[TheFirstLiffey]

N1, It's sensible, practical and mature of your x to not to try and talk to you. What would be the point?

Would you listen???

Would she be able to reason with you??

Do you have a flexible, compassionate side she could appeal to??

You are utterly incapable of seeing things from her perspective.

You can be 'hard' (whatever that means) in decisions that affect you alone and nobody else, but you had no right to be 'hard' with regard to things that affected your x's life/future.

You shouldn't even try to control somebody else's, and for some reason this is the bit that controlling men fail to grasp.

Why should she communicate with her bitter, deluded, angry, selfish, mean, martyred x when she can delegate that nightmare to a solicitor???

It's YOUR life N1, and you're wasting it being a bitter, deluded and mean.

Well, that really shows her ey? You're the winner, right? cos you hate her more than she hates you, and you're more wronged than she's been wronged, so you're the biggest martyr? You have justice on your side? WHO says? YOU?????

[solidgoldbullet4myvalentine]

N1, were you brought up by people who thought that women are less than human and exist only to serve men? Or did you read bullshit like Robert Bly at a formative age?
It;s a very ver y GOOD thing that women are able to dump tosspots like you and stick two fingers up at you/ Because gradually this means men like you will become extinct as no woman will want to help you procreate.

[Ivykaty44]

oh just realised who is on this post - have scrubbed my reply and will now move swiflty on....................

[Quattrocento]

HBLB - sorry - bad joke - clearly having children with the wrong person is a lapse in judgement - we all make those, don't we?

NI - we tried reasoning with you on the supporting your children thread. You remain convinced that the right thing to do is to impoverish your exw to retain some degree of control. You may not succeed in impoverishing her permanently - she may get a good job, meet someone else etc. But you will succeed in impoverishing yourself.

Have you ever heard of the expression "cutting off your nose to spite your face"?

[ChasingSquirrels]

It was a bad joke, nice to see the apology.
I don't think I had children with the wrong person, I don't regret the 17 years and 2 children that we had together.
I do regret that he felt unable to stay in the relationship with me.

[HerBeatitudeLittleBella]

Yes I don't think it was a lapse in my judgement either. On the contrary, given my emotional health at the time, having children with him was probably the best judgement I was capable of making. He's not violent, malevolent, controlling, or labouring under the delusion that standing on the outside pissing in to a family unit, is a valuable thing to do for your children. He was just unable to function as a husband and father. When the children are older and he's not called upon to do the nurturing, responsible bit of parenting, I hope that he'll be able to play a positive role in their lives and bring something valuable to them. In the meantime, he doesn't try to undermine me or be a negative force in his children's lives, which is to his credit.

[shoptilidrop]

Im sorry - i have to say i dont think it was a lapse of my judgement either. I thought we had a really strong relationship, we had been married for 4 years, 5 by the time we had dd, and together for 7. It was not until i was pg did i find out about all the affairs and the lies etc..........
Also im not the only one who has been taken in by him, family memebers, work, friends... none cant quite belive how he really is.
So, quite honestly, thats a terrible joke.....

Not everyone choses to become a single parent...... our children arent all accidents or unplanned.... i would suspect a large percentage are single parents as our dhs turned out, after years to be total arses...

[ChasingSquirrels]

and not all of them are arses. I think that mine did the wrong thing by just leaving without trying to work it out (we have different views on this), but it doesn't make him a fundamentally bad person.

[lou33]

"if I moved back into higher earning again, the CSA would steal the money from me and give it to the ex, who would use the money to fund any possible tactic to try to drive a wedge between my son and I."

am i the only one to be shocked at that comment?

[ChasingSquirrels]

nope lou, personally I have ignored that part of the thread, but I did when I read that line.

[lou33]

it sounds like N1 has forgotten that the csa is about supporting his child and nothing to to with getting revenge on each other

still i should probably shut up, exh pays not a penny to me and never has, so i may be accused of being bitter

[beanieb]

I thought I should respond as I said I agreed with whoever said "stop telling women they are being abused and filling their heads with rubbish".

When I said I agreed it was only in so much that often people do post here with their side of the story RE their relationship, and more often than not other posters leap straight in and call their partner an abuser. I think before responding with 'leave him!' and 'he's abusing you' it's wise to remember that we are usually only hearing one side of a story and that not everybody who is going through a difficult time with a partner is being abused.

Obviously there are some cases where it is quite obvious that the poster's husband is a c**t but not everyone is being abused, not everyone is dealing with toxic parents/partners.

Sometimes, in relationships, our own behaviour needs to be examined and changed. It takes two to tango.

I, of course, would never ever ask anyone to justify why they have had children with the people they are posting about.

[TheFirstLiffey]

BeanieB

THere is no defence for name-calling, long silent treatments or being bad-tempered unless one gets one's own way completely all the time, controlling all the money and abusing that control, prioritising your own career and life and interests at the expense of your partner/wife... A lot of women don't recognise that they're being abused. They only recognise that they're miserable.

I had children with my x because I was on the rebound after a broken relationship. I was literally jaded after about 7 yrs of on off on off broken relationships with men who always dumped me or married their x, or married the next gf or went back to south africa, Ireland, Australia. I felt exhausted and depressed when I met my x, and he ground me down even more. I was so lucky to get out of that relationship and I feel a lot stronger now, and I see things a lot more clearly now. Having 'his' children, loser that he is, has marshalled my thoughts and given me confidence, clarity and determination to be a good parent. That must be done alone as a single parent, for their sakes as well as mine.

[INeverTalkAboutThisStuff]

This post might be a bit triggery, I just want to respond to the thread title. I also felt upset when I read the comment in 'things you are too polite to say on mumsnet'.

At 15 I ran away from a violent, alcoholic home having previously been expelled from my nice academic private school and roundly told off by a teacher who told me I was lucky to have such a nice family when other girls were coping in difficult circumstances (she gave the example of a girl in the year below whose mother had died). I was sexually active from the age of 11, with my 17 year old step-brother.

I lived and slept rough for a while before finding lodgings with a Christian family. I met a nice man at their church, and impulsively agreed to marry him. I knew he had been in prison for drugs and that he had committed a sexual offence and if anything this increased my whole new life, fresh start, forgiveness and optimistic mood. I think we were happy for a while, but at some point he started using drugs again. Everything went bad. Without going into detail I confronted him about something very serious, I can't even say what it was. I can't think about it properly. Maybe you can guess in your own minds.

In response, he cleaned out our cupboards (literally), snapped my personal bank cards and cleared out our joint funds and disappeared one night. I couldn't even go to work that day, I had to borrow money to feed the children. A friend encouraged me to press charges but I couldn't get through the statement-making process. I also didn't want to put my children's father in prison, even though the risk of that was slender, but I had to balance that against a wider responsibiity. I can't describe how difficult that whole period was. The children were devastated and amidst the emotional and financial chaos of getting our lives back together I knew I had a responsibility to promote a good healthy relationship between them and him.

He left the country and has made very sporadic, infrequent contact since. He has gone on to hurt the children very badly but they still love him and would welcome him with open arms tomorrow. In some ways I've paid dearly for being young and wanting to be part of my own loving family, rushing into motherhood like that with the first person. But in others, well I've got these amazing children, how could I look at them now and wish I'd made different choices then?