and so it begins

How to start this... With quite possibly some of my biggest mistakes.

What i will tell you is my story, in hopes that there may be something in it that may help anyone avoid the pain this type of situation brings, to yourself and those around you.


in order to understand my story you must know a bit of my past..
at the age of 18 my ex wife and i had our son, at the age of 20 our daughter. At the age of 22 we married at the age of 24 we seperated and divorced it was not an amicable break up( very messy ).

and this is where we will start this story.

My ex and I had our first real fight of the marriage, which proved to be our only fight. I fought hard to try to hold us togethor but in the end, the reason we had broke up was quite simply she had allready found someone else and i found out from an outside source she had been sleeping with him for a month prior to breaking up with me.
At that point I lost all my will to fight, I was crushed. I gave her permission to move with the kids to a town hundreds of miles away. So not 10 days after we broke up she moved into this mans home.

I did not fight for custody of the children as it was a promise i had made to her when i was younger, that if we were to break up...the children should be with their mother.I was raised by a single mother so this made sense to my young mind.

at the time of our divorce I was not financially stable and my ex agreed to no child support, but if the kids were ever in need to contact me and I would find a way to make it happen.

I removed myself out of the childrens life.. partly because everytime i got to visit them, i would be a wreck for about a month after haveing to return them. Also they had a set of parents that they were living with, why confuse them even more with me in the picture.

last year (7 years after the divorce) I received a phone call telling me the children wanted her new man to adopt them. That it was the childrens idea and that since i had not paid any child support, which was now 28,000 in the rears it would be in my best interest to sign the adoption.
Basically all i heard was it was the childrens idea...and that was all i needed to hear.. If the children were pushing for this...then they will have it. I signed the adoption papers.


Last week my son contacted me on facebook. I knew he would eventually contact me...and he would have some serious questions. there was the small talk leading up to him trying to work up the nerve to ask the tough questions. and eventually the questions i had been dreading. " why did you leave like you did?" and "do you ever wonder what it would be like if you hadn't left?"
after i answered the first question honestly and the second question with a simple " yes , I do". he tells me the adoption was never their idea but the ex's husbands idea, they only agreed to it to make their mother happy. The topics became lighter and we chatted well into the night. The amount of joy i felt in that day was unreal.


The joy was short lived and turned to pure rage...two days later my ex contacts me via email...tells me that she has removed me from my sons facebook and will tell him when he gets home that nite, and that i have no right to speak to him or even be a friend to him.

I reply to the email, reminding her that I am putting myself through hell going without seeing my children so they as a family can go about a normal life. I confronted her by including my son as a recepient, as she was making choices for him without his consent(removing me without his knowledge being just the tip of the iceburg). I pulled no punches, I exposed every rotten thing she had done from the first part of our break up...to the falsified divorce papers so on and so forth, at the end i told her if i ever had to hear from her or her husband again, or they tried to intervene in the children contacting me..i would seek legal council. An adoption is a signing over of parental rights, and gaurdianship...it is not a restraining order.. and as I have never harmed the children in any way shape or form, the previous letter was a huge slap in the face.

she wrote a reply the next day, apologizing for the way she handled it..that she was wrong to remove me from his friends list. but then she went on to try and defend her lies, her cheating and her broken promises.

At this point i had , had enough. for 8 years I have been defending her...never said a bad word about her and would not let anyone do it either...I have been living without my children for 8 years, if she thinks its soo easy, and that I enjoy it, well maybe its time for her to find out for herself how difficult it is.

I print off the letters with full intentions of seeing a lawyer to discuss options. My thought being if I can prove that the divorce was filed under false pretenses rather than the true case of adultry, which could easily be proven simply by her having to provide her tax returns from that year if she claimed as a couple with her new man, or her having to provide proof of residence. But I instead decided to go to work...at least put in a half day, and discuss this with my buisness partner and best friend.

He was there sitting with his wife having coffee when i got there.. and i had them both read the letters.
I asked them their oppinions.. and they quite frankly told me, I was not going to like the answers.

I insisted.

so they told me.

I am not going to tell you what they told me but i am going to copy and paste the email i wrote that night when i returned home.

I have blanked out names. M*** is my ex wife, A**** her husband, and K*** is my son.


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I am going to finish this how it was started, as an email to both of you.

Firstly to M***, what I said and the way I handled myself in my first email was inexcuseable and unforgiveable. I took out my anger and frustrations over the past 8 years out on you, when truly it was myself that is to blame. If I would have taken my own advice and stepped back, I would have seen this.

Granted there are issues between us, but they should have remained just that...between us.

I don't deserve forgiveness, but i will ask for it.

Now on to the heart of the matter.

K**** you contacted me with some very real questions..and I knew they would eventually come.
Know that i did answer your questions honestly, but for the one question I did not elaborate on.

the question was " do you ever think about how things could have been?"

I answered "yes I do." while being the truth you are about to hear something you wont want to.

yes I do think of how it could have been, and there have been times I wish like hell I had not done the things I did. The truth of the matter is, if things would have been different, if i had stuck around. You would have turned out more like me. I want soo much more for you then that.

To fully understand this, I am not saying that I am a monster, or a bad guy. But Neither am I a good parent.

The lifestyle I live is not for anyone to look up to, I float through life with no ambitions or goals. I can't hold jobs because I can't make it to work on time. And while I seem to be doing ok now being self employed, the reason it seems that way is because I can make my own hours, and not have to stick to a schedule.

A father is someone who instills their children with everything they need to survive in life. I do not possess those skills.

In the end my decision to step out of your lives was the right one. You are allready twice the man I could ever be and you arent even out of school yet. And A****** and M**** instilled these work ethics in you.

All I am is a big kid, and perhaps by admitting this to myself I may be able to grow up a little bit, only time will tell.

Know that I have not nor will I ever stop loving you, and i do not write the next paragraph to hurt you, but this is the way it has to be.

I am incapable of being your father, or anyones for that matter. You are at the point in your life where you are pushing the boundaries, and pushing buttons. I cannot be a person to hide behind or run to anytime you think your mom and dad are being unfair. They are your parents, they are the ones who have made you who you are today. From what I can tell they have done an excellent job soo far and I will not interfere in this matter. So even though it would pain me to do it, I could not let you move in with me.

The best I can offer you is my friendship, and not the friendship where i take your side in eveything, but the type that tells you the truth.

As i said before my first letter was written out of anger and frustration and was meant to hurt..really not a very parental thing to do. and it was missdirected at your Mom where the blame lies with me.

In closing this is the last email I will initiate, I have allready caused more then enough trouble and for this I do apologize.

If your mom and dad agree to it, and you still want to talk to me, I would love to hear how you are doing.

I hope this clarifies some things.


M*** the threat I posted at the end of my letter, is gone... you decide where and when or even if you would like the children to speak to me. I was being very defensive about something that I had no right to be.

Once again you have my sincerest of apologies.

Lisa has said you two have talked, but i cut her off and sent her out with her daughter for coffee so that I would have no outside oppinions while i wrote this. I hope that I have not undone anything you two have discussed but this is the right thing to do, I know it is.

James
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After admitting to your own son that you are worthless, it makes you question yourself.and possibly admitting for the first time to yourself and believing it, knowing it too be true.

I now have a mission, for the first time in my life i have goals that i want to work towards. I want to be the guy my son points at and proudly says that is my father. Its going to take a lot of work and i know im gonna fall. But thats where my Girlfriend and friends come in to support me and tell me when im making mistakes...not just to blindly agree with whatever im saying.


I have bored you long enough..

as i said i hope something in this huge post will help you.

if nothing above is relevant to your problem take this one small piece of advice.


A true friend will never sit by and watch you make mistakes, they will tell you when you are being an idiot. They will not agree and hang off of every word you say.But even seeing your flaws they love you and want to be in your life and help you make your changes. A false friend will tell you there is nothing wrong with you that you are perfect the way you are, will make excuses for you, will lie for you and eventually lie to you.