Tag: Control

I Can Smell the Change Coming

HeligKo
Day Three: Something Smells Rotten . . .

Its in the air. I can tell by her demeanor, she is up to something. Probably not anything nefarious, but something I am having a hard time facing. She is about to file for divorce. This isn’t so bad. I don’t trust her. I can’t stay married to her. I wouldn’t consider reconciliation, because I know that we would be back where we are now in a few years, and doing it twice would wreck the kids more than I can imaging. I don’t love her anymore, because I can’t. We don’t work anymore, because the bond was broken by her. It happened some time ago, but the final rip of the tape off my hairy arm was her moving out. This I have said before. Up until that point I would consider reconciling with her. I would say I would now, but the truth is the hill she has to climb is so insurmountable, I don’t believe she can do it. So why does it bother me. There are a few things.

The first is this is the final severing of the bond I entered into for a lifetime. I have to acknowledge once and for all that she did not enter into that bond with the same expectations. I have to acknowledge that I was lied to, and somewhere deep down I knew that. I wanted so badly to be married, and I loved this woman. I wanted it to be her. I have come to terms with this multiple times. Emotionally it rears its head again and again. The basic thing I must always remember is that I have control of one person in this world, and that is me. I entered into the bonds of marriage for it to be forever, and I never saw an escape hatch. That she did not enter into marriage to forsake all others forever and ever is not my problem.

The second is the loss of control. Right now things are pretty good. Is she going to try and change the playing field through divorce, or is she going to leave things as they are. Until we have it on paper and agreed upon, I won’t know for sure. I hope that she deals with me fairly and honestly, and with honor, but how can I believe that she will until she does. The very act of divorcing me is dishonorable. Time will tell.

the third is like the second. We will at some point have to allow the judge to rule. He may or may not accept the terms that we have determined are favorable for both of us. I hate that we as adults can’t come to a decision without a third party interjecting itself into the mix. I have to say that this bothers me on so many levels. The judge is acting for the state, not as a neutral party in divorce. He is trying to ensure the state won’t incur further costs do to our actions before it is evident that will happen. This is probably not legal under our laws, but they have been granted tremendous lea way in these matters.

The fourth is a bit more esoteric. I don’t want to be the divorced guy. I have spent my life in Christian circles with happily married couples. I don’t want to be that guy. I know that guy. People feel sorry for that guy, and he is invited, so he won’t be alone. All this is great for that guy, but I don’t want to be him. I would almost rather not be alone at the bar. I am never alone at the bar for very long.

One of my daughters had a birthday on Friday. She was at her mom’s place. Thursday, I stayed over late at her house and worked on some homework with my oldest son. I saw her anger and his anger collide. I saw it with fresh eyes. I hated it. It made me sad. I was exhausted when I left. I had dinner with my daughters earlier that night. It was nice, but a poor substitute for waking up with her in the morning. I was the Watchdog at her school for her birthday. That was great, but the night before, I went home and folded laundry while getting a fire going outside. I opened up the Captain Morgain Private Stock and drank. As I drank I began to cry. I never got drunk, but I needed the liquor to loosen me up and cry. I cried because I would not see my daughter wake up to her present in the morning. I cried because my son and my wife can’t seem to get it together, and I can’t help in many direct ways. I cried because my wife wants to drug my son into submission, and will probably win that battle, at least initially. I cried for the death of my marriage.

Ten-Foured,

JeD

Raising My Kids Part Time

HeligKo
Daddy's Girls

Separation and divorce means I lose the every morning and every night influence on my kids. No matter how much I make sure I am available, half the time the kids aren’t going to bed under my roof and waking there. I hate it. I hate everything about it. At their mom’s house, she is much more likely to hand them off to the neighbor who’s fifth grade daughter already knows how to create sexual tension in a room. They are allowed to fight with each other in terrible ways. They are encouraged to tear each other down, and act like the parent to each other. When they come to my house, I have to deprogram them from this, and it is becoming harder and harder. I hope that the resistance that I feel now from them is the top of the hill, but I guess that it is not. I have to deal with her trying to medicate my oldest, because he is a tough kid. I am frustrated beyond anything I can understand, and I hate it. I have lost the right to daily influence of them. Not by my own actions, but because she decided that she didn’t want to be married to me. A year ago she asked me “Did my character change just because I don’t want to be married to you?” My answer was “Either that or I misjudged it from the beginning.” I am sure that I misjudged it now. I am sorry for my kids that this is the case. I am sorry because we adopted three kids, and I could have stopped that when I first saw the problems, but instead I assumed it was momentary weakness on her part, not a character flaw. I am sorry because we then had a child of our own. I do not regret that child, but I would do anything to protect her from what is happening now. It is my fault that we are here, not because of my actions, but my inaction. I could have stopped things when she proved herself unworthy of my love, and unworthy of my loyalty. I bought the Christian line that staying was noble. It was not. It was the path to raising my kids part time. Now I have to do all I can to raise them right, and let them know they are loved every day when I only have a right to see them half of the days.

Ten-Foured,

JeD

Flipped It, and Some new Epiphanies

HeligKo
Flipped His Lid

A couple of weeks ago I went to a friends birthday party. This is a man I have worked with for most of the last 12 years. There was a break in the middle, but we still hung out from time to time. We enjoy working together, hanging out, and arguing aggressively. I was talking with his wife, and she told me that my wife had called about the party a couple of days earlier. These are friends that we both spent time with. She was complaining that she couldn’t go to the party, because I would be there. She was told it was fine, that there would be enough people there that it wouldn’t matter, and that was true. Then my wife complained further that I was bringing a guest. His wife again, said so what if he is, but I hadn’t told her that. She also asked what did she expect would happen when she left me. The conversation went on, and she told my friends wife that every time she sees me, I have hickies. Now I admit that this happened once early in the split, and I had a mark she accused me of having a hicky one other time, but it wasn’t. She said she didn’t care, but just wanted to know who it was, but again she didn’t care. Of course I didn’t bring anyone, why would I to a party of a friend who always had beautiful women around.

About a week later, I had dinner with these friends. They told me some things I didn’t know from when me and my wife were together. There was a time my wife was going out with some women who were actively destroying their marriages. I knew from a slip up in anger that my mom had confronted her about this. I did not know that my friend’s wife had as well. Well at the time I was carrying her water, and wanted to believe that she was there to keep her friends out of trouble, and besides she often would come home drunk, and we would fuck. Something that rarely happened during that time in our marriage, or anytime for that matter. She also told me that she remembered a conversation one morning they had. She had just finished sending her husband off to work, and had fixed him a special breakfast for no reason and packed his lunch. My wife complained that I never took my lunch, and she suggested that my wife pack my lunch. Her response was, “He can pack his own damn lunch.” My friend’s wife told her that she was destroying our marriage. Her lack of desire to serve me in any way, and continually complain about my actions while doing nothing to encourage me to behave differently was destructive. Now my actions do not encompass things that were destructive to the marriage, they were things like eating out at lunch most days. My friends wife also challenged her that instead of continually harassing me about getting a promotion, that perhaps my wife should go back to work as a skilled nurse, especially since she insisted on having a cleaning lady, the kids were all in school, and she didn’t really cook most of the time. That evening my eyes were opened to two things. First, I had good friends, better than I knew. They stuck up for me and the marriage I so wanted even without my knowing. Second, that my wife was never on a track of happiness in marriage. She didn’t understand that the test of marriage was to love the other person without needing reciprocation, and when their partner does the same, we grow as people and as a couple.

So how did I flip it on her. Well she was declaring by leaving that she believed that she outranked me in the relationship. That she was more desirable than I was, and she was. She was because she was on the market and she was married, and I was not on the market and was married. Once she moved out, she fell in the sex rank category, because she was now a single mom of four kids in her forties and not slim. I moved up, because I was on the market, in good shape, and a single dad of four kids. Strange how these things work, but I can find a woman pretty quick. With or without them knowing any of the details. My self esteem went up quickly, and with that women came to. She thought I would be alone all the time, and she would have the men she wanted. The truth is I have the women I want, when I want them, and short of some sex, the men aren’t there for her. I am excited about my future as I mourn the demise of the dream of being married once and forever to someone to grow old with. The truth is I never had that. She would never have been a woman that would have endured. I know because I have seen it, that its not a fairy tale, but it is a a fairly odd tale for a man and woman to live out their years growing closer and closer as their youth fades. At least in this day and age.

Ten-Foured,

JeD

I Remember When

HeligKo
I remember When

This weekend was a hell of a weekend. I went out with some high school friends. We heard a band, and I at some point went from drinking to way to fucking drunk. I haven’t done that in a long time. Not sure what happened after the piece of pizza. I know that I was pulling idiots off the stage who were messing with the band. Not sure why someone didn’t deck me. I guess the shiny head still intimidates people enough to think twice. Friday night started with a flat tire on the way to my soccer game. I was going to pick up my boys to watch me play. I didn’t make it there. I got the tire fixed before this night on the town.

Saturday morning I headed out to see the boys play soccer at 8AM. My car just died. The idiot me the night before forgot to bring in my phone. It was dead, and not fairing well on the car charger. It was cold. Like 10 degrees cold. I got the car into a parking lot, and managed to slip a text out to my wife as the phone lost its mind. She knew I was not making it to the game. Since the phone wasn’t working, I started to walk. I walked to my parents house. Of course they weren’t home. I then walked home. It was a 6 mile walk in bitter cold. I felt horrible when I got home. I had not dressed for that walk. I couldn’t get warm, I was exhausted from the walk and the night before. My wife came by with the boys to get some shoes. She was pissed, and stomping around. She just kept saying that if I had answered my phone she would have helped. She wouldn’t believe that my phone was dead. She had weaved her story and didn’t want it changed. She had made my boys believe that I didn’t go to their game, because I was lazy and didn’t want to get up. She made everyone believe that at the game. My kids, the other families as if it were any of their fucking business. I had to spend my morning Sunday explaining to all of them what had happened.

I was reminded of how in the past I would have accepted her story, and wove mine around hers. I would do this to avoid the fight, and to avoid embarrassing her. It was one of the ways she would isolate and embarrass me. It was incredibly strange seeing this from a new perspective. Thank goodness I was exhausted, and just wanted to figure out my car and go to sleep. I didn’t respond to her at all. This totally threw her off balance, and so she had to find a place of certainty again, so she begins to agree with me, and let me lead with things regarding the kids for the next few days without any argument. I don’t know that I understand her psychosis, but I am learning how to manage it for my advantage, now if only I can figure out how use that for my kids advantage, or teach them the same thing.

It is in these hard times, that my family steps in and helps. They never did before, because they had been isolated from me by my wife. It these times that I realize how bad things were, and how beat down I was. I still have a hard time understanding how I got there. It is so different than how I was before, and how I feel now. When we first got together I had compassion for her, and the things that had been hard in her life. I now have contempt, because she has used those things, which were very hard to manipulate me and others to be put under her will. It is sad. So many people who have wanted to lift her up, and help her, and she has abused that every step of the way. Not this guy anymore.

Ten-Foured,

JeD

The Power of Women

HeligKo

“Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.”
– Samuel Johnson

The wisdom of this man was spoken in the 1700s. Samuel Johnson saw the pitfalls of the society we live in now. I have always understood that the founding fathers saw that women had their power in the family. They had their say and influence with the men who voted. It constructed a natural balance. The problem is our society is not concerned with balance, we are concerned with fairness and most of all equality of outcomes. The natural consequence of giving women so much legal power as we have now is for us to have an equality of outcomes, we have to limit people to the lowest outcome available. As we try to limit outcomes, there are those that will still find ways to excel in society either by sidetracking all the pitfalls designed to stop or slow down the majority, and those who find a way to become the gatekeepers so they can ensure they are taken care of. Then there is the prickly affair of some people just work harder than others. The gatekeepers constantly find ways to give away their results to someone who doesn’t work as hard. As time goes on, there become protected classes of people. Now that we have protected classes, and women are one of them, and as the quote says above, we end up with a giant problem. This is where the United States lies now.

What power did nature give women? They have the power to give life. Men were designed to desire to protect women. They have an emotional intuition that allows them to manipulate men without hardly trying. They put out chemicals that make men stupid with desire. Men are designed to care for and protect women. The balance makes it a fair trade to not give women legal power, because they have the power to manipulate their men. The men in turn in their desire to protect will have to balance how to go. Whether to respond to the women or to protect them. Some of this is simply the changes in the brain that happen when sex is determined. A man’s brain is split down the hemispheres. They literally think with the emotional and creative side completely separate from the logical side. Women don’t have this. Their emotional and logical thinking are intertwined. This explains a lot of the differences. It is also why men respond to their women, and then with some time to think about it can determine a logical response in law to the thing they emotionally responded to. The mistake most men make is to believe that women are illogical. They are not. They simply have their logic intertwined with their emotions. They can be just as tactical and cunning as a man. The motives and manifestations of this between men and women are discrete. This again is why we should seek balance, not some form of equality. In the modern world we do not have that. Lucky men have found women who desire that, and who will allow that balance to exist, even though there is no enforcement of it under the law. It will be interesting to see where the world goes from here. I don’t have high hopes for my children, but it is my job to train them to be both prepared for the world they will face, and to train them on how they can be good human beings regardless of the world they will face.

Ten-Foured,

JeD

What’s So Bad

HeligKo
73/365 - Snap snap

Sorry for the somewhat chaotic thoughts last night. I was tired and just needed to dump some of my thoughts. One of the points that I was trying to get at is that there is no separation of parties in a divorce with children. We will forever be linked by the children. While the children are minors we talk nearly daily. The conversations haven’t changed much that we have, but now they happen over the phone instead of face to face. My life is not that different now than it was before. I take care of my children. I see them almost every day, because there are four children, and she isn’t able to get them where they need to be and still hang out at the gym without my help. Again no big change here. When the kids are with me, I usually make it work without her help. I don’t want to deal with any complaints about her needing time for this or that. There were plenty of nights that this was true before. The changes in my life are that I seek out some friendships that I wasn’t able to maintain when we were together. She prevented me from having a social life. She still tries, but its harder for her to do this now. I now have sex pretty much whenever I desire it and have time for it. Not that I am going out to find some whorish woman at a bar. I have been surprised by the women who approached me after my separation started. Of course before our separation, I hadn’t had sex in over a year, because I was a married man, and I took vows that said I wouldn’t do that, even though she saw no need to live out that part of marriage with me. I may not be divorced yet, but we are not living as man and wife, and I won’t pretend that after her violating our vows multiple times to the point where she leaves me, I no longer will act like a married man. I am certain that I should have thrown her out long ago. I should have seen this day coming. I honored my vows to the detriment of my marriage. A paradox that remains unsolvable.

Now what was so bad. I went to work, and made good money. I loved my kids, and cared for them whenever I was with them. I loved my wife, even though she treated me with contempt most of our marriage. Aren’t these all things that should have made a marriage work. I was the protector of the family in many cases where I had to make a strong stand for their well being. So where did I go wrong? Why could I not keep my wife? I am not asking why would I want to keep my wife. There were few good reasons beyond the children left. Her contempt was disgusting and selfish. It was escalated to force me to leave her, and when that did not work her contempt grew, and she finally left. Raising the kids is harder now. Having time to myself is more abundant, but I have less control of when now, and so does she. Finances are harder now. Trusting is harder now. I expect that is true for her to. Not that I have broken trusts, but that her own ability to do so must make her distrust others, and expect that they too will handle the her trust in the same way. The thing I lost that hurts the most is the dream of growing old with someone, and sharing the good and bad times. This may sound ridiculous, but you have to understand I never disliked my wife, and she never showed that she disliked me. I would have been happy to be with someone forever, even if there was not one ounce of romance in the relationship. I know this might be strange, but it is true.

So the paradox is, I lost her because I kept her. With her very first breaking of the vows, I should have tossed her. At the time we had our boys as foster children. We had not adopted yet. We had a dog and a small house. We had very little debt, and it would have been easy. I believed the Christian propaganda that holding on to the marriage was valuable. The truth is holding on to a bad deal is not valuable, and it will end eventually. Sure I have my honor. I kept my vows, even when I had the chance to break them without being found out. That honor means nothing to me right now. I should have tossed her. The truth is that is the only way I could have kept her. You see I never made her value the marriage. I never made her understand the significance of her actions. I also failed to protect the pussy, and then was willing to accept it again without making her regret giving away what was mine. I had never been cheated on before. I had no idea how to handle it. I also wasn’t promiscuous, so the whole sexual value system was not in my mind. I was used to women wanting my attention, and not having to work hard for dates, but since sex was not what my end goal was, I really never thought about these things. So what I did is allow her to give up the goods to another man with little consequence. Ultimately this conveyed that she was not valued. It took ten years for that to destroy what we had. I don’t know that she would have tried to keep what we had if I had tossed her. That is precisely why I didn’t, but now I regret that decision. I will count it as wisdom learned to share with my sons and any other man I encounter who needs it.

My final thoughts come to this. Women if you value your marriage, don’t toss him if he cheats once. That is not the price that will make a man value you. As a matter of fact, do not punish him at all. Give him a pass fairly quickly, and show him that you value him with your increased attention. Not desperate, strings attached, please stay kind of attention, but the kind of attention that shows that you value him for his masculinity. That is the thing most men are seeking when they cheat. That is for time one. After that, if you take care of him and he continues to wander, give him the boot.

Ten-Foured,

JeD

Hoovering and Projecting

HeligKo
The Movie: Borderline Biennial / Abode of Chaos 09/09/09 - BLB-999-Abode-of-Chaos-23

I find that I am constantly struggling to understand what it is that she is up to. I have come to the conclusion that she is much more intentional in the things she does than I have ever given her credit for. I have also come to the conclusion that she is a much better actress than I would have given her credit for. Vox Day has pointed out on multiple occasions that just because women are more emotionally driven than men, does not mean that they are not extremely calculating and willing to wait for the “right moment.”

Hoovering

First lets define this. In the BPD survivor world this is a term for when a BP person tries to draw you back into their life. They do the things that they know make you feel good. It is all for show, and it only lasts as long as it has to. It is usually the same things that drew you to them to begin with. So my wife knows that little flirtatious touches draw me in. She has been touching my chest as she approaches, and resting a hand on the center of my back. As we sit at some event for our children she will brush her foot lightly against my leg. She stayed to watch me play soccer the other night. She also has asked more about my father recently than she did any other time in the last year. It is so tempting to be sucked in by these actions, but resisting them generally frustrates her, and I get to see her rage flare up against others, so I am reminded of what I no longer have to live with.

Projecting

This is another BP trait, and it is one that most BPs are extremely convincing at. They project their feelings, actions, emotions, and motives onto someone else, and seem to be able to get others to believe it. Sometimes even the person they are projecting these things onto. Just today she quickly got angry with my middle son over not seeing his grade card. She then got mad when his feelings were hurt that she never acknowledged him getting into the geography bee. It moved from him to my older son, because he defended me for throwing out my youngest daughter’s grade card after seeing that she had a nearly perfect first semester of second grade. She then turned things around as the boys left, and cornered me asking what all the hatred is all about from the boys, and what happened to make her deserve that. It makes me sad to watch. They are angry. Angry about her being angry all the time. Angry about her destroying our family. Angry most of all that she blames them for her anger, though she has been angry most of her life. I don’t know what she expects to gain from this. My suspicion is she will eventually discard the boys in the same way she did me. She will make it their fault, and I will have to put them back together after their mother is done. I only hope it happens sooner than later, so I have more time to put them back together before they have to enter the hard world out there on their own.

I may never know her drivers. I may never understand why she does what she does. I am not sure she knows or understands herself. I will have to deal with it, because like it or not, once there are kids involved marriage is forever in some form or other.

Ten-Foured,

JeD

Chivalry Lost

HeligKo
Chivalry

I have a bad habit of trolling through craigslist ads. Mostly because they crack me up. I never in my life seen so many BBW women wondering where their prince charming is. Well for the record, he left with the skinny chick. The other common theme I see is all these women complaining about no chivalrous men left out there. I am sure there are some. They are happily married and retired. Lets define what chivalry really is, because I think it has been lost on so many in our society. Women want it, even expect it, and men don’t do it because they are tired of the madness that this post-modern world has created in relation to men and women.

The first thing to extinguish is the idea that any woman deserves chivalry. It’s origins is from the days of knights. It has many meanings, but generally came from the concepts of how a knight is to behave himself when not in battle. I suppose the ideas spread as at every age, men preferred to liken themselves to the battle hardened warriors of their era, rather than to the realities of their life, so they adopted the behaviors they attributed to knighthood into their daily lives. Chivalry defined how a knight was to behave in the castles and court. They were to extend certain courtesies to those around them. Acknowledging that they were under their authority. Things like opening doors for even the little lordlings and ladies who had no true command of resources or physical ability to have authority over a knight was a for of respect. . The knights extended these courtesies to ladies of the court that also had no authority, nor any honor due to them. This extension was submitting an honor or power to someone else, that they had no right to. I am not going to talk about all the aspects of chivalry, but this last point is important to understand. Chivalry as we understand it in modern culture is based on the voluntary submission of privilege or position to honor someone else. You must also understand that socially, politically, and in almost every other way in the cultures women were not afforded the same “rights” as men. This public showing also demonstrated that this man was providing protection of the woman. Chivalry was far less practical in the home. Men didn’t show the same deference for his wife. He also in the average family home gave her far more equality in decision making for the family than she was allowed in public. This meant that the power difference in the home was less, and the was less honor to give by the husband.

Lets skip ahead to modern times. As women have become publicly and socially equals to men, so has chivalry faded. The men have less power than they used to. These courtesies are based in power, so it stands to reason that men would be less chivalrous than they were in days gone. Allowing a woman to pass before you is not a courtesy when she can merely just go before you without prejudice. There is no cause for chivalry when the decision is hers to make. There is no social or legal moor to prevent her from retaining the right of way when passing through a door. In the past the woman would have waited for the man, and he would then open the door and allow her passage as a courtesy. I have rarely seen a woman in the modern world who pauses for a man to go first, so it stands to reason that there is no reason for him to allow a courtesy that there is little opportunity to provide.

Lets further explore the realities of the modern world. Men are second class citizens in the west. We are treated as necessary evils. Where men in the past treated women as things to be treasured when they had the power. In many ways women were treated as fragile, but valued. Now men are treated as the unwanted dog, or the jester in modern society. We are objects to be tolerated or laughed at. We have very little true power in society or in the family. We aren’t even considered physical threats. This negates chivalry. If men were to try to be chivalrous, it would really be duty to keep the women who have the real power now happy. Chivalry is not rooted in duty. If there is chivalry to be shared, then it is the women who should be chivalrous to the men. They hold the levers of power now, so I should have more doors held open for me.

Before I get a bunch of NAWALT type arguments, it doesn’t matter. Societal moors, family courts, and DV laws have changed the playing field. If you don’t like what you see from men out there, I suggest you go talk to women. Women need to stop fighting for more to be taken away from men. They need to stop breaking up families because life is hard, and when they do, they need to accept that it is going to be hard to work with that man to raise kids in separate households. Women need to fight for men to have a strong footing in society again. Stop complaining, and look at the playing field from a man’s perspective. If you want men to behave like men of the past, then the world they live in needs to look more like the world of the past. If you want men who are going to use you, and go about their lives doing what makes them happy, then keep on doing what you are doing. Men will adapt, and you are not going to find freedom when men stop making themselves a choice in your lives. There will be fewer and fewer gullible chumps looking to marry you, because that is how you raise a family, since very few families are being raised by an intact family any more. The dream has been exposed to young men, and they aren’t signing up for what their fathers endured.

Ten-Foured,

JeD

Child Support Is Immoral: A quick followup

HeligKo
Slave shackles

I just want to clarify one thing for anyone reading this. I don’t support men not fathering their children, or paying for things the children need. My accusation of immorality is the against a system that demands that they owe a portion of there income to their former partner to pay for the children, and that system is going to take it by force. It has turned motherhood into a paid vocation. The only system in history where motherhood has been a viable vocation is the ones where the mother was married to the father of her children. We have replaced the husband/provider/protector role of men in society with a model that has women choosing a lover of the moment, the government is her protector, and the father(s) of her children are her providers. Women are given the children in so many cases because they were the primary provider, and men are accused of not being active enough in the children’s life when they were together. Well that doesn’t account for the fact that there isn’t a man I know who wouldn’t want to stay home and raise their kids, but responsibility takes over, and they realize someone has to provide the means for these little people to grow up. They do this willingly, and often view the time that the mother has with the children as a gift they were able to give to both the mother and the children. That is used against them in custody cases and child support issues. Men if you are brave enough to get married, then realize that she will be treated as sacrificial for your sacrifice of time with the kids, and if you are the stay at home dad you will be treated as lazy for not getting a good job, and letting her stay home and be the doting mother.

Ten-Foured,

JeD

Child Support Is Immoral

HeligKo
Slave shackles

I know that in our culture, this statement is considered ridiculous. We have been fed a line for our entire lifetime about dead beat dads. I think it is time for us to reexamine this thing we call love, marriage, and child raising. The rules we are playing by are from the 1930s. They are based on a society very different than the one that we live in. Alimony and child support are based on a society where women rarely worked if they were mothers, and couldn’t earn what a man earns. They are based on a society where women rarely left left their husband providers, but the men left their families to start over with another woman. I don’t know that I actually believe that story, but it was certainly more likely than it is today. I am not going to talk about abusive relationships, and when I say abusive, I mean someone is being controlled or broken in some way. We all feel abused after going through the trials of a failed marriage. Truly abusive relationships are much more rare than we are led to believe. Now in modern culture marriages are ended with little more thought than a dating relationship, and women have the same opportunity to earn what a man earns.

The next problem is that the courts, at least here in the USA aim to provide the same standard of living for the children that they had during the marriage. They also apply a standard that the children deserve a certain portion of the parents income. The standard of “the best interest of the children” is applied.

The first problem is when two parents are not together, unless there is significant means involved, it is impossible to provide the children with the same standard of living. You suddenly have two households where there was one. Now that father’s rightfully expect to have equal time with their kids, they must have a home that is adequate to house their children.

The next problem is the idea that the children have any right to the parents income. This is the idea that is applied to justify child support. When a marriage stays intact, the only index used to measure if the child is receiving what they deserve is whether they are healthy mentally and physically, and if they aren’t then they are receiving appropriate care. Suddenly in divorce, they deserve a percentage of the income, and that income is entrusted without strings to one of the parents, usually the mother. This is insane. What if the parents normally saved 60% of the income, and now suddenly one can’t. Or what if the divorce is over the fact the husband wants to take a job that pays 50% of what he used to make, so he doesn’t have to travel anymore. Suddenly the court has control over whether he is allowed to do that without going to jail. The court says he must earn close to his total earning potential. He no longer has a choice in the matter like he did before. Sure sounds like slavery to me.

The best interest of the child drives me nuts. If the court were interested in the best interest of the child, then there would be more remidations ordered to avoid divorce by the court, and less screwing with peoples lives. Since when is it in the best interest of the child to have the court in the middle of their lives their entire childhood. The other problem with that argument is that it is completely subjective. The courts are supposed to try to make objective decisions, and they are being placed in a position that requires subjective reasoning, which they are not equipped to handle, so they try to pretend that with the right experts they are making a subjective decision. Lets not kid ourselves, none of this is about the best interest of the child. If it were, then very few parents would be allowed to raise our children. We screw them up even in a good home. That is a part of life. We learn how to overcome the shit in our lives, and we all have shit even in the best of circumstances.

All this sets the stage a little, but the truth is in the western world, money is power. Having money gives you power, but so does controlling someone else’s money. Child support being based on a percentage of the parents income is not about providing for the child. It is about transferring wealth, and that is always evil. Simply put in the modern world, when parents are sharing responsibilities for the kids, there is no reason for a wealth transfer. The logic is convoluted. Probably because it isn’t about the kids at all. If a mother or father has chosen to cut out the other parent, then they deserve no part of that person’s income, and if that person shares in any part of the parental duties, then they should pay while they are have the children in their custody for the child’s needs. If the carrot of money from the other partner is removed, there would be far fewer divorces and out of wed lock children.

Now lets look at the logic of child support turned on its head a little. If time with children is valuable for the parent, then the time that is taken away from the parent should be compensated for. The parent who has the most earning power has the most valuable time. They should be compensated for the lost time with the children at a higher rate than the parent who has a lower income. In most divorce situations that would mean a stay at home mom would be due no child support at the time of the divorce, and if she had the children 50% of the time, she would owe the father a large sum for the lost time with his children. She would have to get a job, and support herself and compensate her ex-husband for his lost time with his kids. Isn’t this how most law suits work. The person who has incurred harm is compensated to make up for the harm. Well in a split custody situation both parties have incurred harm, but one is more valuable in the market place than the other.

Men have sought divorces at roughly the same rate throughout the history that it has been tracked. They divorce today for roughly the same reasons they always have. Women rarely sought divorce before. It took some extreme circumstances to give up the security of marriage. The system has been changed enough that they don’t lose the security when they divorce. They get financial support, and the state steps in to make sure their ex-husband continues to dutifully take care of her in the name of the children. Once the risks of not being married with children were reduced women have sought divorce for rather frivolous reasons at an alarming rate. Not that the men’s reasons were less frivolous, but the rate of them choosing to divorce is and has been much lower than the women choosing to do so now.

The truth is I don’t think anyone should pay child support. If two people or one of two people choose to part ways, then the children should be considered marital assets (didn’t want to say property). They have value to both the parents. It doesn’t matter much if one is a better parent than the other, if both are adequate. Yes merely adequate, because if the bar is set any higher, it is just a foothold for the state to come take everyone’s kids and give them to parents they deem better than you. We have already established that with the parents not together, the best interest of the child isn’t really the issue. Both parents decided to have kids together, so they decided at some point the other one was going to be the kind of parent they would like to raise a kid with. The ramifications of that decision is that you are stuck raising that kid together whether you want to or not. Along with the decision to split, both parents should determine how they are going to afford to not be together. The fact our society puts so much weight on romance in marriage is ridiculous. The purpose of marriage is to raise a family. It is designed to combine the financial a time resources of two people to take care of each other’s needs and the needs of the children. Since the marriage is broken, then each party should be responsible for both the financial and time needs of their family, which is inclusive of the times you have the kids and are nearly complete, and the times when you don’t and are single.

We all know that the biggest reason for child support is to prevent divorce from putting women and children on the welfare roles. I suggest that if the financial incentives for divorce were removed, and some disincentives for divorce were in place, then you would have fewer split families, and the cost of the welfare cases that result would be less than the cost of child support enforcement costs now, and fewer dads would be estranged from their children. Of course this is supposition, but I don’t think I am too far off.

Ten-Foured,

JeD