Tag: Facebook

When Does It End

HeligKo
The Endless Tunnel

I have been reading things at A Shrink For Men. Its abuse week or some such thing. The stories stand out to me, because these men have or are dealing with the things that I have. Some to a greater degree, and some to the same. I know these stories seem crazy when you read them, but they happen, and with greater frequency than most people understand. The reality is our culture breeds borderlines. We forgive their actions, because they are women. Men who behaved this way go to jail. Women who behave this way send men to jail.

I am heading back to court next week. I have lost all hope of a good outcome. I don’t have a settlement yet, and I suspect that she will not give me what I want. I am financially unable to pay my rent. I have to dig up $600 to avoid contempt of court to pay the GAL who basically decided that I am not a worthy father. He handed all the power to her. He took away any normal negotiation tool that I may have. So far she has taken the position of simply limiting my time to a point to maximize her child support. This isn’t so bad, except she has the power to make it less, and she very well might do so. I hope that I will get a settlement, and the one I want. I am not asking her for anything really. I am asking for her to accept my retirement money, and to cash out a portion to give back to me. Money that is already mine, that I don’t have access to. Money I need to get back on my feet. Money I need to avoid bankruptcy. I am not even sure that bankruptcy saves me, because much of my debt is in the category of things that aren’t subject to bankruptcy. I am sure my lawyer has made sure that a good chunk of my time has been charged for custody and child support issues, so that it isn’t subject to discharge.

The system loves women like my ex. They feed the system with unending debates. She can look reasonable, because the conflict feeds her. Its a natural place for her to thrive. Absent of this conflict, she is likely to explode to create the conflict that she needs to feed on. The process is killing me. I walk around with constant chest pain. I have had multiple panic attacks while playing soccer that have dropped me to my knees. The judge has lost her patience with the case, but I won’t be surprised if it continues. If she settles with me, then it will be a constant return regarding the children. I have decided that I have to move if things become worse. I need to go live somewhere where I am not constantly reminded that my children aren’t mine anymore. The supreme court has upheld that parents not being married don’t lose parental rights, but the family court denies these rights to men everyday. They do so by threatening the worst, even though its probably not legal. Men settle fearing to lose it all. Lawyers get rich off of divorce. Divorce is a predictable cash cow. I haven’t won a single point in court or negotiations, yet my attorney will still collect the thousands of dollars for this privilege. In my field I don’t get paid if the work isn’t satisfactory. If I do get paid for shoddy work, I will get sued. Most courts won’t hold attorneys to account, because they are all a part of the system. When I went through my DUI case, the attorney explained to me which lawyers were prosecutors where, and judges elsewhere, and defense attorneys somewhere else. The system feeds on itself. If a lawyer loses a case against another lawyer they risk being ostracized in future proceeding with that attorney or their law firm. Unless you can afford to hire a hotshot from out of town, then you will not find an attorney who will be vigorous in these cases. The same goes for the GAL in family court. No one wants to challenge them too harshly, because they have to deal with them in other cases, and can’t afford to lose every time they are in the same courtroom.

I don’t have much fight left in me. I truly understand how men walk away from all this. The pain of living it everyday is too much. Its easier to live your life completely apart from anything that may bring you in the path of your children who might choose to ignore you. When you are unable to provide directly for your children, it hurts to say that they have to ask their mother, knowing that you have provided the funds for the things they need. The only glimmer of hope I get is when my kids see things for how they really are. I am attacked for pointing it out to them, so its not often. I don’t see them seeing the truth for long if I lose time with them. Someday, when my sons are facing the family court themselves, they will understand. Its possible that they will also be so estranged from me that they won’t call me, but they will mourn what they lost, and what they will likely lose with their kids. Its at that moment that they will realize the pain that I felt.

I don’t know what is going on, but she seems to have turned my family against me. My sister has pulled away from me for most of the last 3 years. All the while telling me she doesn’t like my ex, and never did. A couple weekends ago, I was at my daughter’s soccer game, and my sister was at the game. I didn’t know she was coming. She sitting next to my ex and chatting like they were the best of friends. She wouldn’t acknowledge me. I talked to my brother-in-law for a bit, until she gave him a look. He sat down behind her like a puppy dog. My mom has met with my ex on at least two occasions. The first time she came at me with all sorts of accusations that were straight from my ex’s lips. She has since blown up over a Facebook post from my current wife. One that had nothing to with her. I assume that a guilty conscious fueled the backlash. I guess people asked her if it was about her. I can only assume that she has talked about things that would make them think like that. For years I have asked her and my dad to be more involved in my kids life. I have pointed out that as they get older, they will see that she is more engaged with my sisters kids. I was told as my ex and I split, that she was largely the reason. Nothing changed. My dad was sick with cancer, and that was the new excuse. My dad has since died and my mother remarried, and nothing has changed. They still make it my nieces events. When my daughter played on the same team as her cousin, they watched her play. They haven’t seen her play since. My daughter also always said that they were there to see her cousin. My step-daughter was super-excited that my mom was at her school show, but she didn’t even realize my step-daughter was in the show. She was there to see my other niece. I have come to the conclusion that the problem is likely with me, because I am the constant in the equation, but she has never indicated what the problem is. I wish I had moved away years ago. I have stayed in the area, because I was made to feel guilty to do otherwise. Now I feel trapped by the fear of losing my children. This is why if I lose more time with them, I will make that move. I will likely make it with or without my current wife. There is only so much pain I can face, and if she is unable or unwilling to move with me, I cannot stay.

I honestly think that my ex has manipulated things for her advantage. I suspect that I will hear in court that I should have less time, and that she will do a better job than I do in keeping the kids connected with my family. I think she will hold my kids hostage to get what she wants from my family. She will threaten that they don’t get to see them if they don’t play along, and then use the contact she controls to justify taking them away from me. I have grown to sympathize with the men who after family court have committed suicide in fantastic ways to send their message to the world. I understand how a mild mannered man is driven to murder. Not that these are things I am considering, but what once seemed so crazy to me, now is evident. These men feel powerless. Not just powerless, but enslaved. They have been enslaved through the system to the very person who despises them. They are continually punished by their slaver, and they are treated as something despicable. Their is no justification for what happens in family court. For the court, it is simple pragmatism. The court operates as it always has. It functions to control conflict, and has a system that does just that.

In every case that I am personally familiar with, only one parent is willing to use the kids as pawns to get what they want. That parent will win. The other parent, who actually has the kids best interest at heart, will lose. They will lose big time, and the kids will lose as well. The kids lose the parent who cares most for them. The courts do not use the wisdom of Solomon. Most judges probably look at the story of Solomon, and think that they are like him, but they are not. They are more like the appointed judges under Moses. Their job was to give Moses time. To let him do other things that were demanded of him. Often they would try to mimic what they thought he would do, but in the end when he made wise decisions these judges were surprised by what he did. Wise people do not mimic others. They instead learn to understand that thought process of others, and use the same tools that other wise men used to make new wise decisions. I hope for a day where some wise men make changes to fix this mockery of a family court system.

This post is all over the place, there is just a lot of shit going on in my head that I needed to dump.

Ten-Foured,

JeD

Facebook Stories

HeligKo

First, no this will not have anything to do with the use of Facebook to destroy marriages. That topic is fairly uninteresting, because it is not Facebook that facilitates cheating, it is just a means of communication, and the women who want to cheat will find a means to communicate and connect to willing men. This is about how Facebook tells the stories of people who go through divorce.

Recently I was told that an acquaintance of mine was divorced. He was one of my U6 coaches that went ahead and continued to coach in the U8 age groups. I liked the guy a lot. His wife was beautiful and engaging and his children were pleasant to be around. His wife was a friend of mine on Facebook. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t use Facebook. I went back through her history. Pursuing the story she was telling. There was very little there about her husband. I saw pictures of them happily on a cruise in January of 2011 with friends. That was it. Then after all the noise there are pictures of the Holidays without him. I was dismayed. I saw them out and about town on a regular basis. They were always a pleasant couple. So why does this couple get divorced with two kids under the age 8. All I have is rumors, but it seems she wasn’t happy, and wanted to pursue opening her own photography studio full time. His family business took too much time, and so she didn’t have time to do what she wanted full time. So shortly after the kids are all in school, she forces the issue with divorce. Now he has to take the kids, and she will have that time to do her thing. Oh but wait there were other pictures that showed up right after the divorce was final. The pictures of her and another man. As a matter of fact, it became her cover picture. I am sure the rumors play their part, but she was running a photography studio, and with both kids in school, she had the time to do that full time. A studio that she would not of had the luxury to open if it hadn’t been for that husband and his job supporting her getting it started, with the expensive cameras and equipment, and general lack of income until her name became known.

Another couple I have known for years went through a divorce. I had to remove the wife as a friend. Her posts became so toxic. Her Facebook story is one of a woman who was abandoned by a man who wasn’t taking care of her kids. A man who didn’t care about their fate. He just left and wasn’t fixing things at the house he promised to. The kids missed him because he was spending all his time with his new girlfriend. Now this couple I know the real story. You see it is a part of my story. The wife was a lifelong friend of my wife. She is a toxic, whorish, overbearing woman. She decided that she wanted a divorce. She hadn’t married the man who produced her first child. She had two children with her husband. She began picking fights with him whenever he was home about not doing enough around the house. She was a stay at home mom, who didn’t fix breakfast or dinner, didn’t vacuum, do laundry, or just about anything else. Oh and both the kids were very much school age. She then said she needed a social life. She began going out to bars, and hooking up with random guys. My wife would go also, supposedly to make sure this lady stayed out of trouble. I took this at face value, but since she wasn’t staying out of trouble, then what was my wife doing. Right, of course she was getting into her own trouble. This woman eventually kicked her husband out, then moved out. He moved back in, and then things went back and forth again. As they divorced. He paid the entirety of his paycheck to her, and then delivered pizzas at night for his living money. He has been chastised for not being more supportive with his fucked up stepson, who he was never allowed to be more than a baby sitter for. Well I recently had dinner with this man. Turns out she began turning the kids against him to the point who couldn’t handle having them with him the four days a month he was allowed. He got the child support adjusted to something that allowed him to have a life. He is now considering moving to another state for work, because he there isn’t much hope for him seeing his kids. I feel sorry for him. I know how he got there. I would make different choices, but he is of a generation a bit older than me. He also isn’t much of a fighter.

I find it interesting how things go on Facebook. It seems that when someone is talking about custody and divorce on their, well they are trying to control the conversation and shape the view others have. I generally find these people unbelievable. Other’s its the subtext that is there. The tone of their posts. The character of their pictures that tell the story. These are the ones that I am interested in. The story is partly there. You see it, but its not all there. Oh and I can make up the rest. I look for the hidden story. Sometimes I will send a message to a man to find out his story. Surprisingly most respond, and seem a bit surprised that anyone cared to ask. Women talk, even if no one wants to hear them. Their story will get out. Men tend to keep it in. They don’t want to air their dirty laundry for everyone. I have found though that this is not the case of its a privacy issue. They lost that with their wife’s blabbering most of the time. It is the case that they don’t want to force people to take sides, and they don’t want to force their burden onto someone else. Many men think telling the story without being asked is akin to asking for help. Keep this in mind. It has been a good thing for people to ask my story. It has let me know people care, and has helped me think through things as I share them with someone else.

Ten-Foured,

JeD