A Divorced Man: Never again!

A Divorced Man: Never again!.

Daily Prompt: Have you ever gone to a new place or tried a new experience and thought to yourself, “I’m never doing that again!” Tell us about it.

If there is one thing I will not do ever again, it is having a relationship with a divorced man.

A little background here: I met the Ex when I was 24 years old, he was a 40-year-old man with an ex-wife who had cheated on him, a six-year-old daughter, a mother who died of breast cancer, a father who suffers from dementia and two houses of which one still has to be sold. I did fall for him. Afterwards I felt a little out of place, living on my own for hardly two weeks. I fall for men who can give me a kind of security, I am aware of that now – I was not back then, and sought it in someone much older. What he brought me was more insecurity and a lack of understanding for someone so much younger.

Did I love him? I think I did. I did… care about him anyway. It was not enough. It was by far not enough to beat all those problems he brought with him. The fights with his ex-wife, while I told him to ‘ease down, you only make it worse’, he told me I could not know, I was young and had never been divorced. Meanwhile I hurdled his daughter with me out of the house, to a playground, when he shouted at her mother over the phone, or at her uncle because he did not want to give her enough for her birthday present. When I told him to sort out his finances without the guy who sold him all the way too expensive insurances, he said I did not know anything about it; I had never bought my own house. What did I know about finances or insurances? I was only 25 years old. When I told him to give his daughter more structure, to let her chose between two dishes to eat instead of asking her ‘what do you want to eat tonight?’ (she was only seven at the time, and clearly could not handle the blank choices he made her make), I, the ex-scout-leader and eldest of 5 siblings, was told ‘how did I know what was good enough for children? I was young and did not even have children’. So his ability to put his shizzles in his ex without a condom made that he knew how to raise children. Right.

I will never again chose a divorced man as a significant other. Not only because I already have the most wonderful fiancé, without a nasty past, also because I have been hurt too much to be able to deal with it again. Because of what happened. Because of the feeling of guilt that I left him, and that after that he has never seen his daughter again, because her mother did not trust him with his daughter when I was not around. I do not want to be responsible for a father to see his child anymore. I will have my own family, my own children who I can love and take care for and for whom I can decide, for whom I do not have to watch the persons who can protect them fight over them and make the world a worse place for them, while I can do nothing. It was too hard, it hurt too much.

There is one person I have a lot of respect for in this story: my ex’ daughter’s stepdad. Yes, the one her mother left my ex for. Afterwards he made her leave the ex, because he saw he was too difficult a person to cope with, and he stuck around. He stayed, they are together still. He kept fighting for the little girl who became his stepdaughter. The position that was too much for me – fighting without being able to fight, because you know the child is worth it – he was able to keep doing it.

via A Divorced Man: Never again!.