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What to Do When Your Ex Is an Absent Parent
When your ex isn’t there for the kids, you need to remember what you should and shouldn’t be doing.
I found out that my ex-husband had a daughter with his high school girlfriend a week before our wedding. Some people would say I should have walked away then and maybe I should have — but I was already three months pregnant with my oldest kid, so it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
The reason I didn’t find out about his daughter until a week before our wedding was that he was an absent father to her. He didn’t see her, call her, or even pay child support for her — not even after we were married and I would specifically set that money aside so that all he had to do was send the check every month.
So when I decided to file for divorce, I knew one of the consequences of that decision was that he would disappear from my kids’ lives. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly. I debated whether my happiness should be put ahead of my kids having a father. I wondered if his absence would really be noted given how uninvolved he was when he was living in the same home. I questioned whether the infidelity and abuse he subjected me to was really as bad as I thought.
In the end, I decided that both of my children and I would all be better off without my ex in our lives. I knew that if I was wrong and he chose to…
