Of Ex's and Hoe's

It has come to light that the husbands ex-wife has been living in an alternate universe. For many years she has told her daughter I was the sole reason for her and his divorce. Being that I am a woman who likes to live in honesty I will admit, when we met he was married. He had a child with his wife, who was still in high school back in Texas. He told me they were estranged due to her infidelities and dishonesty. We were friends from when we met in November 1994 until I left North Carolina in April 1995. In September of that year I began writing him. He was such a good friend that I did not really want to lose contact. He wrote me back and talked a lot of his daughter. He mentioned his wife and how she did not want to move to North Carolina and was still having a relationship with a woman. They had finally decided to divorce.

We wrote and talked on the phone. For Christmas leave he wanted to come visit me. I encouraged him to go see his daughter and family. That is what he did, and ended up probably fathering another child with his wife. She for years has denied the child is his. He tried working it out with her yet, again. We still wrote and I was in a relationship with another person. This was 1996. I moved to Kansas with that person and the letter writing continued. He had become my best friend and someone I could tell anything to. I will be honest I had feelings for him beyond a friendship for years, held them at bay because he was married.

The Kansas persona and I broke up. We still remained room-mates. Much to my dismay and weakness for not wanting anyone homeless. Jimmy and I started a long distance relationship which consisted of phone calls and lots of letters. In October of 1997 I made the bus ride from Wichita, Kansas to Jacksonville, North Carolina. I went not knowing if I was visiting or moving. It had been about two and half years since I saw him. We had both changed in appearance and more. Yet, it was still like we were those teenagers who talked on long walks and hung out at the music store.

I never moved back to Kansas.

During the time I was living the very sinful life, living with a still married man.....he proposed. His divorce papers came and I lost a baby. He told his parents about me and his ex-wife. They were still in Texas. When he was discharged from the Marines I went to Texas with him. He started to finalize his divorce (the state requires a class that has to be taken in Texas). We spent a lot of if time with his daughter and even his ex at times.

I often gave him the option of leaving me and making a life with them. He refused as she had moved on and was living with her partner. Before we married I told him that any kind of function we did for his daughter would include them, if they chose to come. No badmouthing her mom in front of her, ever! As far as I know, he was able to stick by these things.

Our oldest son was born. My grandpa was sick back in California. Jimmy's mom was mentally unstable and things seemed to be calling us out west. I left first with our oldest he followed suite two weeks later. We had his daaughter a few summers at first then, as the years went on the visits were less frequent. Sometimes we had no money, sometimes she did not want to come. He wanted her to live with us, she said she wanted to and was scared her mom would be mad. She chose to stay with her mom. Her calls became infrequent and emails stopped coming. She did not return any we made for many many months at time.

When she was upset at her mom, or hurt she would call. This became a pattern, and still is.

Over the weekend I was working on an article for this blog about the relationship between a step-mom and a step-daughter....it got a bit emotional. My heart ached and before it was finished other things happened. A little share of Facebook my husband made, from a conversation with our oldest son turned ugly. His ex joked, I made a joke and she lashed out. His daughter lashed out, a friend tried to stomp out the embers but, it was too late.

As I had predicted years earlier, lies had been told....and I was painted as a husband stilling hoe. Him as a filandering player with no regard. Well, I will admit in my younger days I was kind of a hoe...however that has nothing do with my marriage. He is hardly a player but, often gets attention he does not want.

Now his ex and his daughter have decided not to speak to him. Lovely...and all he wanted was to be in his daughters life, be friendly with his ex and enjoy life.

Maybe one day both sides will come to light and form the truth

Until then

Ex's and Hoe's

XOXOXOXO

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Comments

[Me]

Oh that sucks. I am hoping that his daughter comes around really soon. I'm sorry that this happened to you all. Sending lots of {{{HUGS}}}.

[Betty]

I was real sorry to see the Facebook train wreck. I hope you leave the door open for her. Tom and I were both raised by our mothers to have an anti-dad mentality. Tom's mother told him his father was a loser cheater who didn't pay his bills. Turns out the cheating was true, but she was a horrible wife to him. He paid his child support every month even though he wasn't allowed to see him for about seven years. They didn't communicate until Tom was an adult and we were together. He didn't know that his father was a person with a sex drive, feelings, and all that until he himself was grown. My mother in general raised me to see men in an unhealty way. They were supposed to cater to *me*. Housework was split 50/50 even if I sat at home, I was allowed to yell and he had to take it, etc. It carried over A LOT into how I treated my father as an adult. If he couldn't take time out to see me on a specific day I would go apeshit on him! I felt as though he owed me everything- money, time, and the desire to take all my bullshit. It took a long time to be good to my dad. I was probably in my early 20s before I treated him like a person (sad to say that). I hope that your stepdaughter will eventually develop a healthy relationship with her dad (and you). It took me even longer to be cordial with my stepmother and I've only learned to appreciate her in the last couple years. I've always seen her as the enemy because she is the reason my dad was no longer my dad. He chose HER. He chose to spend his money with her instead of fulfilling the promise of college. He chose to make sure she had clothes she wanted. He took her to the movies and on vacation. He made sure she had a car. The most devastating is that he chose to be 80 miles away from me to be with her. I only got every other weekend and she was still there on those weekends. It wasn't enough! I think the both of us had a lot of justified anger issues with our fathers for being far away and choosing women over us, but I think our mothers' dramatization of how we were to see our fathers' behaviors was wrong. They never taught us to see the men as people with alternate lives, they taught us that they were the enemy. I miss the fact that I didn't get to have a child or adolescent relationship with my dad, and so does Tom; but once we grew into adulthood and became parents ourselves we developed a -different- type of relationship with our fathers. We don't have the warm fuzzies that one would expect from growing up with a daddy around, but definitely an adult relationship based on respect, mutual interests, etc. We expect nothing from fathers that some would. We have more of a friendship type of relationship and I'm glad we at least have that.