On paper I probably appeared to have the perfect life; a lovely wife, two beautiful children, a big house in a nice area and a good job – the suburban dream. But inside my marriage I wasn’t happy. I left my wife and gave up all the security of suburban life for someone ten years younger than me. This may immediately trigger the stereotype about why men leave wives – that all men are cheaters who can never be trusted – but this is not my story. I’ve never strayed before, I’ve always been a very loyal person, I don’t see the point of being with someone if you’re not wholly committed to them. When I married my wife I was thrilled, she’s very genuine, attractive, laughs a lot and has a good sense of humour. We were a happy couple, the envy of friends who knew we were in love and loved each other’s company. So what changed? As much as it sounds like a cliche, kids changed everything. Not immediately, it was a slow change, not even noticeable in any particular moment. My now ex-wife is an amazing mum, so loving, so dedicated, so in-tune with her children. This incredible love and dedication to her children, however, meant there was nothing left for me and we drifted apart. Life with two small children is exhausting, the demands relentless. If we somehow found ourselves with a tiny bit of spare time whilst our children were having simultaneous daytime sleeps, conversation with me was not important, intimacy was not important. Instead of trying to enjoy some rare time together, my ex-wife would use the time to boil and puree vegetables so that the kids would have some healthy meals in the freezer, just in case. A weekend away for just the two of us was unthinkable, as it had the potential to cause far too much distress for the children to be away from their mum for two days and a night. At work I started sitting next to a girl who was almost ten years my junior. At that point, leaving my wife had never crossed my mind. I always thought that as our children got a bit older the demands would subside and we’d find the time for each other to reconnect. There were many reasons to think that things could get better in my marriage, but they didn’t. Watch: MM Confessions: When I knew our relationship was over. Post continues after video. The girl I sat next to at work is incredibly genuine, raw and endearing (and yes, pretty). If I’d been single in this situation I probably would have desperately tried to impress her all the time, but I wasn’t, I was just myself. And we clicked. Not romantically at first, but as friends, and we developed a deep and trusting relationship. She felt comfortable telling me personal things, and in turn, I did also. After about a year and a half of this friendship, something changed inside me (it must have been the realisation that my marriage just wasn’t getting any better) and boom, I was in love with this girl. Add a work function and alcohol, and shortly after we were together. This girl gave me the emotional connection that I’d been craving, that feeling of being deeply connected to someone. We did things that I hadn’t done in years – we would stay up all night talking, stay in bed all day sharing our thoughts and life experiences. For her, just being with me was enough. This was not a feeling I’d experienced with my wife since our first child was born. The connection between us made me feel whole and when I thought about this girl, I could feel my heart swell and a warm glow inside my body. To feel connected – understood – are deep human needs and I couldn’t find this within my marriage. Sadly, the relationship with this girl didn’t last forever. We spent a lot of time together, but unknown to me until the relationship ended, this girl suffers from anxiety, and it was incredibly challenging to have a relationship with someone with this added dynamic. If I’d known it was anxiety, and what anxiety is, we’d still be together. Instead, I spent my time trying to allay her worries, only to lose my confidence in the process. Why am I telling this story? For a few reasons; firstly, the reason I left my wife was because I craved an emotional connection that she couldn’t give me. It had nothing to do with lust or a mid-life crisis. Wives out there – your husbands have emotional needs. I know there is a lot of pressure on wives and mums, I don’t want to underestimate that at all. But mental health statistics are terrible for men in their 30s and 40s and I’m sure it’s because a lot of men feel lonely and isolated, during a time when there is a lot of pressure on them to provide. There are so many amazing mums out there, but ask yourself this question – what’s more important, making sure that every possible need or want of your child is attended to, or spending a bit of quality time with your husband where you’re completely present and you can switch off from children’s logistics for some time? In my experience, my wife was so focused on meeting any possible need of her children that she lost sight of having a harmonious family dynamic. My story may be scary or confronting for many wives, but my marriage ended because the emotional connection I needed from my wife just wasn’t there. I take some responsibility in all this too, but I didn’t give up on it easily and made many attempts to save the relationship. So please, wives, do your best to connect with your husbands at an emotional level. Many men might not open up at first, so be prepared to persist, be the one that’s vulnerable first if you need to be. We need to feel understood, we need to feel connected. Millions of poor children and teenagers grow up without their biological father, and often when you ask them about it, you hear a litany of male barbarism. You hear teens describe how their dad used to beat up their mom, how an absent father had five kids with different women and abandoned them all. The children’s tales often reinforce the standard image we have of the deadbeat dad — the selfish cad who spreads his seed and leaves generations of wreckage in his wake. Yet when you ask absent fathers themselves, you get a different picture. You meet guys who desperately did not want to leave their children, who swear they have tried to be with them, who may feel unworthy of fatherhood but who don’t want to be the missing dad their own father was. In truth, when fathers abandon their own children, it’s not a momentary decision; it’s a long, tragic process. A number of researchers have tried to understand how father abandonment happens, most importantly Kathryn Edin and Timothy J. Nelson, who moved to Philadelphia and Camden, N.J., immersed themselves in the neighborhoods there and produced an amazing account, “Doing the Best I Can.” Pregnancy is rarely planned among the populations they studied. Typically the parents are in a semi-relationship that is somewhere between a one-night stand and an actual boyfriend-girlfriend bond. The couple use contraception at the beginning, but when it becomes understood they are “together,” they stop. They don’t really talk about pregnancy, but they sort of make it possible. When the men learn that their partner is pregnant, they don’t panic, or lament all the freedom they are going to miss. On the contrary, three-quarters of the men in Edin and Nelson’s research were joyous at the news. The men are less likely than the women to want to end the pregnancy with an abortion. These guys have often had a lot of negativity in their lives. The child is a chance to turn things around and live a disciplined life. The child is a chance to have a respected role, to find love and purpose. The men at this stage are filled with earnest resolve. They begin to take the relationship more seriously and commit to the kid during infancy. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black single fathers are more involved in their kids’ lives than white single fathers at this stage. The key weakness is not the father’s bond to the child; it’s the parents’ bond with each other. They usually went into this without much love or sense of commitment. The fathers often retain a traditional and idealistic “Leave It to Beaver” view of marriage. They dream of the perfect soul mate. They know this woman isn’t it, so they are still looking. Buried in the rigors of motherhood, the women, meanwhile, take a very practical view of what they need in a man: Will this guy provide the financial stability I need, and if not, can I trade up to someone who will? The father begins to perceive the mother as bossy, just another authority figure to be skirted. Run-ins with drugs, the law and other women begin to make him look even more disreputable in her eyes. By the time the child is 1, half these couples have split up, and many of the rest will part ways soon after. Suddenly there’s a new guy living in the house, a man who resents the old one. The father redefines his role. He no longer aims to be the provider and caregiver, just the occasional “best friend” who can drop by and provide a little love. This is a role he has a shot at fulfilling, but it destroys parental responsibility. He believes in fatherhood and tries it again with other women, with the same high hopes, but he’s really only taking care of the child he happens to be living with at any given moment. The rest are abandoned. The good news, especially from the Edin-Nelson research, is that the so-called deadbeat dads want to succeed as fathers. Their goals and values point them in the right direction, but they’re stuck in a formless romantic anarchy. They need help finding the practical bridges to help them get where they want to go. People are rising up to provide that help. In Chicago the poet Harold Green has been championing fatherhood. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a vocal leader in this cause, had Green recite his poem “Something to Live For” at his inaugural in 2015, and this Sunday the two of them will be appearing together to honor role model fathers on the South Side. It would be great if society could rally around the six or seven key bridges on the path to fatherhood. For example, find someone you love before you have intercourse. Or, make sure you want to spend years with this partner before you get off the pill. Or, create a couple’s budget to make sure you can afford this. The stable two-parent family is what we want. A few economic support programs and a confident social script could make an enormous difference in getting us there. |