Free At Last, and Why Men Don't Win Very Often

Well, last Wednesday was finally it. I'm a free man now, pretty much. No longer married, simply divorced. To tell the truth, I still struggle some with it, but for the most part, I'm glad that it's done now. Only one issue remains, and it is by far the most important: we still haven't figured out the final status for parenting time. I am asking for 50-50 split time, of course, and she doesn't want to give it to me, of course. I have yet to determine if the factors for her steadfast refusal to negotiate on this point are financial or emotional, but that's neither here nor there. Over the next two months, a court-appointed special advocate will be spending time with all of us, interviewing us, seeing how we do with the kids individually, and that person will make the final pronouncement. I'm actually very pleased by this, because I feel it gives me the best chance I'll have of making my case for why I feel 50-50 split parenting time is the best thing for the kids, and why I deserve to have my arguments for it heard, rather than summarily dismissed.

My divorce experience has been incredibly difficult, as most of you know. I have seen a very strange flipside, however, to this entire scenario. I have learned why men in general, and particularly here in America, are so universally derided, and thus why the divorce system in this country so typically favors the mother over the father.

Heidi (my girlfriend, for those of you who are new to my life) still has to deal quite regularly with her ex-husband, considering their son is 5 years old and still has to go see him. Dirk is quite a charming fellow when you meet him. Once you start to see how he acts and the decisions he makes, however, you see a completely different side of him, and it's quite a reversal from the charming fellow you originally met. (I'm going to be totally frank with all of you about Dirk, and I don't want you to be shocked.) Dirk is a completely uncaring, irresponsible, lazy, drug-addicted loser. If you believe I am being harsh, allow me to defend this proclamation with some facts:

1. Dirk is completely incapable of maintaining a job. He has had several just in the year that Heidi and I have known each other.
2. Dirk is completely incapable of maintaining a place of residence. He has lived in 4 or 5 different places in the last year. In two cases it appears his roommates kicked him out; the other places were all motels.
   
3. Dirk is completely incapable of maintaining anything about a car. In the last year, he has had 2 or 3 cars (some of them ended up with serious mechanical issues) and he has been thrown in jail for nonpayment of his car tag, then subsequent failure to answer court summons about the nonpayment of the tags.
4. He is supposed to pay Heidi about $350 a month in child support, but he can't even do that; his parents send Heidi her check every month.
5. He does drugs, and we know he's still doing them, because he is often high as a kite when Heidi talks to him on the phone.
   
6. Though he has been ordered by the court to refrain from doing so, he smokes in Donovan's presence. Most of you probably know that kids whose parents smoke are about 3-4 times more likely to smoke themselves when they get older. And don't even get me started on secondhand smoke...
7. He can't even maintain a regular schedule for his parenting time, and many times outright refuses to take additional time with his son if Heidi offers it to him.

I could go on and on here, but I won't; I think you get the general idea. Now, there are two sad facts about guys like Dirk. First, there are lots and lots of men in the world like Dirk. Men who were raised with no sense of responsibility and who are only interested in providing for their own desires. Men who don't really care about anything or anyone but themselves and who believe that the end always justifies the means. Men who don't take care of business. Men who are called men only because they have the necessary hardware. I know there are lots of these men out there because Heidi's story is not unique in any way. I've met many other divorced women with very similar stories to Heidi's. Given that I've seen the truth of Heidi's story firsthand, I can expect that many of these other stories are similarly true and not just sour grapes (though some undoubtedly are). It's still a sad fact that most men can't hold up the true word "man" and the virtues it can represent when applied to a GOOD man.

The other sad fact is that when there are good, decent, honest, hardworking men, they must suffer from the blanket insults applied to all men because of the bad ones. I have my flaws, but I am nowhere near what Dirk is. I can hold a job, and a car, and a place to live, and I pay my own financial obligations, and I don't do drugs, and I actually WANT more time with my kids and take it any way I can get it (short of kidnapping). Yet, because of men like Dirk, I have to suffer the slings and arrows of women and of the system that should look honestly at me and see what I work hard to be. This realization hits home hardest when I see that Dirk, with all that he is, gets exactly the same amount of parenting time that I get with my own children.

No wonder we call it "the battle of the sexes"...it seems we men don't exactly hold up our end of the trust-and-responsibility end of the the whole equation, do we? My best hope is that I can show that I am earnest in wanting more time with my kids, and that it really is in the kids' best interests to have that extra time with me. Please pray for me until it is done.

Thanks for reading along today.