I’m guessing you, like me NEVER missed a child support payment, even though we were treated like dirt by our respective ex-wives and the community at large.
Not altogether accurate, this. “Child support” (which is anything but) is a whole other topic I hardly ever comment on publicly and won’t here, other than to say that in my estimation paying or not paying it is no measure of a man. As for the community at large, I was never treated better in my life, in either instance, than after coming out from under the stigma that being associated with either of two women had stuck me with.
I am, simply put, my own man. I hold my head high and get on with business and go about it in my own way. This is both why I was fired from parenthood not once but twice (because I was never, ever going to agree to be anyone’s domestic servant), and why I am treated to this day with utmost respect and decency among my neighbors. Being one’s own man, living under one’s own terms of one’s own making, seems to have been more than enough for folks, most of my life. For the mothers of my children, it was the one thing neither of them was ever going to tolerate.
