His Estranged Kids Asked Him To Pay For Their College Tuition, But He’s Refusing
He kept his mouth shut to protect his kids and let their mom ruin his life. He allowed the truth to rot quietly so his kids didn’t have to carry the weight of their mom’s deception.
He lost his family, his house, and his job. His kids have been ignoring him, but then they reached out asking for money, and without giving him an apology. And somehow, he’s the one who feels guilty for saying no.
This 38-year-old man spent 17 years married to his 45-year-old ex-wife, and they got divorced approximately a year ago after he discovered that his wife had spent years cheating on him.
He doesn’t want to get into all of the terrible details, but he’s still trying to crawl out of the dumpster fire his ex-wife left behind for him to clean up.
He has three kids with his ex-wife, and when her affair was exposed, his 16-year-old daughter attempted to cover it all up.
“She swore what I’d seen wasn’t real, made me feel like an idiot, like I was losing it. Turned out she was just protecting her mom, and once the truth was out, I looked like the fool anyway,” he explained.
“That stung more than I expected. My therapist said she was gaslighting me, but she was just a kid, so I tried to forgive her. We had to sell off everything we owned together because of debts she’d kept hidden.”
“My credit tanked, and then the burger joint I’d managed for the last decade shut down. I had to relocate to a part of the state I hate because there were no other openings. No friends, no support system. TERRIBLE roommates.”
After he initiated the divorce, his kids quit speaking to him. But out of the blue, they’re now contacting him, and it’s only because they expect him to pay for their college tuition.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
He replied to them they he has no money, so he can’t help them out after he suffered so much loss following his ex-wife’s messes he had to be responsible for.
However, he refrained from providing the kids with more information, as he still does not want to throw his ex-wife ‘under the bus.’
His kids are stuck living with his ex, and he knows they don’t have a stable life with her, so he doesn’t want to make everything for them worse, even if they are estranged from him.
“I feel like [a jerk] because in therapy I have worked through a lot, and I do want a relationship with my kids, but maybe I want a relationship with who I thought my kids would grow into, now who they are now,” he continued.
He didn’t break this family; he just stopped pretending he could keep fixing it alone. If his kids want college money, I think they should ask the parent they stayed loyal to. He’s not heartless, he’s human, and that’s more than anyone’s given him credit for in a long time.
Do you think he’s wrong for not wanting to pay for his kids to go to college?
You can read the original post below.
More About:Relationships
