My Biggest Disappointment With My Ex Wasn’t as a Husband
It’s the father he turned out to be.

My guy high school bestie is in town for a few days.
“I want to take your boys out to dinner,” he says.
I smile because I know what he’s up to.
He loves my guys and definitely likes to hang out with them. But he has a broader agenda. I know this because, over the past years, he’s made an effort to see them.
“Your boys need to see strong men,” he once said. “The type of men who wouldn’t do the kinds of things their father did.”
Best friends worry about you.
And he knows me well.
I worry about both my ex-husband’s absence and his example.
The man I married wasn’t a great husband. But I would have said he was a good dad. I would have told you he was loving and caring with our children.
But then I divorced him.
I never understood men who didn’t come looking for their kids.
The kind of guys who start new families but forget about their old ones. I couldn’t fathom that type of detachment. It’s unnatural. Divorce is a breakup between two people, not an entire family.
Once my ex-husband moved out he never came looking for our boys.
He would show up at their games and some carpools.
Our oldest would come home from college for the summer and he would see him twice if that. Worse, we lived in the same town. My boys' father was operating in their world without them.
There were no regular weekday dinners.
No weekends overnight and no holidays.
He ghosted his own children.
I called him a year into our divorce.
“You need to see the boys,” I say. “Our youngest is only 14 he’s looking for his father. He misses you. Our other boys are a senior and in college. They are growing naturally independent but you have to make more time him.”
“I see them,” he says. “I go to their games and drive them sometimes.”
“That’s not spending time with them,” I say. “You’re watching them play not interacting with them. And you only drive them sometimes because my car keeps ending up in the shop and you withhold my transportation by leaving it at the repair shop for weeks at a time.”
Nothing changed after that phone call.
The financial abuse my husband was inflicting just intensified.
He hurt them to hurt me.
I tried to appeal to him, “When will you decide you love our children more than you hate me?” I would ask.
It was gut-wrenching to witness my children’s heartbreak.
It was hard to hear comments like, “Mom, I know dad is mad at you for leaving him. But what about us? We live here too and we need to eat.”
Or…
“It’s painful to live a few miles from your father and never see him.”
Or…
“We love Dad but we don’t want to be anything like him.”
I can deal with my ex being a disappointment as a husband.
It’s much harder to witness his disappointment as a father.
It’s a burden for my boys.
I know this because I understand that burden. I loved my father too. And though I had never said those words out loud I had thought them many times.
“I love him but I don’t want to be anything like him.”
I followed my mother's example.
All five of us children did.
She was everything a parent should be.
She was the one who made it clear she couldn’t live without us. She was the parent we could count on. She was the steady Eddie in our lives. She was a positive role model. She was our solid foundation and value system.
She was our whole word and we were hers.
She was the parent we could respect.
In truth, my ex-husband stopped being a good dad toward the end of our marriage when I told him I was unhappy and thinking of leaving. He began setting a bad example then.
Our marriage counselor told him, “You need to go home and tell your children you will never behave like that again and you will always make sure their home is a safe and predictable place.”
My ex-husband never did this.
Divorce was the emotional death of my children’s father.
They lost the dad they believed raised them.
I can’t get that back for them. I can’t make it better. I can only do what my own mother did. And love them enough for two parents.
One day during the divorce, my youngest son said, “I think you’re pretending to be happy for my sake.”
“No,” I said. “I am happy. If I have God and you boys I have everything.”
Those weren’t my words.
I was borrowing them from my mother.
A woman who was left to physically, financially, and emotionally care for five children. A woman who worked two jobs and went to night school. It took her eight years but she graduated with an accounting degree and went to work for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
She was stressed but she never complained.
She thought she was incredibly blessed. She was a spiritual giant. She believed everything happened for a reason. This was meant to be her path. Despite the hardships she encountered, we lived an incredible life.
We had to carry our weight but we lived as well as two-parent households.
I would forgive my ex-husband if he made things right with our children.
I would forgive him for everything.
If he would only do the right thing. And give my boys back their father, not the man they watched replace him. They thought maybe once he got over his anger he would return.
They thought when he remarried he might be happy…
And return.
But he didn’t.
They finally believe he is who he is.
It’s a heartbreaking reality.
Thankfully they have strong men in their lives who set a better example.