My husband and I first met a few days before my high school graduation. We were set up by a mutal friend and sparks just seemed to fly. He was the first guy I had ever slept with. Two months after we got together, I found out I was pregnant. Nothing bad happened between us until after I went into the hospital for preterm labor. He wouldn't leave my side, refused to go to work. I was hospitalized for 15 days until I delivered our daughter two months early (we got married in the hospital four days before I had the baby. I had to stay in my bed during the ceremony). The day she was born, he lost his job. He told me not to worry and that things would be alright. The two of us lived with his mom and dad while I daughter was in the NICU. He began working constrution with his brother-in-law and would be too tired after work to drive us up to see our baby. She was in the NICU for two weeks. We moved in with my parents when she was two months. He lost his job shortly after that, so I went back to work when Em was 9 weeks old. John would go for months at a time not working, not looking, sleeping all day, staying out all night. We moved back in with his parents when Emily was five months old and finally got our own place when she was seven months. He worked for our landlord, but that only lasted a week. He stopped going in to work and decided that it better suited him to stay out all night and sleep all day. He'd come in at 7-8 in the morning, we would fight about where he had been. We got evicted (after one month!) and I left him for the first time. I got a job and two weeks after I started, I found out I was pregnant with our second. We worked things out and he decided to move in with his mother who had recently separated from his dad. He was doing so well with his job, but he never came to see me or Emily. I had to stop working at six months because I had began going into early labor again with our son. I was on bed rest with him from early March until delivery. As with our daughter, he lost his job the day after our son was born. During my bed rest period, I was still trying to keep up with our finances. I told him we needed a house so we could be together. I checked the balance of our checking and savings account and found several hundreds of dollars missing and unaccounted for. I confronted him after I got the bank statements. There were calls to 900 numbers and always large sums of money taken out at ATMs. He would try to turn it around, like he had the right to get mad because I asked. When our son was two months old, we got a house. We were both working, but that would soon change. He lost his job again, so it was down to my part time income. My employer bumped me up to 40 hours a week, but on $7, we were drowning. A friend of ours moved him (well, not really a friend of mine, but I knew her from the girl John had cheated on me with in the beginning of our relationship. That should have been a freakin huge red flag, huh?). I felt bad for her. She had a son a few months older than our little girl and I couldn't bear the thought of them living in a car or in a shelter. Besides, we had an extra room. She agreed to help me with the housework and give part of her child support money to us every month to pay the utilities. She didn't live there for that long. A week after she got there, I got a call from my husband's sister telling me that John had just told her that he and the roommate were sleeping together. I left work early (God bless understanding employers) and John denied that it happened. He kicked her out that night, but I couldn't help knowing it was true. I felt it in my heart. I confronted him about it for two weeks, days after the fact that I found the girl's underwear in my dirty clothes basket. I moved out and an hour after I did, the girl called me and asked how I was and if it was really over between JOhn and I. I said yes if he couldn't be honest. I was wary; I thought she had him on three-way calling, so after we hung up, I star 69-ed and the girl was calling from my house. I called back, my husband answered, finally told me that they had indeed slept together and that I was never getting back into the house. His parents packed up most of my belongings; he refused to give me my computer. I brought the cops over the next day to get some family pictures, my computer and some other stuff that was mine and the cops told me that if he didn't want me in the house, I could not get the stuff unless I went to civil court (days later my husband admitted to me that the cop that responded to the call was a friend of his and told him "Don't worry, JOhn, she's not getting her stuff today."). I went back home empty handed, called and had all the utilities in my name shut off. Three days later, my husband called me at work, said he wanted me back and that he had kicked the girl out. We stayed apart for two months and then I moved back in. Shortly after I did, I found a bill in my name (since the phone had been in my name) for a 900 number. The date of service was after the cheating, but before I had moved out. I told him that if he wanted me around, he would get rid of the pornography that I found offensive. We burned it, but most of it didn't completely burn except on the edges (it was a big pile...). A few weeks later, I found the burnt magazines in the back of a car in our garage. I got angry and told him to really throw them away and I watched him throw them in the outside garbage. A week later, I found them in a crate in our closet when I went looking for baby photos. He said that he would not get rid of them no matter how I felt about them because they had been in his life long before I came along. At that point, we had stopped sleeping together (about six months from today). In January, he started working for a security firm. He got the aire about him that it was beneath him to even touch the kids unless he felt like it and he never did. He started going out all night, sleeping all day, not paying the bills or buying groceries, yet the money was always gone. He said I was lucky that he was around. I found out that during the times that I worked and he didn't, he had dropped our children off with his sister and would go and do whatever he wanted. He couldn't grow up, even if it meant losing me and his kids.


Yesterday he called and told me I had taken away our kids just like his ex had taken away his other son (whom he never sees although he has visitation. When he did pick him up, I watched him. He's two.). I told him he could come and pick up the kids at that moment because I wasn't taking them away from him. He said he didn't have enough gas to come get them, even though we had filled the tank up on the family car the day before and had not driven it. He said, "Oh, oops, you got me there." At that point, I wrote him off in my mind. There will always ALWAYS be an excuse that causes him not to be around for our babies. It's not my fault, I've tried all I can try and I'm finally coming to peace with the idea that I am not to blame for his immaturity. If I am the only constant in the life of our kids, fine.

WOW! What a story. Welcome to SFV and all the resources that it has to offer. I can't believe you kept going back to him like that. I hope it is definately over this time because from the sounds of it he's not good for you or those kids. If he has enough gas money to run around all the time, he should have enough to see his kids. What a sad thing to have kids go through because of a parent. I hope things start to go better for you and the kids now that you're out of the house. Keep us up to date on what's going on.

I'm sure there are plenty of people that are here that can relate to your story. I hope you stick around and get the advice you need and maybe you can start to give some of your own when you feel ready!

I can relate and I am sorry for what you have been dealt with. I just can't understand how men or woman can do these things to people and act like its not their faults. I wish people would take responsibility for their own actions. I just joined this site and Ilove it!!!! I am always here if you need a friend.