Middle age men leaving families

I really understand where you are coming from. I think it all begins with the way women are being treated in our society and worldwide. when women will be treated equally as men this will change. when women won't be the ones to stay at home and take care of children, when women will be payed equally as men the society will evolve into something better. The sources to this behavior are so deep I wonder if this will ever happen.

First of all let me say"been there, done that". I do not believe that "all" men think or feel that way. I have raised two fine sons, one married with two children and already been through a divorce, and my other son is 27 a professional man, has been in about 4 serious relationships in High School, College and Law School dates but knows he is not ready for marriage. I will say on my older son's behalf, it was his wife that out of the blue told him she wanted a divorce. He, as we all were could hardly believe what was going on. He loved her dearly, treated her like a princess and was and continues to be a really good Father and provider. As I look back on that situation now, his being such a good man was the problem. His ex. had brought into the marriage a lot of baggage from her family and single life before she ever met him. She went on after the divorce and found a young guy that lived with her and was abusive and not a good provider. She eventually got out of that situation, having to go to court, file papers for being stalked by this guy and eventually moved away to another town only to live with another man, who basically from the little I hear, is totally physically able to work but chooses to do as little as possible in that department, I don't know if he is abusive, I would guess that he is some, she has more custody of the two children, my grandchildren and gets a "large" amount of child support that it appears she and her boyfriend live off of because my son, actually does have the children most of the time, buys their clothes, when they are sick he takes care of them and pays all the doctors bills and prescriptions. He also works full time and is fortunate to have a sister that lives close by and has also been divorced and has two children and helps him out with watching his children when he needs help. He is engaged, has been for over two years, she lives with him and has two younger children and does not work so my son has a full time job,basically 4 children he supports financially and as dad, and does all the cooking, she doesn't know how to cook, and whenever he is not at work, he is at home taking care of all of the children, being there for his fiance, and running back and forth picking up his two children and taking them back to  his ex. with them crying because they don't want to leave him. I don't know if he will ever actually marry this girl, he really got burned in the divorce even though he had the better attorney and all the reasons to have come out it better. There were circumstances, nothing my son did wrong, but not really reasons but excuses for his ex. getting her way in most of the divorce. He really loved her. But back to your question. I don't think all men think that way. However I do believe in our society in this country make it so incredibly tempting for a man out on the job and dealing with men and women who for the most part have no real morals or lines you just don't cross, so why not? We, I believe have come to a point in this society where most men and women too, have the need for instant gratification, seeing women at work who are dressed nice and have their make-up on and hair fixed from the first moment they(the men) see them every morning during the week, where he probably just left his wife at home in some raggedy nightgown, hair not fixed, and juggling him, the kids and breakfast or either she is also up, fixed but running in one direction either to work or taking a child to school and he is running in another direction to work or possibly having to drop off another child at school or daycare and then ruhes to work to be greeted by someone who is already at work just waiting for him to walk through the door and be his soft place to comfort him and hear any of his woes and with no complaining there to jump when he says, get this file, did you get that done, and all with answers he actually wants to hear. There are a lot more single women, either never having been married, divorced or widowed and looking for someone to fill that lonely spot next to her in bed every night. I have yet(and it has been 14 years divorced) to figure out completely why he married the women he did(my ex.). I have to honestly say, I loved that man with my whole heart, gave him three wonderful children and did everything so all he ever had to do was go to work and come home and do what he wanted when he came home because I had it all covered. I was brought up that the man is the king of his "castle" and things still did not work out. In fact it seemed the more fetching I became the more distant he became. Our present society, our churches, our way of life do not promote a man and a woman coming together before God and making the traditional wedding vows and meaning them or keeping them. Our churches marry divorced people all the time. Yet in the scriptures it says that you cannot marry a divorced person. I sort of have a bone to pick with that with our churches, because I think it has become a money issue with the church. Just look around in a church and if you made all the people who were on their second or more marriage how many pews would be empty?(one of my issues I'm still working on). The guy is already thinking well if worse comes to worse, I'll just leave. If there are no children involved it is vertually like two people going steady, living together and each one takes his or her stuff and then they go on their way. When children are involved things are quite different. I was born in the early 1950's and my mother and my daddy ran off and got married in South Carolina because she was not quite 18 a week before she graduated from High School and they kept it a secret until after she turned 18. My Grandmother, bless her soul, was raised to accept responsibility for your own self and said," Well, now that you are married, you need to move out and you are now his responsibility and you two will have to make it own your own". They really did love each other but were not at all, well he wasn't, prepared to be responsible for a wife and children. He was the baby of 11 children in his family and had diabetes from birth so he was definitely catered too. Now all of a sudden he had a wife and a little over a year later a son to provide and take care of. You know that is how most children boys and girls are today. They were catered to, most didn't have chores or jobs after school or on weekends and if they did work they used their pay for whatever they wanted to use it for. I think the same applies to girls and let's not put all the blame on the guys. I grew up with a brother. My parents split when I was around two and then finally divorced when I was around 5years old. My dad liked to chase women, have fun, drink, work every now and then and have everythig his own way. My mother, had no problem with being a hard working mother and wife, but she was the oldest of three in her family but born with asthma, and so was somewhat catered too as well. So she had a bad and short temper and a nagging mouth on her. My daddy used to put his fingers in his ears and whistle when she would start in on him. Needless to say, that just made it go on longer and would end with him walking out the door. He was abusive verbally and physically, but the thing that really got my mother the worse was his unwillingness to work and keep a regular job. When I was still married to my ex. in the 1980's he had (with my help) managed to go up the corporate ladder and we had actually worked our way into the "upper class" and we became quite wealthy. He took care of all of the money and bills and I was responsible for everything else. I was blessed to be able to hire a housekeeper/nanny and it made my work a lot easier. The money for him, gave him power and a lot of respect not because of how much he made, but that he truely is a brilliant man, very little common sense, but had become a man that other men looked up to and every woman in their offices would have (and probably did) go after him. I believe he had multiple one night stands when he traveled and even after work. He has and never will probably ever admitt to it,not because he is a Christian, in fact I so trusted and believed in that man, I honestly didn't think he was able to tell a lie,but because he always thinks he is right about everything and it is always someone else's fault.Well it turned out he was able to lie and a whole lot more. But my housekeeper one day when she and I were talking mostly I was complaining about something my husband had or had not done and she said, Miss______, do you know there are women in this town that would crawl through a field of "shit" to have your husband? I said, "yes", but I really didn't get it then. But after the divorce and he married as soon as the law allowed to his present wife, I got it. I think we women had it a whole lot better in the days when most women stayed at home and raised and took care of their own families and met their husbands at the door after a day at the office all dolled up and had the children being productive parts of the family and not destrutive parts of the family and everyone ate dinner together without the TV blaring or ipod ear plugs in their ears and the wife genuinely thankful and happy to see her husband and she was very proud of him and he was very proud of her and his family. I am a Christian, I believe if we women and men in this country really lived by the words God has laid out for us in His Word, then divorce would go down. And I want to say, it was me who filed for divorce in my marriage. He did not want one at first. There were some legal and extinuating circumstances that basically forced me to make that decision and then try to get him to take care of why I had to file for divorce and then we could be back together and continue to work on how we got to where we were and go to God, ask forgiveness and both of us seek his will in our marriage.  Unfortunately there was a lot more things going on during my marriage that I was totally unaware of, during the seperation and even after the divorce. I eventually hired a Private Investigator to check my ex. out and that is how our children and me found out he had married this other woman. My two oldest children have both been married and divorced and each have two children. They both hate divorce as I always have. It was my daughter who wanted a seperation in her marriage because of his unwillingness to be the provider on a regular basis, and he had and still has a violent temper and foul mouth. She has two girls and they were in a store one day and this husband was talking really ugly to his wife and my daughter commented on he shouldn't treat her like that, and her oldest daughter said, "But, Mommy, that is how Daddy talks to you". She said, that was like the last straw for her, she did not want her girls growing up and dating or marrying someone who was abusive to them. So they divorced and it has been one very long hard time for my daughter, my two granddaughters and my ex. son in law. She says if she had it to do it over again, she would still want her two girls but she would never have married him and let him have any say about the girls, or married him stayed with him and tried harder on her end to help more to make things work out better. It was actually in mid life (for my husband) that my husband and I divorced. I used to think that he really loved me more than anyone on earth, I now don't think that he ever loved me really. He was almost 26 and I was 19 when he met me and we married about a year after we met. Back then most men I think did get married in their middle to late twenties,good Christian men anyway, I was a little young but always old in my mind for my age. My ex. after he remarried in 1994 hardly saw our children but twice a year during the seperation 1991 to 1994 and after 1994 because of the divorce decree he had to take our youngest every other weekend. There were many weekends our youngest didn't want to go, my ex. was ok with that, and weekends where he went to his dads but asked his dad if he could go back home after he was at his dad's and his dad's new wife. His dad would call and because he lived about 1 and one half hours away we would meet in the middle and I would pick my youngest up and he would come back home for the weekend. I don't think that things are going to get better in this country for families ever again. I used to have hope that things would turn around some, but being a believer in Jesus Christ and Saved through Him, until this country, beginning with the President is a true believer in Jesus Christ and seeks to follow the Holy Bible in his family, job and life then how can we have hope that things will get better. I have to say I really enjoyed being wealthy in the latter part of our marriage but I also had some of the loneliest parts of my life in those years of our marriage, and when it came time for the divorce he had hidden all the money and everything else so we appeared severly in debt. We didn't start out rich, we started out both working and seeking God about everything and when our first two children came along their dad spent time with them reading Bible stories and playing with them. But it was just before our youngest was born that we had made a big move to another state away from our families and bought a hugh house and he started traveling so I really did have everything else but being the provider on my shouldars.There was about a 5 and a half year difference between our older children and our new baby.  He never gave our youngest son the time when he was little that he gave our oldest children. They all love their dad dearly, I brought them up that way, it was me who was the third wheel. They love me dearly too, but given the choice, they prefer to spend time with just their dad(not including his present wife and two girls)and one of his many homes he has in really nice vacation spots around the country and world. It hurts, but I understand, doesn't mean I don't get all up in the air about it sometimes, but deep down I do understand, because you see really deep down, I still love him too. Always did, always will. So after all of this, which you have probably already found your answer to as well is on our knees with our hands folded and crying out to Lord God and ruler of all for we who are left behind to pick up the pieces time and time again, He is there for us, He will never fail us and it is you and me and others like us who have to stand in the gap and keep seeking His Will and counting on His Mercy and passing it on to others. And maybe, just maybe if our country doesn't destroy itself, or be destroyed, if they won't hear our voices, listen to His Word, maybe they will Know Him through how we act as we walk through this space in time going on about His, Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviors' desires for us to live that we in any situation we find ourselves in can still have His Peace and get through it one day and one prayer at a time. Also, I have a good friend who is a little older than me and she was seriously considering leaving him for good about 10 years ago and I was just straight with her and said, Look, I know you're unhappy but he is a really good provider, a good father, yes he has really done some things that have hurt you, but before your therapist convinces you that if you just get out of this marriage and you will no longer be depressed, you need to ask your therapist well tell me when it's 5 to 10 years down the road and he has remarried some young thing and I stayed at home and had our children,took care of the home, so he could rise in his career, and no one would want to hire me because I really don't have the skills they are looking for today, and he has long since stopped paying for my health insurance and if paying alimony has gotten it cut as much as possible and if not paying alimony yet you get the house then how do you plan on paying the taxes and upkeep for the house and when you lose that how are you suppose to live, have a roof over your head and food and any medications you might need? She and I talked a lot about this as she had been really hurt, but she decided to bite the bullet, stick it out with him and now over 10 years later is so much happier,  yes he plays a lot of golf and she goes to a beach house she inherited and stays there when and as long as she wants and they still have Christmases with their two boys and their families all together and other holidays and birthdays when time and distance permitts and she can still go to the store and not worry about how she is going to pay for the generic or a better brand of something or if she has money to pay for anything at all. Because you know as I do, holidays, birthdays and vacations are a mess when a family splits up and one of the parents remarry. What we do to our children today because of decisions made by Judges or Mediators we would not have put our pets through today. In fact in a lot of cases the pets are better off. And people wonder why children are on Prozac. The one and best thing my dad did for my brother and me was leave us with our mother and we only saw him for 3 hours every other week. Then when my mother remarried when I was around 14 our dad stopped coming to see or talk to us at all. For us, it was a very unselfish gift. It was hard enough to adjust to a step-dad and our mother having been independent most of our lives and now had a man to anwer to, I truely wanted to move away and live with my best friend who lived in another state. It was later in my late twenties that we did come in contact with our real dad again. I never had stopped loving him, and probably loved him more for loving us enough to leave us then to keep seeing us and have to listen to all the fighting over either him or my mom. I tried and so did my brother to stay in contact and we did for a long time but he eventually started talking bad about our mother and we both started not taking his phone calls. My mother as a divorcee in a small town had worked hard and went to school at night while my grandmother watched us so that she could get a better job to have more money to take care of all of us, and she went through a lot and we loved her so much, no one, not even our own dad was going to talk bad about our Mother. Sadly, we only talked to him rarely after that and then one day my brother called me, I lived in another state and told me our dad had a massive heart attack and died. I just broke down. Our family came back for the funeral, and my dad's sister wanted to show something to my brother and me and it was his wallet. It was very worn, but the first thing you saw when you opened it was a picture of my brother and me when we were little. I think my brother being a man and father had in a lot of ways been much more hurt over our parents divorce, our mother remarrying, our having to pull away from our real dad and then to lose him so suddenly and he was only 58yrs.old. I was hurt in different ways with trust issues with men, but I always felt sorry for my brother not having our real dad around for him. He and our step-father never did get along, and my brother died and then my mother died three weeks later and our step-father is still around but took up with another woman who was about his age practically before they finished putting the dirt over my mother's coffin.

I hope I was some help. I have a tendancy to go on and on. I am even beginning to question in my mind about TV ministries. I do watch several of them as well as have been supportive to some. But I am beginning to wonder about those(and some of these I really like)that sell tickets to see them, and use television time that is suppose to be for ministry, for trying to sell you something, a book, a DVD, etc. I really would like all churches as well as TV ministries to give out and send out in detail where every single penny goes. I really like Billy Graham. I went to one of his crusades I think when I was around 19 years old. You didn't have to buy tickets, there were no tables full of his books, or tapes, or anything for sale. They did pass an offering plate which I had and have no problem with. I was fortunate enough for four years of our marriage to live in Charlotte, NC and go to the same church that Billy Graham's mother attended. We met a lot of his relatives and this dear sweet older Christian lady who babysat for us was a personal friend of Mrs.Grahams. Our oldest, our daughter went to a Private Christian School and one of Mr.Grahams brother's wife was her teacher. All of them that we met were really sweet and dear and very humble Christians. We lived a very blessed time those 4 years in Charlotte, NC.

I believe that men in general just can emotionally detach from anything when it comes to family, marraige and other things. Women can do the same, but it just isn't heard of alot. Men (not all) seem to have more freedom when kids are involved. They seem to come and goes as they please and just expect the woman to tend to all the needs of everyone. Women have (most) a bond with thier children that can't be broke. Women speak up and are never heard for what they need, want or expect. I am sorry for your mother and anyone else that has to tolerate this one sided way of parenting..