Context: this is the same mum who, after returning from the high street one Saturday sporting a freshly applied ‘Call out Gouranga’ sticker on her lapel, said to me “they’re out in force today promoting that new Ninja Turtles film…are you not going to see it?” 😂
Suffice to say, I’ve thought for the last 30 odd years there’s a Hare Krishna dude roaming the globe spreading the word of Cowabunga. At least he’s happy. #Mums
To Mums + Nanas + Aunties + nannies + sisters + best gfs + all who give motherly love: Happy Mother's Day.
Sending love to those who’ve lost someone, or for other reasons are having a difficult day today.
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Mum defends ordering boob cake for son’s birthday to stop him breastfeeding
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The £400 mistake new parents make — and how to avoid it
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://metro.co.uk/2025/04/22/400-mistake-new-parents-make-avoid-22949520/
Daisies and Yellow Mums for Flowers on Friday
New artwork & accessories available🌼
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Strax är maten klar #mums 🐃
Inside the baby bank: ‘People never think they will be in this position’
Lövbiff med rå äggula, pepparrot, stekt potatis. Jag drömmer lite. #mums
Coz #cycling #bicycling #walking #pedestrian #disability #disabled #strollers #mums #dads #families #elderly #seniors #ADA #community #bikecommuting #fuckcars #urbanism #walkablecities > #parking #cars #carbrain
Guest interview on Dads Cry Too podcast
I had the pleasure of speaking with J.D. Murgolo about my situation and a few thoughts on parenting.
J.D is a life coach and father. We covered the difficulties of coparenting and importantly, a few warnings for men.
The conversation could’ve gone on for hours, there’s just so much to be said.
Listen to the guest episode
The episode is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
https://open.spotify.com/show/3SCpLgWd1UuHxNYthwK0np
Read the full interview
🗣️ J.D. Murgolo’s text is in purple.
🗣️ DFMB’s text is in blue.
My parents have been married for 50 years. Myself have been married to my wife for six years. I say this not because I want to pat on the back, or to congratulate anyone for being married that long.
I say it because it reminds me almost daily of how fortunate I am to come from a household where both parents were with each other for that long. I am humbled and grateful and fortunate to be able to say that in my own relationship. But I know that that’s not every relationship.
I know that that’s not the reality. In fact, it’s almost increasingly more the reality that couples don’t stay together, married or just as just a regular couple without having that engagement. And sure, breakups happen and people fall apart.
But that becomes a little bit more challenging when you are a parent. See, when that little one came into our life, you are aware now of how big your responsibilities have become. You become aware of the importance of all those things they talk about on a basic level of being in a relationship, communication, for instance, and being able to share each other’s worlds, but at the same time understand that you have separate worlds and separate decisions and separate beliefs sometimes.
This week’s journal entry is a little bit different, and it’s a little bit tougher for me because of these facts, that I didn’t come from a household that is broken. I didn’t come from a household where parents didn’t love each other and didn’t show that while even though they didn’t get along all the time, they did love each other. I didn’t even know anybody growing up that had gone through a divorce.
It wasn’t until my adult life when I had people that around me that had been through that. You see, when you’re a couple with children and decide to separate or divorce, all those considerations that you had just as two adults together becomes expounded upon. And learning how to parent effectively together and coparent the parent becomes almost insurmountable at times when you’re separated or divorced.
It’s challenging to end it ever. And it’s essential to embark on that challenge and really dig deep into it, in my opinion, for the wellbeing of the children involved. See, like I said, those big challenges, just being a parent, become even bigger challenging.
Communication, for instance, right? Ex-partners may have had difficulty communicating effectively before they had a child, and before the divorce, but becomes especially more important to be effective at communicating if their relationship ended on bad terms. However, it’s important to be able to communicate about all sorts of issues related to the children, from the small to the large.
One of the other challenges of coparenting is maintaining consistency between the two households. Nearly on a day-to-day basis here in our house, there are moments where we come kind of face-to-face with the fact that we kind of have conflicting rules or expectations for our children. The benefit of being in the same house together is that we see those differences and we work through those differences.
Children need that routine. They need to know what to expect from parents. And if you have two parents that aren’t in the same household, they can be exposed to conflicting rules and expectations and routines.
And this becomes that much more of a challenge for the child, especially. It can be difficult to achieve some bearing, some consistency in life. At the same time, those inconsistent households, you begin to have less than clear boundaries.
So maintaining those and establishing those clear boundaries is important when you are coparenting. This includes respecting each other’s time with the children and not interfering each other’s parenting decisions. It also means not using the children as messengers or pawns to communicate with each other.
Coparenting can be lonely. Parenting can be lonely. And it’s something that, just as a parent, who comes from a household where both parents love each other, I see constantly.
But when you’re truly by yourself and trying to navigate multiple worlds almost simultaneously, being a single parent, being a parent, and having to mesh the two, it can almost put such a huge burden on your shoulders that is challenging for a lot of people. It’s important for coparents to have a support system in place, friends, family, therapists, and this support can help them cope with those challenges of coparenting and provide them with a sense of community. Sometimes those support systems are within ourselves.
Stay tuned for this week’s interview with the dad who found that support system within himself as he went through one of the most challenging experiences a new parent can have, in my opinion, is turning that experience into something beautiful…
Interview
I’ll attempt to introduce myself. I guess I’m a fairly new dad and the author of Diary for my beloved, which is a blog that I created a few years ago. Initially, that blog was private, and it started from the day, well, a couple of weeks after, the mother of my daughter told me that she was moving and taking the child.
It was obviously a very painful moment in my life, and a lot of advice that I was getting from loved ones was, you need to keep a note of every conversation, you need to keep a note of everything. Otherwise, you might forget or you could use it in court or something like that. And I did, I started keeping an Excel document of the things that were happening.
And then increasingly, I realised this isn’t really, whatever information I gather, isn’t really something I’m going to be able to use in court. What I really need to focus on is my daughter, because I want her to understand how things played out. I want her to understand that I fought for her and that every nasty message or every threat that I received, how I felt in that moment and how all these things sort of tie together.
So the way I imagined this coming to life for my daughter would be many years in the future. And I thought about all of the different formats of how I could capture it, all the photos that I had, the emails, the conversations, and that sort of Excel document that I had created with all of the more formal stuff that I was jotting down. And then I thought, let me just keep at this.
And then I started thinking, this is actually quite nice because not all of the moments were negative. When I was with my daughter, those were really lovely moments. They made me very happy.
And getting the reactions from my daughter or just that quality time was something that I also wanted to capture. So as I think as the years, as the months went by, I started to focus more on the bit like a diary, like a ‘dear diary today we did this’… And I kind of wanted it to be very personal.
So I thought, I’m going to write it to her first person, me to her. So it’s kind of like, ‘we did this’. ‘This is what I planned for our day’.…
This is how things went. And then in the difficult moments, I was also able to express how I felt. ‘So if I got a message from your mom, she told me that I couldn’t see you this weekend…’ ‘I’m really upset. I’d organised some activities with some friends, but now we’re now have had to cancel…’ So the diary really needs to be very personal because that’s its ultimate purpose that she reads it as, as the intended primary singular audience.
Yeah.
So I think moving forward a few years, the diary is currently sort of as very beginnings the first few months. But actually it’s backdated, I think the right expression is. So there are literally years ahead of what’s not been published.
And what I’m doing is every week, I’m going back to one of those posts in a chronological order of a few years ago. And I’m basically making a public version. And that’s, I guess, what I’m inviting people to see, to take part in, to give feedback.
And I think there’s an educational element to it as well. There’s a few things that concern me about my situation that I think will affect many men around the world. And also parents in these situations will have questions about what their rights are, what the legal system looks like, what they can do.
So I want people to see how it played out for me, so that if they’re in the same situation, maybe they can learn from my experience. And get a better outcome for themselves.
It’s interesting. So before we began, I was talking about the premise behind why this show began, why the format for it was. Originally, the thought in my head was, not like this, men need to be heard, like we need to do something kind of attitude, but it was awareness, at least, that there was a conversation that you saw and you knew was there, but wasn’t necessarily taken seriously.
And in my case, I’m referring to just the mental state of dad. And again, not sitting here trying to say, well, you should be looking at me, like mom, yeah, mom’s got postpartum, but no, you need, it’s really just like, hey, there’s two versions of this story and kind of like, how do we have the conversation about something that can be looked at from both sides, right? And that you don’t usually do that.
And then when I came to the format of this, I don’t recall what show it was that I was listening to, but similar to what you’re saying here, that the person had these recordings, and you know, at the time, they had like tape cassettes of conversations between his mom and his dad, who were going through a divorce when they were like, his mom, his mom, him and his sister, and they were like young, like I think like five and three. But the dad was recording all of these conversations between the wife who just wasn’t a pleasant person all the time, but they’re listening to them, they found this box in the closet, and they’re hearing all these conversations between their parents. And as a grown up, when he recalls like now, like, you know, as you get to a certain age, and now you can really remember what your parents like were saying and doing.
He had this whole different vision of his dad, not anybody like, you know, like completely like, you know, a different person, but not the I love you, not the affectionate person, but he’s got now all these recordings of, you know, talking to him, his wife, and sometimes like he was in the background, like, you know, because he was there at the house and the dad’s, you know, or, you know, he’s at the mom’s house, but he’s saying things like, I love you son, or I miss you. And he didn’t know that his dad was like that at all. So I was like, you know, I should probably have this format like that, that I’m saying things and doing things that they may not remember.
And then when they do remember, they have something to remember it by. So it’s interesting to hear. That’s where this kind of like starts with you, but it has a whole other, as you said, like a whole other reach now, but, you know, a conversation that, you know, it’s the same, that we’re not necessarily, I don’t know what it is, and maybe you could shed better light on it, you know, that we’re not really wanting to discuss this topic because it’s possible that men can go through this, or I don’t know, like it’s like, you know, like it’s not a believable thing, or I don’t know.
So maybe you can shed some light on just part of, that part of your story and where, where, you know, where you see as far as like the conversation needs to lead to better understand what people can go through or people are going through.
Yeah, I think, I think there’s this, the subject’s a little bit negative, have to be honest, you know, it’s not happy families. Maybe there aren’t many people in that perfect family unit, but the foundation unfortunately is a bit negative. But I think there’s a positive way to look at this as well and how this may apply to someone who does, who is experiencing the best time of their life with their partner, with their children.
And I think it’s something that’s said all the time. It’s that the time moves very fast and that newborn phase is almost like a blink of an eye. And I guess we all know that it’s these little experiences throughout our life that make us who we are.
I think something positive that I want to offer here is that what I’m doing here, the diary for my daughter, is something that even someone going through a really wonderful time, I would encourage them to do something similar, whether it’s a podcast and a dedicated Instagram account or a blog or whatever, or just something like a photo book. Because time moves fast, and before they know it, the kids are starting school. And some of those little memories have maybe, maybe sort of just been forgotten in time.
And the subject for me is, I guess it’s ultimately about parental alienation. And we hear a lot about various crimes and various behaviours that affect women and men. They’re all very sensitive.
So all I can share really is my personal experience and how I feel. And I try to do it in a constructive way, particularly with the outlet of this blog. If I have my daughter reading it, I don’t want her to think I’m, let’s say, unconstructive or unfair.
So I’m really, really trying, trying to put memories down that basically will help her understand the context of my behaviour or the context of why I did what I did. For example, going to family court is something that I was discouraged from doing, but I felt that I had to do something serious. So I think that that’s sort of like on the touching on what you mentioned there around, you know, some of these subjects maybe are not spoken about as much.
But I can kind of, I can sort of share a little bit about my story. And then I think it, I think I would love to share a little bit about my concerns around some of dad’s rights, I guess, because I do want men to be very aware of the, the challenges that they might come across in adulthood. So I’ll just sort of run through a little bit of a timeline in my situation.
Timeline of the situation
It’s just relatively easy to absorb, I guess, which is like many people, I met a girl, we were dating and then she got pregnant. And I felt a sense of responsibility. And I said, you know, I’m here to help.
This is not for me to tell you what to do with your body, but I’m here to support you in your choice. Her primary view was to keep the baby basically. And I helped, we tried that relationship.
I helped through pregnancy, I helped through the newborn phase. And once my daughter was starting to come out into that toddler phase, she basically told me that she was moving to another city. So it would be very difficult for me to have day-to-day involvement with my daughter unless I also moved.
You know, there’s a lot of challenges that comes of distance when you’re not neighbouring the same city. You can’t, I can’t, I couldn’t pick up my daughter from nursery. I couldn’t give her breakfast and then take her to nursery.
I can’t do these things. Around this time, she also cut off communication. So it meant that I was completely in the dark around my daughter’s sort of milestones.
So the first time she talked, it was when we were doing a handover and she was a little bit uncomfortable. We went to a coffee shop and then she talked and I commented, oh, she said something. And her mom was just like, yeah.
So it wasn’t a surprise to her. She probably heard her talk by that point. But to me, I was like, I can’t believe how, you know, it really hurt me in that moment, realising I’m missing all these milestones.
The same goes for the first time she started her standing and doing her steps. It was new to me, but maybe it happened weeks earlier with her mom.
Yeah.
So being cut off from communication and those updates was very painful. And I think, you know, I’ll never get those moments back.
That’s the hard part. Right. Yeah.
So I think through all the advice I got, a lot of it was actually not to go to court. A lot of it was to not make the relationship harder. But I felt that I was already cornered and I wasn’t getting to see my daughter when I would like.
She wasn’t in the same city. And all I could do is basically go to court, which is a very, very expensive process in the UK. You know, you have to pay for solicitors and barristers.
And every hour that you speak to them costs a lot of money. But I didn’t have an option. I didn’t feel that I would be able to improve my situation and without going through that process of the family court, coming in and setting down their recommendation.
Because at the moment, until that point, it was one way. It was what the mum said. And if I said anything…
Yeah, exactly.
And that was it. And life is about perspectives. For me to be insistent about seeing my daughter would, would and still does become translated by her mum as harassment.
So it’s a crazy situation, I mean, where I’m just trying to see my daughter. Maybe I want to change the place that we pick up or do the handover because we’re going to see family, for example. And then if her mum disagrees, and if I’m too insistent, she’ll say I’m harassing her and making her life difficult.
So it’s a very, very impossible situation to be in. And the ultimately then I did go to court, and the court did something that was basically the status quo. So if anything, they just reinforced what was already in place.
So not a great outcome for me, and just restrictive on both sides. I think it was the right thing to go to court, but the court has a lot of issues with it. They appear to only care about the child being physically and emotionally safe, and the father’s role is not really taken on board.
Act fast
So I guess moving on to some of the stuff that I would love to share, because I think it’s probably applicable internationally. In my situation, the mother moved, that then longer term, months after, triggered the process on my side of the family court. I think family courts probably around the world are not instant.
They take time. You need to do things like go through mediators, go through meetings, go through all this admin. And that really empowers the person that physically has the child, because every day that the mom or the dad has the child or whatever the situation is, that is the status quo.
And the court doesn’t want to change the status quo. So, something that I really want to flag to people is if you’re in a similar situation, you need to take action yesterday, because every day is just going to favour the other side, whether that’s mom or dad. And I think that’s really terrifying.
It’s not something that I want to share here, but there are different things I could have done, but they would have, anything that risked my child being unhappy, is not something that I felt comfortable doing. And I don’t think that’s the right thing to do long term. So, ultimately, the mom in this situation got what she wanted, because she moved, then court basically reinforced that behaviour, and frankly, I think encourages it.
So take action. If you’re in a similar situation, take action. Don’t allow the status quo to define the outcome.
Make sure you fight in all of the constructive and legally responsible ways to change the situation, because the status quo is probably something that you don’t want anyway long term.
Yeah. It’s wild to me. I mean, I’m certainly not…
I’ve never been around that kind of a situation. I was a teacher for 10 years. I never even had a child, at least that I was aware of, that went through it, but it’s still…
The story is loud and clear, that you see it in some way, shape or form, no matter what, whether you’re involved or not. Is that, for whatever reason, and I’m sure that’s a whole other show and a whole other story, but the status quo, as you put it, is that there’s no way that the dad can be the emotionally stable one, the one that can take care of this and do all that. But then the burden, if you are, a couple that is healthy or whatever, however you want to term that one, it seems like it’s on the weight of dad, is to be the one that works and do this kind of thing.
So it’s kind of interesting to see there’s two different versions of the same story, but it’s always baffling anytime I do hear like whether that’s the news or whatever. And granted, I have no idea the rest of your life, who you are as a human being, but the same thing, I don’t know that person in the article if I’m reading it, but you’ve got to imagine, and I think you said it, that if you’re speaking up, if you’re this persistent, there’s probably a good reason that you do have some kind of emotion. This is bothering you and you do want to do the right thing, but it’s not seen that way.
It is seen as you’re just a pain in the butt and you’re making things worse. And it could go both ways, but we only hear it I think sometimes from the fact that the dad is being the one that’s harassing. And I’m going to sound like I’m just a non-advocate for moms, but it’s not.
That’s what you do here all the time. It’s like, well, it’s a mom. Mom has to know what’s right.
And yes and no, right? But it can go both ways. Both parents can know what’s right and what’s good.
But in the end, you’re all… Go ahead.
That’s the challenge that I think moms and dads have, which is a mom is assertive, the dad is a bully. A dad is insistent, the mom is being harassed.
If the mom is being insistent, it’s because, I don’t know, there’s a presumption that she’s right. And there is a bias in societies. There’s the Tender Years Doctrine, which is I think more of an American thing.
And it is a literal presumption that the child is better off with mom. And in the UK, something that I think is morally wrong is that the child is literally born tied to the mother’s medical records. And I think that sends the wrong signal because that literally is implying that the child is one with the mother.
And for people around the world, in Britain, the health care service, the NHS, it’s almost considered by people as a religion. You know, it can do no wrong. It’s an overwhelming force in British society.
So if the NHS are basically tying a baby to mom and not dad, it’s a strong message that maybe baby should predominately be with mom. And I think there are a lot of things in society that need to get ironed out. And I’m always keen to emphasise that I have complete support for mothers.
And I think this situation can equally apply to mothers. But we need to be realistic. It kind of does happen more to the dads.
And what I strive for and what I will never give up fighting for is equal parenting for my child. I’m not looking for 51%. I’m looking for equal parents decision making.
And those are literally the words I put in the court documents. Because I believe in the mom’s role and I believe in a dad’s role. And I think they should cooperate.
And I guess there are strengths and weaknesses of both genders. So it’s not about me bashing moms at all. It’s just in this situation, I’m faced with a difficult mother.
Well, there is, I mean, naturally, I mean, the conversation is that. I mean, there is an imbalance. And you’re right.
I mean, there’s a lot to untangle with it. There’s a lot of other, you know, you can’t just be like, okay, we’re gonna fix this with one, you know, swipe of a button. You know, there certainly is a lot that goes along with it.
But I think the thing that always catches me is that, you know, while both sides like are trying to think about, you know, what the best thing is, and then ultimately, in this case, like a court system, are they really thinking about the ultimate person that needs to be made aware of is the child? And I don’t know sometimes, you know, sometimes it’s black and white, you know, that parent is, you know, a drug addict or whatever the case may be, that’s a hard line. But then when it’s like this, you know, and again, I have no idea like the rest of the conversation or the rest of the story, but if you, I mean, if I’m just looking at what is in front of me, you know, that there is a balance.
And so like, you’re not, it isn’t just a, okay, you could just say that person, you know, you have to have, but I don’t know, it’s not like a willingness to weed that out and really like fine tune it. Cause I mean, I can just, with my own two kids, four and two, and I’ve, I mean, like I said, I was a teacher for 10 years, I am still not qualified to be a parent. Like I had no idea what I’m doing every day, but my wife does it either.
So you have two people that have no clue what they’re doing because, you know, parenting is, you can put out in any handbooks you want. You’re still learning in the moment, and that’s the beauty of it. But if you’re on two different sides of the coin, right?
You never get to interact with each other for, you know, whatever situation is yours. You know, how do you navigate this? You know, how can you say like, no, being with dad is not good, or being with a mom is not good, when neither of you know what’s right from wrong at the moment, you know?
You have to think about the fact that, like, this child doesn’t know what’s going on, they’re looking at you. And so how do they deem that, right? In a court system, in the end, like, how do they look at that?
If it’s not so black and white, like I said, like, it’s like, yep, that person’s been in and out of jail for the past three years, you know, where their daughter’s been born, they’re not going home with the dad, you know, or the mom or whatever, right?
And have a stable environment. And I think the court, if I had to make a judgment, and I can only make that judgment on my personal experience, I would say that the court is not meaningfully biased. The court is trying to do something.
Something, yeah.
Public service in Britain, that many public services try to, they feel like they’re trying to do the minimum. It’s not good enough. So, for example, in my circumstance, it really did feel like the court just wanted to get us through the process.
I was going to say, yeah.
And tick the box and see the back of us, because frankly, they recognised, because there were no allegations of harmful behaviour, let’s say, as a catch-all phrase.
Right.
So they just basically thought, these are just two bickering parents, let’s see the back of them. But their lack of action, the lack of engagement means that they have thoroughly endorsed the behaviour of the mom here. They have also said, with every literal meaning of what I’m saying, that a mom can just take a child and then the court will basically say, okay, that’s now legally binding, that’s now the court order.
And that’s not right. That can’t be right. That’s just immoral for a dad who’s got all of the normal circumstances around him.
So I have a normal life, a normal home, a normal job, everything very normal. The court should have fought for me and said, you know what, the right thing for the child is not to have a 10 percent, 90 percent relationship. If the dad has the means in the love, then it should be 50-50 if that’s what the dad is after.
Because we know that. I mean, we know those numbers somewhere in there. I mean, I obviously don’t have that up top of my head, but we know that balance has to be there because of the development of the child in the end, right?
We’ve seen studies, we’ve heard the conversation where if the mom is in present, for whatever reason, right? It could be just a natural cause that they passed away early on in the child’s life. But regardless, we know what happens when one parent isn’t there enough for various reasons.
So it’s interesting that it’s like, if we know all that, that it’s like, like you said, it’s so overwhelming the system of these kind of conversations that I’m sure you’re right without passing anybody’s judgment that it is, you know, like, nope, I’m not, this is, this isn’t a clear-the-cut argument. Like, this is just an annoyance on my desk. See you later.
Here you go. Right.
And I think there’s something, especially early on, where I didn’t have my daughter overnight, and my daughter wasn’t used to spending more than just the day with me.
Yeah.
For me, there’s something there around, heaven forbid, it’s not what I’m asking for. You know, I’m trying to be extremely clear. This is not what I’m asking for, what I would want to happen.
But what if mom wasn’t available? I should have been able to pick things up with my daughter. Seriously, she should have been comfortable.
You know, let’s just say, you know, something like a week in hospital for a routine operation. Nothing serious. In my daughter’s circumstances, she would have been uncomfortable with me for a week without her mom.
And that’s not right. I want to be there, and this is the promise I’ll always give my daughter, which is whatever happens, I will always be there for her. Obviously, now it’s a lot easier.
She’s a bit bigger, and she does have a lovely time overnight with me on the weekends. But that should have been from the start, because something could happen to any of us at any point. And you’ve got two parents, that should be those two parents fully empowered to be able to do the parenting, the looking after the child.
And my daughter’s mom, she didn’t allow that. And that was very sad at the time. I wanted to share just a couple of things, if that’s okay.
I think…
I was gonna say that, before you share that, though, I was just gonna bring it down to just the basic form of how that even looks, just as two parents that are in the same household with the same child, that there are moments that I have, I mean, not so much with our four-year-old, but with our two-year-old, a little bit different conversation, because they’re two different children, that you can see the motherly instincts kick in and the protectiveness. And that’s always going to be there, but in the mom guilt, all that comes into play just naturally anyway. But the difference here is that you’re in the situation, you’re aware that if you don’t release some of that, that what’s going to happen to the child, by being uncomfortable in a situation that you just didn’t allow them to be adaptable in yourself.
But I can tell you myself that where I understand that this is just where our youngest child is at, that I’m just, I’m not mom, but I’m in the house, you know? And so I get to still see them. I get to still go, okay, you know, all I did was listen to your asking for somebody to get something off the shelf and you lost it because I wasn’t mom.
Like, I’m not going to walk away and be like, well, fine. Like, I can take it personally, you know, but compound that to being not there all the time, like you’re saying. And so I’m trying to relate it to people that like, you know, that may be feeling this, but have no clue, you know, what it’s like to not be in the same household.
There’s how this, there’s how it plays out just naturally, right? Is that it’s like, if you’re not allowing the grace for, you know, the child to be adaptable, you know, and I’m not saying like every situation could be like the worst thing in the world if you didn’t react in a certain way, but we don’t know what those moments are for that child. You know, it could be the moment there that you didn’t allow that space for them to feel whatever they need to feel in this situation, so to grow from it later, and you missed it because of what?
Right? Because of your own selfishness as an adult? Whether, you know, talking about separated parents or not, who knows what that does for the child later on, right?
And a lot of things come in two in life, I guess. So the child needs to see the two parents interact in the same environment, not in the same environment. There’s something that my daughter’s mom has missed, which is I give 100% of my love and energy when I have my daughter.
She should go and do yoga, go and go to a restaurant with her friends, recharge, be an individual, knowing that she’s my daughter’s in good hands. And that’s missed as well, because instead it was quite stressful and quite pressurised. But yeah, just, I wanted to share something, because it’s something that concerns me.
Men, think about the consequences
I guess when I was a teenager, when I was younger, you date, you meet girls, whatever, and you don’t really care, it can be quite reckless and things like that. And relationships, they are what they are. Whether it’s a few months or a few years, you don’t necessarily think a huge amount about that.
When this situation happened to me, when my daughter’s mom got pregnant, the first thing my mom said to me, and many people said to me is, she did that deliberately, you’ve been tricked. And I was just like, that’s just a crazy and horrible thing to say.
Yeah, right.
I wasn’t particularly pleased with my mom. I was upset. My mom gave me a type of support that was almost superhuman during that period of my life.
Yeah, I can imagine.
But I was also quite upset about that comment specifically. I just like, no, that’s not what she did and this and that. But people in their 20s, 30s, and women themselves are active on social media, on communities, talking about the desire to start a family and really in quite a, I don’t know, irresponsible way, talking about these types of scenarios.
Oh, I’m just going to meet a guy and get pregnant or my boyfriend doesn’t want to have kids, but I’m just going to get pregnant and whatever happens. And that is a reality. And I think men need to be very aware of that.
They need to also maybe be more aware of it as they sort of approach their late 20s, 30s, where maybe women of a similar age are increasingly having those types of thoughts. It’s not, for example, my opinion, oh, women are going out trapping people.
Right, it’s not an everyday occurrence, right?
Yeah, I’m just commenting on what I’ve seen myself in some of these groups. I’ve got friends who are women, who have opened up to me and had some sensitive conversations with me about what they’re going through. They’re telling me, look, I don’t have a boyfriend, but I don’t have forever to have children.
So I’m naturally just going to get pregnant with someone that I’m dating, and I’m just going to raise the child on my own. And they’ve let me know about these personal things because they wanted me to understand that maybe I was a little bit naïve, or extremely naïve, I guess. And in Britain, we have this unbelievable situation where a woman can, of course, get pregnant and all of that.
It takes two to tango, don’t get me wrong. But then the women can basically say, I’m keeping the child. I don’t want the dad involved.
Oh, and by the way, you’re going to have to give me a percentage of your salary every month. It’s an unbelievable situation where a man could literally be fighting, going to court, doing everything, doing everything right. And the mom can still do that.
And still feel wrong, yeah.
And still send a bill as well every month. That doesn’t make sense to me. You shouldn’t be able to, in a civilised society, be able to say no with the one hand, but then pull out the other hand for money.
My situation is not really about money, but it’s something that could really affect other people. You know, someone with debts and other responsibilities, being in this situation, their quality of life could be minimised by these things. So, I think that it’s something that I really want more awareness of, but I don’t think it’s something that is easy to say.
Sure.
I can’t go to my friends and say, oh, right, your girlfriend is in their mid-30s. Okay.
Watch out, they’re dubious, right? I mean, you’re right.
I can’t say that because they’ll be like, no way. ‘How dare you say that?’
Well, I think it’s… Go ahead, sorry.
Yeah, I was just going to say, so what do I really do? I mean, all I can do is share that with people who are maybe a bit more receptive and where I have a closer relationship with. But my advice is, you know, take to all men and boys, I guess if you’re under 18, you’re still in the same boat, you know, be careful.
Do what your parents told you when you were growing up. Wear a condom. Don’t just, you know, take the girls what she says, you know, oh, I’m on the pill or I can’t get pregnant or this or that.
You know, if you make a mistake, something that decision will be with you for the rest of your life. And it’s not just about the money, it’s about what if that other person, that woman says, you know, well, I actually don’t want you involved.
Or what if they say, ‘oh, you know, I’m actually from another country. I’m from, you know, Germany. I’m going to move to Germany.’ You may not have a choice to be able to see your child!
That choice is taken from you! So I urge all boys and men to be really considerate of that. And, you know, ultimately, if you’re in a loving relationship, I would, I think having a child is a wonderful thing.
So I’m, I’m pro-children, but I guess I’m pro-family as well. Whatever, whatever mix that family is. Yeah.
I think it, you know, it just comes down to being, you know, just aware, just of life. And you don’t have to be, you know, a cynic or, you know, think that like everybody is out to get you. But, you know, you have your life and, you know, yeah, it does take two to ten go and you’re making a choice by doing all this and all the things that might, all the trappings that come along with that.
But, you know, when it comes to, you know, like in your early 20s, right? And, you know, younger there, like you may not be thinking about what, you know, if you want to be a parent. I know I certainly didn’t.
It wasn’t like, yeah, not ever happening, but there was an awareness and probably mom somewhere in the back of my head on some nights that it was like, do you know what you’re doing here? But it wasn’t like, she’s an evil person. I’m not going to do this with you because I don’t know what you’re up to.
But, you know, it is just getting, it is just being aware of just knowing somebody, whoever it is, you know what I mean? Whether you’re talking about a friendship or whatever, you know, it does come down to just kind of slowing down, right? And just realising like, hey, like what, like what if, you know, like what am I prepared for?
And I mean, I can tell you firsthand, like I, you know, I mean, we thought about having a child, but you know, still, like you don’t know, you don’t know what else changes. All they do is tell you that like everything is going to change. But you don’t like, what do you mean like everything?
Like my Netflix binging habit or what? Like what are we talking about? And you know, some things do change, but not everything.
And you just don’t know. And so I think you’re right. I mean, you just, you have to just be aware of, okay, not that every person you sleep with is going to be, you know, the mom to your child or the father to your child, but you know, I mean, you have to kind of think about that, right?
You kind of have to go, okay, what am I doing this for? And what’s going to happen? And am I prepared for life, right?
Yeah.
I just think when I was a teenager and I was in my early twenties, personally, I always wanted a family. In a way I felt like, what’s the point in life if you didn’t want to spend a good chunk of it raising a child, learning about a child? And I absolutely love spending time with my daughter.
I find her really interesting and really funny. But when I was younger, I didn’t, it definitely wasn’t the right thing for me. I wouldn’t be the same person if I hadn’t had a chance to travel, to make mistakes and all of these things.
About those things, yeah.
And you can’t make the same type of mistakes when you’ve got a responsibility. Although I’m not the primary parent in my situation, I need to set myself up to be the responsible one in case she needs me, in case something does happen, in case she needs me. But it’s a tough thing to say.
Maybe some boys and men will feel like it’s just their mum nagging them, but it can also happen to people who are in a relationship for a long time. And it might be very sad. Maybe the man doesn’t want to have a family or children, and the woman does. But it’s better that that’s a conversation.
It’s better to come as I was going to say, yeah.
And if it needs to be a breakup, rather than, you know, I’m a man and I need to stand up for men’s rights as well. And, you know, your rights kind of disappear after the tango, your rights disappear. It can also work out, I guess.
Some people, they could realise that actually they absolutely love it and it brings the couple together and all that. And I’d want that for everyone. But you need to be allowed the ability to carve out that path for your life and not have it be the decision of a woman.
Carved out for you, yeah.
Yeah. Stopping taking the pill or lying about the fertile stages and things like that. And if you want to see the repercussions, you can basically read the blog I’m writing.
Because that’s the repercussions.
JD’s closing thoughts
Well, I appreciate you taking the time to share your story and being vulnerable with this kind of a story and allowing that to bring some strength and some light to conversations that need to be had, that aren’t.
Yeah, thank you. And I always love speaking with my parents. I love humble parents that aren’t jumping in to just say, you know what, I know what I’m doing.
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Until next time, take care of yourself out there, parents.
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We’re keeping our Christmas decorations up until February for one heartbreaking reason
I’ve left my kids in the UK to spend Christmas alone on a paradise island
“Vibrant Colorful Mums” for Flowers on Friday
New artwork & accessories🌼🌸🌺
25% OFF ALL WALL ART!
> https://cac-graphics.pixels.com/featured/vibrant-colorful-mums-cac-graphics.html
#FlowersOnFriday #flowers #nature #mums #garden #Photography #artforsale #art #wallart #interiordecor #artprints #homedecor #interiordesign #Fridayvibes #Fridaymorning #BlackFriday
“Yellow Golden Mums” for Flowers on Friday
New artwork & accessories🌼
> https://cac-graphics.pixels.com/featured/yellow-golden-mums-cac-graphics.html
#FlowersOnFriday #flowers #nature #mums #garden #Photography #artforsale #art #wallart #interiordecor #artprints #homedecor #interiordesign #FridayVibes
Some flower pics from a few days ago at the Lamberton Conservatory. I didn't realize there was such a variety of garden mums.
#bloomscrolling #mums #GardenMums
