How One Horrible Decision Can Ruin Your Life - A Follower's Story

Hello everyone, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website and you can submit your own story or question at deardso.com. The website is deardso.com and if it's a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see. And this one is a doozy. Prepare yourself. This one comes from Joe and the subject line is Cheating and Taking son. That doesn't sound good. He says, in August of 2021, I started dating a woman. After a few months, I decided to separate from her due to her clear mental health issues. In January of 2022, we reconnected. She swore to me that she had been waiting for me and was still in love with me. After hearing this, I gave her another shot. In March, she became pregnant unintentionally. I am a traditional man and honored this and devoted my life to making this work. She moved in, and though I had an uneasy feeling in my gut for the duration of our time together, life was good, or so I thought. Our son was born the next January, healthy and beautiful. In June, I asked her parents for their blessing to marry her. I selected a diamond and was prepared to propose. A few nights later, I was making dinner and she was acting very strange and distant. She was under the impression that I had heard something. I came to discover that during our separation, she was driving from 4 hours away to see a man and sleeping with him while we originally dated. Devastated by this news, I wondered what else I did not know. After 6 months of attempting to make it work for the sake of our son, I discovered things that made me realize I never even met this person. Her sexual past was one that I had never come across, and I have more dating experience and time with various women than almost anybody I've ever met. Through my own work, I discovered that she did not know who had gotten her pregnant. Even after this, I attempted to solve the issue because if I separated from her as an unmarried man, she was threatening to take my son 4 hours away back to her hometown, which she can legally do. I was broken. I could not eat or sleep, and her response was, quote, get over it. At the end of 2023, I discovered messages with this man where they were making fun of me. I had reached the point where there was no more effort to be had, so I offered her my home, pay off her student loan debts, pay for her car, and every single expense for our son to stay in the city I lived in, and she accepted. But a day later, she drove off, never to return. It has now been 1 year and due to her lawyer's ability to delay through venue hearings, I still have no rights. I drive 4 hours after work every other Friday to pick up my son and drive 4 hours home. I get Saturday to spend with him, and then I drive 8 hours total again up and back to return him. She cheated on me but reached out to all the people I introduced her to to tell them that I cheated on her. The damage she has done to my life and career are irreversible. I am 31 years old. I have a good career. I am 6'4" in very good shape. I did not require her to work and we had a fantastic social life, but that was not enough to keep her from stepping out on the relationship. I have spent $150,000 on lawyers. We are nowhere near to setting the start of a custody hearing. Recently we had a mediation and I offered to buy her a home and to give her the majority of my salary every month just to move back, and she refused. What would you do if you were me? Taking her back is not an option. I'm not even quite sure how to process what I just read, to be quite honest with you. Um, I don't want to beat up on a man who's already obviously down. I don't want to beat up on a man who obviously has emotional issues, to put it bluntly. Obviously she does. I mean, we can almost kind of write her off as she's a nutball. Nutballs exist. The women do really bad things to people all the time. Men do really bad things to men and women too all the time. It's just bad people exist and they do crazy things. And if you— and here's the key— if you intertwine them into your life, you're going to get hurt, probably. That, Joe, is your big lesson in all this. You meet said person, kudos to you immediately saying, I don't like this, something is off about you. Farewell, and then you made the mistake of all mistakes. You took her back because she loved you and she made you feel amazing. Welcome to the club. You're one of bazillions of dudes and gals for that matter who have done the same thing. And what all these people who do such a thing have in common is they don't like themselves that much. Now, there was something within your story that every man is already screaming that is watching this on their computer screen or their phone or whatever. And I'll just come out and say it. Um, what are the chances that this child is not biologically yours? I would say the chances are pretty high. And if, from your story, it sounds like that was overtly addressed, where you saw information that showed you that she also wasn't sure who the father was. But I noticed you kind of dropped it at that and just kept on and just called this child yours. Now, some people will hear that and say, kudos to you, dude, you're taking ownership, you're taking on the responsibility. You see a human being, a child in need, and you're like, I got it. Um, but it sounds like you take it to the next level and the next level and the next level, to the point of being almost— well, it's concerning— handing out, you know, houses and a majority of your money and Offering all this to a child who, as far as I can tell— I'm sorry, Joe— who is in all probability not yours. Maybe that's too much for you to confront mentally and emotionally right now. Maybe that will be the straw that breaks the camel's back and that will send you into a mental headspace you can't escape from. But it just seems— by only what I can go on is what you've written to me here— and it just seems very odd that you're just kind of Avoiding what seems to be the obvious to everyone who just listened to or watched what I had to say here, which is you got with a gal who runs around with a bunch of different men, is kind of crazy for lack of a better word, got pregnant, and you took her in and immediately said, "Kid's mine. Let me give you anything and everything I can to make you stick around." And that's not good, my dude. Um, so With all that being said, your question to me is, what should I do? Thankfully, you say, I'm not taking her back. But I guess what you're saying is, what should I do about this kiddo, right? Um, it's gonna sound cold, and I'm probably gonna lose like half my audience with this one, but the first thing you do is a test, what they call a paternity test. You waltz kid into clinic— I don't know how this works— and say, draw blood from me, draw blood from him/her, and tell me, is this kid biologically mine or not? And if it's not, I don't know what to tell you, dude. Um, it's easy for me to say, being a guy that's disconnected from you, not in the situation, but if that were me, I would just bow out and say, this isn't my responsibility anymore. As cold, callous as that may be, I don't see any other option here. Now, if the child is yours, then what option do you have? You continue as is legally, going through the proper channels. You've spent an inordinate amount of money for some strange reason, $150,000, to try to gain access to this kid. Why are you spending so much and not getting anything? It should be you spend a fraction of that and then have a paternity hearing. Now, if the law is saying, dude, it's not going to happen, you have no rights to this child, child could potentially not be yours, you're not married, whatever it may be, then you walk away or keep fighting, lose all your money. I don't, I don't know. I'm not an attorney. I can't tell you that for certain. So if it's me, is the kid really mine? And if so, What are my legal obligations, limits? What can I— can I not do here? What can I accomplish? Not— what's realistic and what isn't? She lives 4 hours away. What about you getting closer to her? Again, if it's your child, this is— that's a big if, dude. Um, dude, this is just a mess. And for those watching this or listening to this, perfect illustration of how the wrong decision can have this, can have this cascading, snowballing series of ramifications down the line. You agree to give your love, your time, yes, your resources, money, vulnerability, your heart to the wrong person, and you don't back away when all the signs there are saying run for your life, and you attach further. You're going to pay the price. And what a lot of men in your position have learned is everybody else is just kind of like, dude, suck it up, it is what it is, right? And they even go as far as to believe when your ex is making accusations against you and all this other good stuff. I don't know, dude, if it's me, I just distance myself from that situation as much as humanly possible. Paternity test, if negative, that kid ain't yours. Chalk it up to one of your biggest, if not the biggest, life mistake you've ever made and move on. All right, brother, thank you for reaching out. Appreciate it. Check out our group, the HFM Brotherhood, at help4men.com. It's a private community for men only. We get together in discussion forums and talk about this kind of stuff. We get together in live meetings, 6 to 8 live meetings a week. We record all the meetings. We have over 1,000 hours of meetings recorded. Get get all my books and another book, no extra charge. We get together in person, all kinds of good stuff. HelpForMen.com/join, that gets you directly to the page, and we would love to have you. All right, brother, thank you for reaching out. Appreciate it.