As one of the few men responding positively to your article, thank you for your intensely harrowing journey into single parenthood with your daughter. It’s hard for damaged people to see the value gap in our partners before jumping the broom, so to speak. My divorce mediator made me apologize to my X for simply stating that our values were different. I am pausing before dating again after so many repeated excoriations with partners gone bad. I am a recently divorced single father who cares for our beautiful son. My X was as careless as your husband was. She alienated me from my son for nearly 3 months because I asserted myself. This kind of pain of being separated from my son was beyond words; every molecule of air was papercuts for weeks. As thoughtful, people pleasers like yourself, my respect for my X landed me in a fierce legal battle over my right to parent my son as I wished. It was the intolerance of spouses who chose their lives different from their partners yet inflict their world view onto their spouses and make them submit. She wanted the world to believe her reality rather than mine, and unfortunately, I was a man in a woman’s divorce monkey court. She chose uniculturalism vs. multiculturalism when all I wanted was to cuddle with my son as I pleased. I nearly believed her lies for control of my son as she called the cops. I faced reverse discrimination from lawyers, social workers, and the police because I was a man in a post-feminist world. Even my own male divorce attorney said what I did could be considered criminal for playing keep-away with her cell phone, such empathy. Be warned fellow men with oppressive wives. I felt like an African-American smoker with a “Je suis Charlie” sign tattooed on my XY tears. Thankfully my son was clueless to all these grownup blood feuds. He only wanted warm huggies and a sunny place to play Roblox with his Dadda. Yes, we are all imperfect and damaged, single fathers and mothers alike; must we punish the other for each other's lack of proper attachment figures? Yes, childishness knows no bounds with parents who continue to treat children and their X like objects of their traumas and lack of attachment figures rather than innocent children of God ignorant their own our power plays. I have left my infinite series of indignation over her thoughtless, careless acts of treating me like a child who is no longer hers yet hers to manipulate. She means nothing to me now. I have burned her effigy till she transformed into innocent atoms needing assurance in a sickening co-dependent way. It is the victimized not the control freaks who are the righteous ones, not just mothers, not just fathers, not just on Pinterest, not for the love of God, but for the love of the next-gen, our kiddos. Why am I putting down my childish, egotistical baggage of indignation and sorries that abound on Medium? I probably have a load of stained laundry to do before logging onto Indeed or Medium for more attention-seeking. We serve a thankless church of deprivation and consumption by each act of disrespect for the respectless polluting our beloved blue oceans rather than washing our inner souls. We keep little for ourselves and barf aplenty; perhaps enough for a seed in that sh*t that will grow into a loving idea or an innocent child of God like George Stinney Jr. or George Floyd Jr. We are all Black thinking we are White. We should discard the Church of Social Media as the fountain of white wisdom for raising our rainbow children, and look within to what we want them to B by emulating that love within ourselves, what God wanted us 2B ever since creation. Then perhaps the baggage we pass onto the next-gen will be lighter for them to carry.

Let’s use social media as a cash cow for our true wants rather than needing the Tweeting golden calf ignoring the beauty around. Don’t you understand that the rich are the rich by sucking the blood of the truly rich, the cash people, the down-trodden who knows the pleasure of life by having none? By pleasing yourself is pleasing to God is becoming a better parent to our planet whatever Dr. Spock decries from his ignorant and backward grave. But, pleasing yourself, well, takes a lifetime of shedding and discarding stupid habits we’ve grown to love. I’ve learned the hard way that keeping my son alive, forgoing his violin lessons & fiber-rich organic foods for embracing the poverty of time together. It is good enough parenting for a good enough individual still trying to sever the ties to my X who thinks I am still her family to abuse no matter what the third party says. Both men and women need to educate themselves on being better people, thus better parents. I’ve experienced reverse discrimination as a man engaged in divorce. Let me tell you it is not fun being black when I am yellow, but only the oppressed know how to groove and only the powerful see the difference in colors. This is a beautiful burden both fathers and mothers carry whatever color you may be. As you wrote, “In general, we are master facilitators and planners because who else is going to do the work?” I leave you with the Word of God:

Colossians 3:23
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,