Why I am a single mother.
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The first time I thought of leaving my husband I was just 8 weeks pregnant. He was unemployed again and spent his days parked on the couch without a care or worry.
“I’ll get a job when I need to, just stop to talk,” he would say in his thick french accent. The accent wasn’t sexy anymore. It had lost all of its luster.
Then there was also his complete unwillingness to improve our relationship. But instead of leaving him, I kicked him out. Two weeks later and two marriage counseling sessions later I took him back.
I didn’t want to give up the chance, a fat chance, but still a chance that maybe he would be a better husband once the baby arrived. Some men do change. He wouldn’t. It actually just got worse.
We moved into a bigger apartment, he had finally found a job and we could afford the extra space. I was five months pregnant and in full nesting mode. I wanted to get everything unpacked. Who wouldn’t? Boxes were every where and they had been for weeks. I did what I could. Unpacking the little boxes, pushing furniture around slowly…all of this while working a full-time job. So you can imagine how frustrating it was when he’d come home from work and just plop on the couch.
“Can you please move these boxes?” I would ask.
Days went by. They just sat there and so did he. On the couch. One week later and still the boxes aren’t touched, “can you just move them. I’ll tell you where they need to go.” I’m pleading, practically in tears.
“Why? Why right now? I’ll get to it.” He’s yelling at me from his spot on the couch amongst piles of boxes.
And then it happened. He picked up a heavy medium sized box and threw it at me. The box barely misses my pregnant belly and hits me in the knees. I keep my balance and then, shocked by what just happened, feel a little scared. I realize that I actually don’t know this man at all. I don’t know who he is and I’m pregnant with his child - no, no, this is not his child, this is my child, I remember thinking.
It was a whirlwind marriage.
I met him, fell in love, he needed a green card and three months later we were married. My friends and family supported my decision even though I was clearly suffering from temporary insanity. In just a few months I realized what a colossal mistake I had made, but I stayed with him. I decided to give the relationship two years. I didn’t even change my last name, knowing that it wouldn’t last. One year in, I got pregnant. It was an accident, but there was no way I wasn’t having the baby. I wanted to. How couldn’t I? I felt him inside of me…and I fell in love with him instantly.
For the remainder of my pregnancy I focus solely on myself and the baby. I would talk to Benjamin while he was growing, patting my stomach and telling him everything was going to be okay.
Meanwhile my relationship with my husband continued to get worse and worse. The fights and the violence continued, one night he actually pushed me into the stairs, pushed me face forward into the stairs. I caught myself with my arms saving the baby from the impact. I didn’t tell anyone about it. Not a soul. I was ashamed that I was married to such a creep. I couldn’t leave him, I thought, not now, not while I was pregnant. I just kept my mouth shut, very unusual for me, and played happy little wife to keep everything calm and relatively peaceful.
Three months after Benjamin was born he came home early from work.
“I got fired.”
Later that week he told me he wouldn’t be finding a new job. That he wanted to be a stay at home dad. This was a financial impossibility. I had just finished three months of unpaid maternity leave. Now my husband was officially giving me nothing. He wasn’t bringing in an income, wasn’t sleeping with me and he wasn’t even there for me emotionally. He was useless to me. But, he’s Benjamin’s father… I thought I needed him. And what would I do? How would I leave him?
Then it hit me. If I raise Benjamin with this man one day he’ll grow up and he’ll treat women this way. He’ll talk to me like his father talks to me and there will be no chance he’ll get to see a mother and father in love with each other. Besides, what was he giving me, how was he helping me? He was actually making my life harder. Was I really going to give up my entire life or any chance of happiness just so my son could have a father in the house? Did I want Benjamin to grow up with miserable parents who were only together for him?
No way. For some women this is possible. For me - not an option.
So I did it. I left him.
I was done. I told him I was leaving. He looked defeated. The anger was gone for a moment and I realized that I was doing the right thing - for both of us, for all of us. This was a mistake from the beginning. I was miserable and so was he.
He refused to leave the apartment, giving me no option but to uproot our lives and move with a newborn. I was a mess. I wouldn’t be able to afford a place on my own. My mother said we could move to her place, an hour and a half away. I would have to leave my career, my friends…everything…just to get away from him. I called my first boss, the owner of a small radio station I had worked at when I was 17. They had an opening for a secretary. I took it. My salary was cut in third. I didn’t care. Somehow I would have to make it work.
The first night at my mother’s house I started crying hysterically. A rock up until this moment, I had suddenly become overwhelmed with the reality of what I had just done. My friends, my life, my career - it was all gone. And my husband, what would he do? All alone in our now empty apartment. It’s funny now to think I was actually worried about how he would make it without me. I had no idea what I was about to go through myself.
I was now a single mom. I took it one day at a time. I didn’t think about the future or how I would get back to the city and back to my career. I just buckled in for the ride.
There are no words to describe the year that followed. I survived by facing my fears but not letting them consume me. My maternal instincts were also in full gear. I was still breastfeeding…all I could think about was keeping the baby happy and healthy. That helped take my mind off of everything else. We were hibernating. Hiding from the world until I could get us back to it…somehow I would.
Just under one year later I found an even better job in the city and moved back. Now I’m completely supporting myself and my son. So that’s how I got here…and I’m still here.
I know there are so many women out there in horrible marriages, sucking it up for the sake of their children or because they have no way to leave him financially and it’s those women who my heart really goes out to. Sometimes I look at my life in two alternate universes or scenarios. What if I would have stayed? I can’t even imagine…
Filed under: The Father (My Ex), Uncategorized, Why I am a single mother
So many things you wrote are true for me too… I moved when I was 5 months pregnant and because I wasn’t doing the things he wanted he locked me in the garage, he refused to work… I don’t like my boss, I’m going back to school, etc.
I call my daughter mine too. I’m the one who is responsible for her, so I get her.
I wish you happiness!
Wow, what a piece of writing. What courageous person you are. How lucky your son is to have you.
I am married to a supportive man and motherhood is *still* so hard. I truly honestly do NOT know how single mothers do it. My hat is off to you.
My mom was a single mother from the time I was 8 years old and I have never once wished that she and my dad stayed together. Your son will see the example of strength and independence you set and be the better for it, I promise!
What a candid post you have here and it took a lot of courage to do this Im sure. It is not easy to be a single mother but I always believe that one door closed behind, a few more will open up.
Let me commend you on taking a stand for the sanity, safety and happiness that you and your son deserve. You did a brave thing. It’s always hard starting over, but sometimes it’s necessary. When I look back to when I left my husband and how I had to move back with my mother with my 2 girls, I sometimes cannot believe I am where I am now. I feel fortunate that I was strong enough to leave and make a way for me and my children. Maybe this one blog entry on why and how you left will inspire another woman who is in a terrible situation to get the guts to leave.
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Until I was 7 I grew up with a single mother and I appreciate all your efforts, but I would never put the details on the internet. Personal is personal.
Congratulations on changing your life around. You did the right thing, and one day when your son is older, he will thank you!!
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Congratulations! My mom kicked my sperm donor to the curb I think when I was a couple of months old. Not sure. Basically she went out to work, she had a 30 day maternity leave in 1979, and worked until the day she gave birth to boot! And he wasn’t working.
She married him because everyone told her she had to get married to her high school boyfriend after college.
So anyway she was working extra hours to support us and came home one night to a child and no husband. So he couldn’t “deal” with a crying child so he left me at home alone for who knows how long. He didn’t call anyone and just left. That was it. She packed his stuff and put it outside.
Why did she need him if he didn’t do anything? Plus when he was “frustrated” he shook me. It was enough. He had to go. And we didn’t see him again. He didn’t come around.
Sounds like my story, but I was with my x for 10 years and he left me when I was 6 months pregnant. I was not strong enough to leave him but I got strong and stayed strong and now he is in her life, after an almost 3 year absence…. and we are doing it MY WAY!
i was raised by a single mother and i didnt turn out bad at all. there is nothing bad about what you did. Go girl.
this is all too familiar to me.
am glad.. that there are others out there who’ve been through more or less the same thing.
my daughter’s father left US when he i was 2mths pregnant. for a girl he met whilst we were on a break two months earlier. even had the nerve to move her into his flat……… that now is all history. once my little darling was born, i was overcome with so much love and that maternal instinct kicked in. it was all about us now.
he suggested i post her registration certificate to him so he could sign it off (for a certificate of birth), and talk about it with his new partner. im sure you all can imagine what i was feeling - i wasn’t going to go out of my way with a new born to post this to him, when he lived 15mins away. so i decided ‘thats it - we don’t need him’. and i never called him again. nor did he get the chance to meet this beautiful creation.
3yrs down the track - my little darling has grown so much, and is such a little girly madam
just like all of your own children out there, she charms the socks of me and is full of questions about everything/one around her. Her fav song right now is ‘Disturbia’ Rihanna.. thanks to her aunt (my younger sister), my babes is queen of shrieking through the house being a diva .. 
We’ve made the right decisions to move on Mamas, and it can only get better.
xx
just to clarify also.. he didn’t get to meet her because he chose not to.. we had lived in the same house since he left, same phone numbers etc.. i would welcome the contact, but @ the same time i don’t want to share her.. to me she is mine. she doesn’t know him or his family, am super grateful for all the family support my babes and i have had. made all the diff in the world.
I spent the last three years of my life in an abusive relationship staying when I should have left. I finally left him 8 months ago. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done and I do have significant scars on my heart from all the rending it has gone through. Although we tried to have children, we thankfully did not. He did have a daughter though, that loved me deeply and I loved her back just as fiercely. I can not describe the loss of leaving her.
I still find myself worrying about him occasionally, wondering how he is handling his migraines and ridiculous things like that.
I don’t speak of it, sometimes because people are surprisingly judgmental toward you about this. But reading your blog, knowing you are a smart and beautiful woman who shared a similar experience warmed my heart. Sorry for the long post, but your post opened me up.
Wonderful writing and good for you for leaving!
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