Unbelievable, isn't it, that so many otherwise sensible people fall back on the ol' "If he didn't want to be responsible, he shouldn't have opened his zipper" routine. Notice they NEVER say, "If the mother didn't want to end up a single parent without enough income to raise the kid, she should have kept her legs shut." Meanwhile, our culture is SCREAMING in pain from the long-term consequences of fathers' roles being reduced via family law courts to emasculated tokens whose only role is to provide money -- suicided teen boys, promiscuous girls desperate for male affection any way they can get it, popular music filled with hatred toward women -- I can only shake my head in amazement. For "conservatives," an awful lot of folks around here indicate the same narrow-minded template thinking as Liberals.
I've learned to scrape the "holier-than-thou" types off my Vibram Lug like so much dog-sh!+ :)
I'm happily married now, to a youger lady, and I have a nine month old son, but there is no denying that the whole process took an awful lot out of me. After all the dust had settled I became a hermit for quite a few years. I just could not deal with the insanity that runs much of the world. There are worse things than being alone, after all.
Still, here I am, getting close to 60, my health ruined, my finances a joke... but, I have my wife, my son, my cats, my dog, my cameras... For me, life is better than it is for my ex, even with her high-rollin' "life"style.
She may have destroyed my children, she may have taken the best years of my life, she may have cost me my health, and my wealth, but I'm still the winner -- compared to her.