Rodney and I became friends through his sister – one of my closest friends. We’ve known each other for more than 15 years and have unofficially adopted each other.
I was visiting him in Texas when his phone started blowing up out nowhere.
Everything is an open book with Rodney, so he answered the phone and immediately started going hard in argument mode.
It was the mother of his second set of children. In total, he has five children ranging in age from 18 years to 18 months by three women.
To say that I don’t approve would be the biggest understatement ever. But it’s to the point where you are so disgusted with someone’s choices and you’ve done everything possible to offer advice (that they continually ignore), so you just pretend like that part of their life doesn’t exist.
Anyway, we don’t talk about “the drama,” so I didn’t know until the phone conversation that he had just driven six hours to see his girls only to be prevented from seeing them because he brought “that chick and that baby.” He wanted his daughters to meet their new little brother. Their mother was not having it.
“There are plenty of women who wish their children’s father wanted to see them,” Rodney said. “But you steady playin’ these childish games.”
He hung up. Her mother calls back going off talking about how he “tore up her daughter’s family.”
“But she was the one who ended it with me,” Rodney responded.
He’s currently in a relationship with his young son’s mother, and the other mother is working overtime to make sure that it doesn’t work out.
The situation is “extra,” but far from an isolated.
As they went back and forth, I thought of the strain the mother’s actions have on the father’s relationship with his children. But I couldn’t help but break my rule about discussing his personal life to inquire about how the drama affects his current relationship.
“She cool,” Rodney said.
I could tell he didn’t want to go there.
To be honest, I was more interested in talking with his current girlfriend about the burden she picked up when she entered his life – but I don’t know her like that.
Through a friend and a friend of a friend, I spoke with a couple of women – neither have children of their own – who openly (under the freedom of anonymity) discussed the trials and tribulations that they have experienced as a result of doing so.
“There is added stress in our relationship because there’s always that other person you have to deal with,” said Gia.
Gia’s boyfriend is the father of a nine-year-old son whose mother prevents the father from seeing because she “doesn’t trust his choices in relationships, friendships and so on.”
Gia’s boyfriend has not seen his son since Father’s Day of 2008.
“When he doesn’t get the opportunity to see his child, he acts differently,” Gia said. “And that affects everything.”
Gia says that her boyfriend is not open to discussing the situation with her and works to keep it to himself.
She wants him to take legal action so that he can get visitation rights. But he doesn’t want to rock the boat with his child’s mother and is trying to play nice in the hopes that she will soften up and get civil. So far it hasn’t happened.
“He doesn’t want to go to the system and therefore is letting this other person run his life with respect to his child,” Gia said.
“She is controlling his interest in the relationship with his son and he is letting her prevent him from giving his son what he needs – a mother and a father.”
Gia’s boyfriend also lies about being in a relationship with her to the child’s mother out of fear that it will make matters worse – fearing she will get jealous and make matters worse.
“That I don’t understand, because she’s in her own relationship,” said Gia.
But Gia’s situation is happily ever after compared to the issues faced by Tiffany and her fiancée.
As she ran the story down it sounded more like a script from the most awful “urban drama” plays than anything real-life.
“She’s mental,” Tiffany said. “She’s always trying to kick something up.”
Her fiancée has been forced to move twice, has issued restraining orders and has to meet her at the police station to pick up and drop off his five-year-old son for visitation.
Tiffany herself has been victimized by the woman as well.
She has been stalked – to say the least. The woman was “coincidently” assigned to Tiffany’s place of employment where she attempted to berate her in front of the school and her students.
To make matters worse, the woman also plants negative seeds about Tiffany to the boy.
“He sometimes does things to me and I know it’s because Mommy is filling up his head,” Tiffany said. “Your son is happy and I would think that it would make you happy, but for some women it just doesn’t.”
For the sake of the child Tiffany has to curb her instincts to go head-to-head in order to keep the peace within her new family.
“When you have to be a role model for a child, it changes the situation,” Tiffany said.
“I feel like she pushes me and I can’t push back. But if I did, how can I continue a relationship with this young boy? You have to back off. You have to be the bigger person.”
She believes the drama stems from the fact that the woman still wants the man and is bitter from the fact that he moved on so quickly after their relationship ended.
“At one point, we almost broke up,” Tiffany said. “If you do not feel passionate about the relationship, I would say bag up and walk away.”