Hello All,

This is my first post. I would like to give a different viewpoint from most of the posts here. This post is long. I have a lot to say and a lot of information to give you all. I broke it into three posts and posted them one after another to help break it up.

I am 25 years old and both an adult child and a child caught up in divorce and a bad marriage. I say adult child as I am an adult dealing with my parent’s divorce. I say child as I have been dealing with my parents’ bad marriage for most of my life. My earliest memory of actually speaking out about my parents’ marriage was as an 11 year old in the 6th grade. I was extremely worried that my parents would divorce and went to my youth pastor to talk about it. The reason I had these worries was because my mother threatened my father with divorce frequently and there was constant fighting in our house. Slowly, over time, I became immune to those words and just accepted it as part of our family’s interaction. So now it has happened, almost a year ago though 13 years after I first remember talking to my youth pastor about it.

To get you all on the same page, Faith4me is my mother. I am the eldest child of four she refers to in her posts. I became curious about the posts my mother and father argued about all the time around a year and a half or so ago. So, I came here and checked it out. I am here to talk mostly about my mother, not what my father did, did not do in the affair. The reason being, I am worried about the relationships she will have with her four children if she does not work herself out of all this anger she has built up. And, this anger has not been building up in just the past couple years, there has been anger and fighting in my family since I can remember. This anger she has is deep rooted and I suspect it comes from prior to her marriage.

I have only read a small percentage of her posts a couple times over the past year and a half and they mostly infuriate me to the point I don’t read them again for many months. I am guessing, most of you think we are the laziest, most irresponsible kids on the planet. Some of her posts make us sound as bad as drunks, addicted to drugs, leeching off of their parent/s.

Just to straighten things up, I maintained a 4.0 in high school, participated in multiple clubs, honor society, multiple sports, and pursued a horse career. My parents bought my first horse, a cheap one, when I was 15. I worked a job at a local ice cream parlor and helped in the family business to help with expenses. My senior year when I was 17, I maintained a 4.2, was in 13 clubs or after school organizations, was the president of the 4-H club, captain of the varsity soccer team, graduated 6th in my class AND worked at the barn five days a week to pay for my horse’s expenses. I was accepted to the University of Michigan, considered by many to be on par with Ivy league schools. Basically, not a walk in the park. There in four and a half years, I took over 200 credits, did the last five semesters straight, no breaks, and graduated with a BSE (Bachelors in Engineering), a BFA (Bachelors in Fine Arts) and as pre-med. I also maintained my horse career and did some odd horse jobs when I could. Granted my parents covered most of the expenses, because I scarcely had to time to breathe much less work a heavy duty job to cover all the horse expenses. I paid for half the education with scholarships. Plus, the rule for my sister and I was if our parents were to cover the horse expenses, we had to maintain good grades. We both went above and beyond just good grades. The next two kids, sister and brother, both maintained above 4.0 in high school and graduated in the top five. Both were active in numerous activities and sports. Both are now just about to finish Aerospace Engineering degrees at the University of Michigan. Both have worked part time jobs, gotten many scholarships and pushed themselves hard through college. The final child, my brother, is graduating respectively in high school. The first three of us set a blazing pace for him to follow, that I don’t think he quite wanted to meet. That’s fine, because he works hard and is smart. He is musically gifted and has devoted years to perfecting his instrument.

So, in short, we are every parent’s hopes and dreams when they have a child. And, my parents have four. Yet my mother continues to trash us on these boards. I will continue…I remember a ways back about her saying, something along the lines that I was playing when I was working at a place on the opposite side of the state. To refresh your memories, just before college graduation, I broke my hand which required two surgeries and nine months of PT. Kind of put me out of commission for awhile, though I needed the break to recover from the whirlwind of college. Even during that time, I did work some short odd jobs to help with my horse expenses. After PT, I worked on starting a horse related biz. A year after graduation, I contacted a company on the other side of the state about working there. Finally, they took me on in March when I offered to work for free. The job market was tough then and still is. I juggled the horse biz, showing and trying to sell my big show horse and this new job. I became the main project manager within a few months and my show horse was leased out. I moved to the other side of the state and started working full time.

The job wasn’t enough to cover all my horses, all my personal expenses and the horse biz I was trying to start (which had monthly expenses as big or bigger then most middle income family house payments). So, I took on a second job as a horse trainer and lesson teacher at a local barn. Mind you, this wasn’t some big fancy place with fancy horses. This was a barn trying to resell off the track thoroughbreds, ex-racehorses, the cheap ones. Two of the eight horses I was riding were nutcases as many horses off the track tend to be. They were ticking time bombs ready to rear, buck, explode at any time. Yet, I risked my life working at this barn three days a week, so I could make enough money to be self-sufficient. The two jobs added up to any easy 90 to 100 hours of work a week. I didn’t mind though, what else does a 23-24 year old have to do? What infuriates me, is my mom actually posted to you all and told me in person, that I was just playing over there, having a good time. I guess, her definition of a good time is being bit in the shoulder by a horse (still have the scar 1.5 yrs later), having to bail off horses numerous times to avoid being seriously injured, skipping sleep many nights so I could work more hours in the office, having no social life, etc.

Ok…continuing on… My horse biz failed as the main component failed at no fault of mine. I ended up with a lemon piece of equipment. I lost the project manager job a little over a year ago when the company closed up as many dot-coms do. Oh well, this is business, most will fail, those who persevere will succeed in the long run. I moved back in the house and decided to start my own dot-coms, since I had learned a lot. That is what I am currently doing, still trying to get off the ground. I have new and fresh ideas all the time. BTW, if you know anyone who needs a website, send them my way, that’s what I do! I also help quite a bit with the office work for my father’s business which is the life blood of this family.

Now to start addressing many of my mother’s comments and the posters’ comments. Yes, as of now I do depend on my father to help with my expenses. I have proven my ability to work and work hard, I have proven my responsibility and I am on the brink of starting down the road to monetary success. I am an investment to my family’s breaking free of the chains that money puts on us. My dad sees this, but mom doesn’t. She has told all of us kids, numerous times, she is going to live in a cardboard box for the rest of her life because she will be dirt poor. She is not kidding either when she says this, she seriously believes this. This has got to be one of the most hurtful things to us kids. What??? She has no faith in her children who have worked their butts off and together will have three engineering degrees if not more. She actually thinks her children will let her starve and wilt on the side of a road??? The whole darn reason I want to make major money and have worked my butt off and will continue to do so, is so my family can live the easy life…NOT just me. My biggest wish is for my parents to “retire” and have full financial freedom NOW. When she says things like this, I want to just let her live in a cardboard box, seeing how she wants it and doesn’t believe in me when I have proven so much. Though, I could never do that, and would send her abundant funds even if I wasn’t speaking to her.

CONTINUED in next post………