Your opinion

[vashti]

Did you not entitle this thread "your opinion"? ::puzzled::

You are right. I am sure you DO know more about "Ed" than I do. I am basing my opinion solely on the information YOU provided, and I suppose my tolerance is low for people who would abandon their kids. Maybe this is what happens when you have a couple of your own - it tends to make you less sympathetic. It makes you ask "could I EVER do this to my own kids?", and "how might giving my children away negatively impact their lives?"

I am sorry you didn't make him out to be such a hero, but if all you wanted was for people to try to rationalize what he did, you should have called this thread "please reinforce that my "friend" is a swell guy".

[StephensDave60]

I actually don't know the guy. Never talked to him. I read some of the posts.

I don't know the details of what happened with his son, but neither do you. You assume that he abandoned him. I read a lot of the posts before I said anything myself. I know that whatever happened was out of his control, and his options were thin. I'm not trying to paint him as a hero. I'm painting him as a human being, nothing more... in fact to be honest... I read what happened and it got to me. I was using the instance of what had happened to illustrate my own reaction, and I must have done it pretty poorly lol.

Sure, I feel bad for the guy. But I don't know him. It's one thing to "abandon" your children... it's another to send them to live with family temporarily. I did that when my second was born. My oldest lived with my wife's parents for two months. We had a hit of financial problems and health problems, and it was easier to do that at the time. In retrospect, I'm glad we did do that, because her father passed away shortly after, and he got to spend a lot of time with his grandchild which otherwise wouldn't have happened.

But the real point of my post was the fleeting nature of relationships. So many people talk about this being "life".... maybe it's more than that. Sure you can chalk up the growing divorce rate to growing population, such that there are more people, and as such more variables, but I just don't agree. A rate is a rate. 50% means 50% regardless of how many people are involved. (Unless the sample is odd, at which point you can't have 50%... but anyway) Divorce rate is at 50%. It is growing, and I believe that is because we are looking at some sort of moral decline. And when I read what happened to him, I felt like maybe that was evidence of it. It didn't bother me what happened to him, but rather the way it happened.

I agree that "playing the game" as someone called it, involves risk. I agree that it is every bit possible that someday my wife and I may reach a point of impass. We can't get past something. However, I would hope that we were both raised and built to make an attempt at it, rather than a slight push and then quitting. I would think that if you invested 20 years with someone, it would be worth the effort to keep it standing. And then, if we find it isn't feasible, then we come to a fair and impartial agreement as to the outcome. I don't see the reason for things to be so immature , dishonest, and cowardly.