All too often you hear about a single mom, or a woman that was screwed over by a guy. From cheaters, to abusers, to scheming minds, and whatever else you could think of. For many, the story of a child who doesn’t see their father, somehow it is the father’s fault. They were the wrong doers. My question is…how many of the “deadbeat” dads are actually “deadbeats”?

Now, before I go on, there are always 2 sides to every story and, in reality, most of us only get to hear the one side. But, what about the other side to some of these stories?

It has almost become the go-to thought that when you hear about a single mom struggling, or about how a child only has 1 parent, that it is the father’s wrong doings and they need to grow up. The problem here is that it isn’t always the dad’s fault. I have friends that are single dads that don’t get to see their kids because the mom is actually the bad guy.

I have friends who were cheated on, friends who were set up to look like the bad guy in the situation, friends who were ultimately screwed over some how by a toxic woman.

These toxic women are good at making the guy look like a bad father. They talk bad about them to other people, to their kids, to whoever will listen. Sometimes the mom is the problem, not the dad. There are a lot of moms out there that are getting child support paid and anything else they can leech from the father of their child, who barely get to spend time with their own flesh and blood.

This is one thing I hope I’m not doing. I have good reasons for keeping the “father” of my child at bay for the time being. I do not trust him. He may have changed for the better, but while my child is still little, I will protect him from the man that I knew him to be. Maybe one day when my son is older and can understand how relationships, of any kind, work; then maybe I will tell him what happened. However, once he is old enough to know, he will be the one to make the decision. If he wants to meet his father and make his own judgement about him, so be it. As an adult I don’t have to like the man, but I can be civil for the sake of my son.

I pray every day to not be, or turn into, a toxic woman. The situation I left was toxic, that doesn’t mean I, as a person, have to be as well. Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving means letting go of the pain and leaving it in the past.

“Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is not guilty of whatever they did to upset us. Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting. Rather, forgiveness means letting go of the pain the incident is causing us. We forgive to give ourselves peace of mind…”
–Martha Sorren, Woman’s Day