I'm watching this OWN special called Black Love and it's basically celebrity couples that have been married for a long time sharing thier stories of how they met, the trials they'd been through, the changes they experienced and what they've learned along the way... It's beautiful. I often think about my failed relationship with my child's father and everything we had been through together and how I would rationalize things much in the same way as I'm seeing these couples rationalize through thier difficulties and how no matter how much I empathized, forgave, tried new forms of communication I could never get the same in return infact it was almost always met with more disrespect, abuse, ignorance and intentional pain. I knew I simply didn't have a true partner anymore. I knew that I had been used and decieved and above that I noticed that my child wasn't receiving the love or attention he deserved either and was even being bullied at times by his own father at only a few months old. I immidiately got us out of that situation and not a moment too soon... What I'm getting at is I can't help but feel like I made a bad choice and it's always going to affect me and my son's life in a negative way because of this decision I made. I feel guilt and embarrassment sometimes for not just making the decision or being decieved into a decision to have a child with this person but I feel guilt for even thinking about it like that because I love my son so much. The main thing that eats at me is that I feel that because of my bad decision -I robbed my child of a family by chosing a man that obviously wasn't fit to be his father. But in reality my son would've never existed without him... I just had to get this off of my chest. My question for other moms that have maybe experienced something like this or have been through this and now have older kids is how did you move on? How is your relationship with your child? Are they resentful of thier lack of family ? I just want to know if things get better and how I can help them get that way I guess.