Just yesterday I was commenting on another single mom’s post and the comment opened an unusual door for me to my ex-husband. A door of gratitude. She and also some of my good women friends have experienced ex-husbands who were unreliable, absent and inconsistent in their children’s lives.

I remembered when my ex-husband left and the profound emotional effect it had on my three year old son. He kept saying after his father left that “Nobody loved him.” It broke my heart. I knew I loved him.

I remember one day while in his bedroom he said something in relation to his father and his feelings of being unloved. I called his father immediately and his father set a time up to be with this son. In addition to this his father had the children visit him every weekend. He didn’t take them on extended holidays but I didn’t want him to. It was hard enough for me to have them go there every weekend.

My son kept saying that “nobody loved him”, even after his father made an effort to spend extra time with him. I wanted to know just how deep this feeling was in my son and I knew that I would have to somehow tap into his subconscious to see if it was just a surface emotion or a deep seated void.

I did it one night when he was walking past me as i was sitting on the couch. I said “I love you,” as he walked on by. He replied “I love you too,” then stopped himself and said “You don’t love me no one does.” But I knew I had touched his inner being and that little boy knew without a doubt that he was loved and that he could also love  back.

Did my ex-husband hurt my children  by moving out and leaving me for another woman? Yes, he did, but he could have done a lot worse if he had abandoned the children or been unreliable.