Whereas I know that I did the best I could for my daughters. We always ate, and always had warm clothes. There never was any money (still isn't), but we made it. And now, because we live in this great country, their futures are as bright as the efforts they wish to expend. Sure, they will have to figure out how to finance higher education, but they have opportunities.
My ex, on the other hand, has screwed himself. His daughters never want to see him or establish any kind of communication. He is, I am sure, a very lonely and bitter man.
As usual, some women miss the point. I am not bitter over having to pay out the money in support for my children, because I love my children more than life itself. What grinds my gears is that the money had to be sent to a cheating, lying slut who didn't have to account for how the money was spent. She remarried, and at one point her new husband had the audacity to say to me, after a change in support payments had been instituted automatically by the State, "of course, you realize this is going to hurt the children". The thing that makes me mad is not the money per se, it is the fact that I had to give the money, without having the comfort and consort of a woman and the constant presence of the children ( a family united and living together, in other words). The money would have been spent on the children properly if the family were intact. Her husband's remark to me as much as told me that the support money wasn't being spent on the kids, or accounted for, it was going into the general family finances, and in effect, some of my money was supporting his two children, too. There needs to be strong laws on the books to make custodial parents accountable for how every dime of support money is spent, with penalties for non-compliance, up to and including removal of custody and awarding custody to the other parent, with a reversal of the child support order. The system makes men unduly accountable, and women absolutely non-accountable. That is not right by any stretch of the imagination.