Member-only story
Five years ago I was broke and trying to change career
It’s always darkest just before dawn
“I’m leaving.”
Two words that changed my world forever. It was two weeks after our eighth wedding anniversary and just four months after our second child was born.
I had no clue. Apart from me losing my job a few months previously, I thought all was right in our world. I’d got an interim role, we had almost £50K in savings, we lived in a beautiful home, our second child had just arrived fit and well.
I guess not. This isn’t an ex-wife bashing post, far from it. She’s happily re-married to a lovely guy (the reason, it turned out) who is an excellent step-dad, and I’m about to re-marry to an amazing woman, and, most importantly, the children are great.
At the time, the way I reconciled it was to accept my 50%. I refused to accept or dish out more blame than that: two people, one relationship. Own my half, move on.
A single Dad with two kids and a mortgage
What it did mean was that I became a single Dad with two kids half the time and a full-time mortgage!
The £50K vanished in a puff of legal bills, mortgage payments, and more, over the next 18 months, which meant that by the time I could no longer afford to keep the family home. I had to…
