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I am 52 years old, and for the past three years I have been fighting for something I destroyed myself. Seven years ago, I left my three children to be with another woman. They were 14, 12, and 9 when I told them their father was going to live somewhere else. I didn’t explain that I had fallen in love with someone else. I just left.

I met Laura at work. She was divorced and had two children, ages 11 and 8. She made me feel alive again, made me laugh, understood me. My marriage had been dead for years; we were only together for the kids. Or at least that’s what I told myself to justify it. One day I told my wife I was leaving. She cried, begged me, asked me to think about our children. But I had already made my decision.

I moved in with Laura and her children. At first I visited my kids on Sundays, but little by little I started spacing out the visits. Laura needed me, her children needed me—they were having trouble at school and needed a father figure. I convinced myself I was doing the right thing. I took Laura’s son to his soccer games, helped her daughter with homework, attended school meetings. I became the father I had stopped being to my own children.

Months passed, and my children stopped answering my calls. My oldest daughter sent me a message saying they no longer wanted to see me, that they had found in their mother both the father and the mother they needed. Those words hurt—but not enough for me to do anything about it. I was too busy building my new life.

For four years, I lived believing I had done the right thing. I devoted myself completely to Laura and her children. I paid for their education, took them on vacations, was present at every important moment of their lives. Meanwhile, my own children were growing up without me. My youngest son turned 13, and I didn’t even congratulate him. I didn’t know my daughter had graduated from high school until I saw photos on social media months later.

Everything changed three years ago. Laura met someone at work—a younger man, more successful, with no children of his own. She told me she had fallen in love, that what we had was over. She thanked me for everything I had done for her and her children, but said it was time to move on. She left me exactly the way I had left my family seven years earlier.

I was left alone in an empty apartment. Laura’s children didn’t even say goodbye to me. To them, I had only been their mother’s boyfriend—someone who was there for a while and then left. I realized I had spent four years raising someone else’s children while my own were forgetting me.

I tried to reach out to my children. I wrote to them, called them, went to see them. My oldest daughter told me it was too late—that when they needed me, I wasn’t there. My middle son didn’t even want to see me. The youngest, now 16, agreed to meet with me once. He looked at me with cold eyes and asked why I had come back. I told him I missed them, that I had made a mistake. He replied that he had missed me too—but that was years ago, when I was still his dad.

Today I am 52 years old and completely alone. My children don’t speak to me. The woman I left everything for replaced me with someone else. The children I raised for four years don’t even remember me. I lost everything chasing an illusion. I traded my children, my family, my emotional foundation for someone who discarded me when she found something better.

Sometimes I ask myself when I lost my way. When did I decide that the love of a woman was worth more than the love of my children? Now I understand that children are not something you can pause and return to when it suits you. They are people who grow, who feel, who remember. And they remember perfectly the day their father decided that other children were more important than they were.

I keep trying to get closer. I send them messages on their birthdays even though they don’t reply. I deposit money into their accounts even though they don’t need it, because my ex-wife remarried a good man who knew how to be the father I stopped being. But none of that erases the seven years I failed them.

If I could go back in time, I would never have left. I would have worked on my marriage, been present for my children, been the father they deserved. But I can’t. All I can do is live with the weight of knowing I destroyed the most important thing I had for something that wasn’t worth it. And that weight will stay with me until the day I leave this world.

Adapted from the story shared by I'm glad the sky is painted blue via Facebook posting on Thursday, 19 February 2026. 

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Adapted by Fauzi Kadir
Chief Editor

Assistant Editor

Nazura Othman

Final editing and brought to you by

Fauzi Kadir CHIEF EDITOR

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