I will never get married because I will not set myself up to lose everything I have worked hard for to any woman. I see how too many men got licked one side because of this – foolishness ain’t sense.
This thing is getting real bad here in Barbados. I know two fellows who got married, and after they used their money to build houses, when things broke down, the wife got half and the children the other half. Those men ended up renting. That can’t be fair.
This problem has come about because we try to do everything the people in America and England do, however foolish. They talk about women’s rights. People here champion it, too, but you know us: we have to take it even further.
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with the idea of giving women their due. It is one thing to talk about women’s rights and that sort of thing, but you’ve got to be fair to men who work hard to provide for women and children only to lose everything in a divorce settlement. When that happens, what do you leave that man to do, especially if he is middle-aged?
That is why it galled me to hear the Market Vendor making mock sport about Paul McCartney the other day. I don’t feel any man should laugh at another man when it comes to divorce and the woman is in a position to take the man to the cleaners.
From what I read, Paul’s wife can claim up to half his money, estimated at US$1.5 billion, because when he married her four years ago he did not sign a prenuptial agreement to safeguard the money in case something like this happened.
Now tell me, how could it be fair for her to even try to take half of everything he owns when she was only living with him for four years?
The man is 64 years old and they only have one child. So how that could be fair?
It is things like these that have turned my mind totally against getting married. That is why I tell everybody I will never get married.
What I have I am leaving for my children, but I am not going to give any woman anything because most of them are only interested in what they can get from you and don’t really care about you.
And this isn’t just talk. When I was 22 I began living with a woman seven years older than I was, her two children and her mother. I helped that woman build her house, put in a bath and water toilet and took out a stove, fridge and furniture from the store.
For 11 years of my life I spent every cent I made on that woman, her children, her mother and her house. I did all of that ignoring my own mother’s and family’s needs. I loved her that much.
During that time I wanted a child from her, but all she would tell me was that we should get the house finished first so that the child would have someplace proper to live. She used to say that she did not want our child to suffer the way her first two did.
I went along with that because I was basically naive and never thought that after doing so much for someone, I would be left out. But was I wrong!
She horned me with her children’s father. The same man who got her pregnant at 18, never supported her or his children, and left to live in America without even telling her anything.
However, when he came back and saw that the old house was now a bungalow and his children were flourishing teenagers, he started talking to her again.
She never told me a word about him being back or that he had contacted her. They were in contact by phone for over a year before I even heard, and then I was told that he called to ask about the girls. I was only told that because I came in on the girls talking about what he said he would send for them that Christmas.
Imagine, me there all the time, providing for them from the time they were small, and getting no praise for anything. But the man who turned his back on them is back now they are past the worst. He sweetens them up by promising them pretty clothes and they’re all excited.
You could imagine how I felt when I finally learnt the truth about how he had visited Barbados twice, even coming to the house more than once but leaving before I came home. None of them said anything to me about it. So when I got vexed when the barrel arrived, I became the worst person.
Imagine the same woman and her mother who used to curse that man for what he did, turned around and told me off. They called me jealous and petty, saying that he was trying to make up for deserting his children years ago and deserved a chance.
And that was when I lost my cool and told them he was not to come into the house I built. That was when they let me know I could not say who could not come into their house. The mother even went as far as to tell me I didn’t have anything around there. In the big noise that followed a few blows were exchanged and it ended up with the police coming for me and I getting banned from around the place into which I had sunk all of my money.
I got nothing. After all that I had to go back and scotch at the same mother whom I had ignored. That is why I tell any man I meet doing what I did to stop it, because he is wasting his time.
I have recovered from all that and eventually became a father, but I have not lived with another woman since because I don’t trust any of them.
