When Worldviews Strain Friendships

I have a friend who has left his wife and his daughter for a younger honey.

I should explain the extent of the friendship.

We had a common interest (essentially a hobby, not anything deep) starting when we were teenagers that lasts to this day. We met and kept in touch because of that common interest, hanging out together doing activities more or less related to that interest. Since we were not in school together and didn't live too close to each other, it wasn’t like there was the issue of making sure we were in the same sorts of cliques.

We became friends about the time we were both establishing our distance from families of origin, so it wasn't like we hung out with each other's families. It wasn't a problem that I became full-time university student and he didn't go to college at all.

He eventually found a woman he wanted to marry. She lived out of town. We (his friends) told him that he didn't need to leave town to be with this woman, but he insisted – the plan at the time, at least from what he said, was to eventually move back to town together. It never happened. He moved to where she was to shack up with her (not something I would do) and eventually marry her. I attended the wedding with my girlfriend at the time, and there had even been some talk about me being one of the groomsmen, but that didn't turn out to be necessary.

They had a daughter. They had actively sought to get pregnant (they had no qualms about using contraception).

I visited their city (by then I was unattached again) and crashed at their place for a few nights. He was one of my (many) groomsmen when I married, and his daughter was a flower girl. They gave us a great wedding present. They also let us crash at their place for a night when we visited their new city to which they'd moved.

It is when you do things like get married and have kids that rubber meets the road when it comes to your worldview. My friend and I do not share the same worldview. We don’t believe the same things about God, the Bible, life, and death. We don't share political views. We don't make the same lifestyle choices – and when you’re in your relatively carefree bachelor days, as long as nobody is terminally ill or engaging in crime, such differences don’t really matter all that much. I can be friends with him even though he would never want to go to church with me. I can be friends with him even if he votes in direct contrast to every vote I make. Nor does he make our friendship contingent on me agreeing with him.

But when you talk marriage, children, family (or even crime) – you are talking about how you treat other people.

I had refused to get married unless I found the right woman. "Right woman" didn't mean "I'm attracted to her, she's attracted to me, and what more do we need?" It meant we were fundamentally compatible – our goals, our priorities, or personalities, our lifestyles, etc. We were attracted to each other in body, soul, and spirit.

I also knew that once I married, it was no longer between me and God. It was between me, my wife, and God – not in that order. Likewise, when we decided to have a child, we knew that our lives could never be the same because our priority for at least 18 years would have to be that child (and any siblings – with the clock being reset with each kid).

I'm convinced that, absent actual danger, I should stay with my wife no matter how miserable my marriage gets (thankfully, it is great), at least until our youngest child is 18, and I should model a peaceful and loving home to them, even if I don’t feel like it. That's because my children should come before my personal happiness. And should things go sour, I can probably help make them better with such an attitude and commitment.

Which takes me back to my friend. I don't know his wife's side of the story. All I know is what he tells me. And he tells me that his marriage was hell from "I do". If that's true, I suspect things were bad before, but he chose to ignore them and get married anyway. I would attribute part of that to the fact that he never established himself, always living with a woman – first his mother up through most of his 20s, and then with the woman he ended up marrying (his mother getting remarried and moving, forcing him to find new living arrangements, was probably a factor in him moving in with the woman he did). His jobs never lasted more than a few years, and most of them were McJobs anyway. It seemed like he would inevitably go from being excited about the latest job to being thoroughly disillusioned, usually burning bridges at the end. Mind you, he does have some real talent. He's just never made a living using it, usually trying to get a "day job" so he can keep toying in his off-hours with his talent.

And even though his marriage was "hell" from "I do" (something I had no idea about), he went on to intentionally impregnate her. He chose to make a baby within that marriage.

About a year ago, I started noticing a change in him. Since we lived in different cities, it was hard to get the real picture. He denied having an affair, but did say there were some problems in his marriage. I would expect there would be, with him going from job to job and pissing money away on a vice and wanting to spend time and money on a pet project of his that never seemed to go anywhere. His wife was probably thinking, "Either do it right or give it up and stop wasting time and money." Plus, there was the matter of moving to that new city, taking her away from her family and not getting any closer to his.

Finally, several months ago, he announced that he was leaving his wife and returning to town. He claimed that things were just too dysfunctional and that it was causing his daughter to act out. He tried to leave with his daughter, but his wife prevented him from doing so by calling the authorities. So, he left without his daughter. He left a job for a possible job, which he got, but it didn’t last due to the recession. He was able to crash at a place owned by his mother. His wife and child returned to where her family lives.

We've discussed things since his move back to town. I urged him to at least go live near his daughter. He hates that city too much, he said. I also told him that even if he is sure he will not get back together with his wife, he should avoid dating and especially getting into another relationship, because he isn't going to make the best decisions in that area right now.

Well, after I put the pieces together, I realized he had been having an affair with someone in town for about the past year. He finally came clean about that. He swears his marriage was dead long ago, and that he and his wife didn’t even share a room for the past few years, and that his new young thing wasn't the reason for him leaving his wife. He says that, without this new young thing, he would likely be dead - another example of how his worth is tied up in the woman in his life instead of seeing himself as a child of God.

Even granting all of that – he chose to make a baby with his wife, and I believe he has an obligation to his child, even if he feels that his wife broke their vows long ago.

We discussed things more, with me urging him again to go live near his daughter because she needs her father. He can probably get a real career in that city by using his connections. He doesn’t want to pull his new honey away from her family. He ended the discussion by saying that his daughter would understand and that he refuses to live in that city. So, the bottom line is that he ditched his daughter for the new honey, or that he hates that city more than he loves his daughter. He doesn't have a job or family or housing keeping him here (his mother lost her rental property she was letting him use). He isn't willing to pull his new honey away from her family but he’s letting being here for her pull him away from his daughter. Oh, his daughter will understand alright. She will understand that her daddy left her – and if what he says about his wife and her family is true, he left her with people who have serious problems.

Out of all of the mistakes I have made in my life, thank God I haven't made this one.

I can't help but think part of the reason he fails to see how much his daughter needs him is that he really wasn’t raised with his own father.

And now he's told me that "when the time is right" he will have more children with this new young honey. I pointed out to him that this young girl got involved with a married father who is broke and jobless, and that doesn't bode too well. Of course, he refuses to see the problem there – of course she fell for him, and to imply this may have been due to something being wrong with her is an insult to his ego, so it is ignored.

I want to kick him in the crotch until I'm sure he will not be complicating his daughter's life with any half-siblings that get to live with her father while she doesn't get to. I wonder if his estranged wife will be giving his daughter half-siblings, or exposing her to a bunch of men coming in and out of her life? Why would my friend consider making more children when he isn't able to care for the one he already has?

The situation makes me sick.

And it is an example of how it is easy to have "diverse" friends when life is about having fun and maybe studying or starting a career, but the conflicts in worldviews make it harder to maintain those friendships when spouses and children and innocent people are getting hurt, and when you speak out about it you are met with cries of being judgmental.

It is easy for me to say my friend is doing a bad thing. I have a happy marriage and it is easy for me to go home to my wife and child (in no small part, I'm convinced, because of what I did differently than my friend). But I can't imagine I would ever abandon my daughter no matter what my wife did.

I am someone's daddy. That comes before a job, before good sex, before ego stroking, before preferring to live one place as opposed to another. You may have also heard the saying "bros before hos" (what do women say – chicks before dicks?). Well, I put the well-being of a child ahead of patting a friend on the back and saying, "whatever makes you feel good."