Your pretty dang spot on how this has played out...

I did react pretty harshly in ONE text message after she told me she was pregnant and I called her out on some things. After that however I THINK I've been pretty reasonable, but in that case that was my "bit of an ass" moment.

Her family liked me prior. The gal shortly before things hit the fan told her mother that "for once I felt like I found the right guy" and her mother agreed and relayed that information to me in a confident moment at her grandmothers Christmas party. Whatever.

As far as the "greatly exaggerated version of his behavior" portion goes I think that you are right, however I think she is coaching the family. Her mother seems pretty reasonable but due to the nature of their relationship with each other (the gal moved in with her mother @ age 13 from her fathers) and has since taken a very passive parenting line in hopes to "make up for lost time" not wanting to risk her daughter getting angry and moving out. This thought process over the years has capsized into a ******ed convoluted version of "sisters in crime" mentality instead of a healthy balance of a mother/daughter relationship. The gal has obviously spun this to fit her agenda and I noticed this before things got bad, I should have left her but didn't trust my instinct. Also I noticed while dated the gal would withhold information from certain people in the family, she would tell certain things to certain family member and withhold things from others. This was alarming but again, I opted to "give it time."
Her grandmother is extremely neurotic as well and talked about ad nauseum between the gal, her mother and I (I briefly took a job back in healthcare when returning to vegas for a short ammount of time. the gal and I worked for her grandmothers company together, its how we met, and the work environment was filled with needless girl drama.) The gal constantly complained about her grandmother's use of logic in this and that, but it became a point of contention momentarily when I urged the gal to own her share of things. It's an unhealthy dynamic that I noticed was only useful when they were against someone, either in the workplace or elsewhere. Which leads to my next point.

When things hit the fan the gal the first person she employed was her grandmother. Like I said previously I showed up at her grandmothers house to speak with her grandmother about the situation. Her grandmother was happy to see me, didn't know we broke up 3 weeks earlier (despite being co-dependently close with her granddaughter, its unhealthy seriously) and she didn't know the gal was prego in the eggo (aka nugget in the oven, aka pregnant...) and during my conversation with her I explain everything and got her up to date. The grandmother left for a quick hair appointment up the street but encouraged me to stay and wait for her to return to continue talking about things. I obliged, but adamantly told her not to notify my ex I was present at her grandmothers house (knowing the co-dependent nature between the two.) The grandmother agreed, left and about 5 minutes later the step-grandfather if you will, came home and I repeated the process with him that I did with the grandmother. Things were good until about 10 minutes later my ex showed up because the grandmother called her... SWEET JESUS.... She then proceeded to cuss me out while saying "HOW DARE YOU SHOW UP AT MY FAMILIES HOUSE, HOW DARE YOU" She grabbed me and slapped at me while trying to push my 215lb body toward the door. All while I was trying to calm her down with a mixture of apologizing, pleading and saying "just talk to me, can we just talk about this." I left and waited outside and her grandmother returned. After waiting for 45 minutes I knocked on the door with the 3 of them inside and the grandmother and step-grandfather came to the door with extremely angry faces (who knows what the gal told them) and their conceal carries on them, gesturing to me that they were wielding them. They told me to leave as well as they were notifying the police that I came by.

The point I'm trying to make is when this happened, I saw the grandmother converted by some nasty, unhealthy family dynamic the existed between the two of them. The two of them, united together in some unhealthy venture together against the world, or down each others throats bad mouthing the other. I was this in the work place as well.

These were my exact thoughts when leaving the grandmother house that day, I remember them verbatim. "The unhealthy nature of their relationship has officially orbited its way to me. I am caught in their cross hairs and they are going to viscous and co-dependent in whatever thier ****ed up front is against me. I SEE HOW IT IS."


Thanks for the post Abbaddabba, not too far off homie.

UPDATE:

So this week I spoke with a family lawyer, a gaming lawyer, and an accounting firm that specialized in working for poker players. This is what I was able to get.

I need to start an SCORP, which is basically and LLC that files at the end of the year as an SCORP. The gaming lawyer will help me set this up. For the first year after starting the SCORP there are certain benefits that I will not eligible for until ONE year after starting the SCORP (I'll go into detail about this when I get the process started) and because of this my winnings are not necessarily but COULD BE (in a worst case scenario situation) under fire for child support for the first year.

So I'm going to get the ball rolling on getting an SCORP started. In the mean time I'm going to be moving back to Vegas the end of the month or early next month and am going to take a job dealing somewhere and play on the side. I will do this for one year. The reason for this is, when baby comes, and if I am indeed the father child support will be coming out of my 40 hour a week job and I can treat poker winnings as "on the side." This is a tactical move, but will allow some time to get the SCORP running and finish out probation in vegas for the year that I am on it. I'll be grinding online after work, and playing live on the weekends, and deal with winnings under the SCORP, but it will still count as "on the side" due to me working 40 hours a week. Online funds will remain online until the SCORP is good to go the year after starting it, despite small cashouts under $5000, but I'll only be cashing a few hundred here and there, so I'm not too worried about it.

The family lawyer said I'll be on the hook for child support for a larger % for the first year or so due to her not working and because the court doesn't want the baby moving house to house at such a young age, she will automatically get 100% custody which means larger % child support. At this point the restraining order is employed throughout my probationary sentence but is subject to being modified at the mother and the courts discretion. Should they modify it when the child comes then I will most likely be granted a one hour visit with the child once a week at a public setting such as a Panera Bread or something while a social worker sits over my shoulder while paying the 100% child custody rate for child support. Call me what you will but I'm not staying in the state for that... That isn't fathhood. God bless the court system.

If for some reason I am not the father, I will TAKE all of you that in the Vegas area that have posted on this before this post out to dinner. haha.

Obviously there is a lot of information to be learned going into this and I'll tell you what I learn as I go.

Good job. I figured getting the full time job w/ side income was the way to go, good to hear it confirmed from a lawyer. Yea, the court system is really feminized and ridiculous considering two parents are responsible for the child. Men are treated like criminals in todays day and age, which is ironic because single mothers are statistically criminal factories. I'm sorry for your situation, but it sounds like you got a good hold on it. Hopefully the kid turns out ok :/

I've been saying for a while (not on 2p2) that woman have way more rights. Modern feminism is a joke. You see the same justice in divorce court.

Can you gain some custody after getting a full time job? Can you eliminate your income, live with your family, and go to school for a few years? File bankruptcy? Move out of the country?

Also, her mother might be more reasonable after things cools down. No mother wants to see her grandchild in a broken home. And no guy wants to date a girl with a baby, so your ex may come back around and you'll have to put ring on it.

Putting a ring on it is easily the worst idea possible in this scenario, as soon as shes unhappy she will press the divorce button and OP will owe alimony on top of child support. This girl obviously isn't a princess and should be avoided like the plague.

But he wouldn't agree to a divorce. Also, who knows, with some time she may grow some maturity and live a successful married life.

Disclaimer: All I know about this topic is based on Google searches. Luckily, I've never experienced any of these issues.

Are you trolling or something? Women don't need a mans permission to divorce in the civilized world.

Also, women initiate ~70% of divorces and its no surprise when you see the benefits they receive (alimony, custody, child support) while the man gets ruined.

Marriage in general is something men today take far too lightly without understanding the consequences. Roughly half of all first marriages end in divorce where the man loses half his assets plus the aforementioned negatives. It doesn't take a genius to see that a lackadaisical approach to getting married is one of the most -EV things any man can do. In this case it isn't even close: verbal abuse, bi polar medication, restraining order.....need I go on?

Yeah I was gonna say to OP, while reading your response to my post, I was thinking the ex is bi-polar. I have some experience with bi-polar chicks and you need to understand that, emotionally, bi-polar means her highs are really high and her lows are really low.

So when you're ****ing her and she says some **** like take the condom off I wanna have your babies (literally what a chick said to me once) it's her being overly exuberant.

When she's saying gtfo of my life and you're a psycho here's a restraining order you psycho mfer it's her being depressed, isolated, and ice cold.

Neither case is a true reflection of her balanced self.

You should be wary of this moving forward. For your sake, her sake, and the child's. It's possible she does some stupid **** and you end up with full custody if she doesn't manage her disorder well enough. It's possible, in spite of how bad you look in public currently, that you should have custody now.

That said, it's arguable neither of you have any business raising a child. You aren't even in control of yourself if your head got all f'd up over her in spite of her malicious intent, bi-polar or not. You had a few drinks and couldn't keep yourself from contacting her (while she had a restraining order on you!) and I can only imagine what else is going on or you two are saying that isn't being shared with us. She says she has daddy issues and you sound like you have issues of your own being neglected as a child or something of the sort. You are in need of some maturity, because soon you're gonna be a role model if you aren't already to someone else. He or she needs someone to look up to and learn from on how to handle life.

I assume you're not a fish at poker so use your ability to not tilt in life. Get your **** together and watch your back. I would suggest therapy for her, for you, or if possible together at the same time. Sounds like there's a few balls of yarn that need to unwind and it could benefit immensely to each individual's life EV. I mean no disrespect, it's just how I see it based on what I'm reading.

Pinkmann gives good advice. From everything I've read this relationship is unsalvageable and the best course is to be a distant money provider. Getting back together with this woman would be an absolutely terrible decision, for you and for the child. She already put you out of its life when she filed that restraining order. If you want to spend some time with the kid, that's up to you, but honestly a non-present father is probably better than a almost non-present one. Marriage is the worst possible option. She would then have access to increasing future earnings and 50% of your assets, which she could access at any emotional whim. There is very low probability of the relationship working out long term. Do NOT do that.

I have a friend who, while having relationship issues with his girlfriend, actually decided with her to have a baby to save the relationship. They stayed together just long enough to be common law married. This is more common than you would imagine, and you can foresee what happened. He sees his kid 50% of the time, works the other 50%, and donates 50% of his income + gratuitious random $5k vacations for her because she's a 32 year old bartender who only works part time and is vulnerable to outbursts of emotional rage and legal threats. Suffice it to say I feel sorry for the guy, but he made a ******ed decision and he's going to pay for it for the next 18 years.

You made a mistake, you took responsibility for it while protecting yourself. Don't make another, even bigger one.

To be fair to the non-present party, we don't know the details here. How do you think this girl would describe her interactions with her beloved on a messageboard while asking for help?

Woman accused of stalking Paradise Valley man she met online; sent him 65,000 text messages

She's probably describe the "stupid drunken email" that led to the restraining order a lot like OP, and leave out 65,000 texts or what was really said, like threatening to kill him.

I don't buy OP's story because of this line:

What pregnancy options would you discuss??

You think it's better to leave the kid in the hands of someone who you believe is emotionally unstable, and is going to date strange men? If the kid's welfare is what we can about, then it's better that he's as involved as possible, if only because he is allegedly the sane party in this whole affair.

Not that I care about the kid. But using your value system. How do you think abuse happens? Often step parents and bad mothers with an absent dad.

OP is likely leaving something out, but I don't rule out completely that the girl is somewhat mentally ill. I have met women like this before.


With the information given, best case scenario OP wins full custody and she is removed from the childs life. However, that is highly unlikely. In most jurisdictions the woman has to be a proven drug abuser/reckless endangerer to have anything less than full custody, so I'm being practical here. If that is the case, and he has a restraining order against him, I'd just stay out of it completely.

Unfortunately we live in a society that propagates that kind of abuse. The decision to spend time with the kid isn't up to OP, it's up to the judge. If he can get 50%+, great. If he gets 1 day a week or whatever with written consent, it's not worth the effort and will just devolve into him not seeing the child anyway whenever the mom gets hitched. Obviously if OP can get full or partial meaningful custody despite having a restraining order and being imprisoned for breaking it already then go for it. I'd be surprised if it's possible, though.

I think we all know the answer to this.

You also make a strong point in the rest of your post. The natural tendency is for people to cast themselves in a more flattering light.

The options I was going for was to discuss how we would be co-parents which basically meant telling her my plans and listening to hers and coming to a civil agreement on how to proceed with our lives either separately or together. I also kept open the idea that we would work our sh** out.

I didn't lobby for abortion. I don't agree with it for the most part but whatever.

As far as casting myself in a favorable light, I shared this with you accurately as it happened and I'm honestly not withholding any less flattering information. It is what it is. The fact that I am where I am is a complete mind **** to me considering that I tried my hardest to be civil and be transparent with her and her family. Those close to me know this and agree that this situation has spiraled out of control and the legal system isn't helping the matter and allowing the gal to call the shots at my expense while she gets to be the "victim."

I do have a pretty colorful past however. I was a drug addict for about 4 years and lost a semi-professional hockey career due to getting addicted to pain pills after a shoulder surgery when I was 16. I played and used for about 2 seasons before blowing out and getting kicked off my hockey team and ending up homeless and eventually going to rehab for 4 months. When I got out I relapsed a month later and used and was borderline homeless until August 2014. I've been sober since from hard drugs and pot. Alcohol was never an issue and I have had some drink here and there, I know many addiction counselors would condemn me for this but whatever.

I have also sought to kill the root cause of why I used to begin with. Addiction runs in my biological family (I was adopted at 3 years old.) Which I believe that I have done. There are many factors as to why I used and what I was running from initially when I decided to start self medicating back in my teen years.

I did wrestle heavily with anxiety and depression for well, as long as I can remember. But after changing to a gluten free diet I haven't wrestled with any of that since changing my diet. However many family and friends and even my ex would attest to wondering if I was mentally ill due to the level of anxiety and depression I wrestled with. Poker was my only saving grace during those times... Both the depression/anxiety and previous substance abuse was shared with my ex and her family during the formative moments of our relationship and was well received and they commended me about how far I have come if you know what I mean... But as you know when shizz hit the fan my past was spun against me and harped on among themselves and who knows what else. THAT FREAKIN HURT.

I still get grief from certain people in my life for the poker route. They think since I was an addict that for some reason I'm also some raging degen that cannot be successful as a poker player and find a way to spin my career into some evil thing. I've heard it all. Which leads to my next point...

Today my best friend returned home from 6 months in rehab. This is his fourth time going to a program for alcoholism. We met in our local church here in Colorado back when I was 16. He was interning for the church we went too and worked for a rehab program he went through called 180 Ministries Teen Challenge of the Rocky mountains. The night we met was when he gave his testimony and I pulled him aside at the end of the service and spoke to him about my addiction and deep down I knew one day I would be going to that program. Eventually I did, and he was still working there when I went to rehab and we became close friends ever since. He spent 3.5 years in rehab and 2 working for one and still ended up going back. Even after getting his MBA and getting a $250K job crushing it for an investment firm as the CFO.

Today he lit me up about my choices to play poker. He quoted the bible and told me how selfish I was for not choosing Gods will for me, and told me that I am selling my soul to the devil to play cards. He gave me every trick in the book to convince me that I am still this raging addict that can't handle life. He attacked my skill set and profession. THIS IS MY BEST FRIEND, who knows me and knows the content of my character. It hurt man... He was extremely supportive in the past.

The thing is I know what I'm made of, it's not much but its enough to do what I need to do. For once I need to trust in my abilities in spite of what other people say and carry on as best as I can. This my career, like it or not and I understand it comes with a stigma. I know my past comes with a stigma. The conjunction of my profession and my past creates an additional level of stigma and concern. And this situation with my ex compounds all of the above...

I'll do what I can to carve out the best financial future I can for this child and one day, when the time comes, I'll be a present father, the best father I can be. I'll be a presence in the child's life for the better and I'll mold their character to be useful to society and to operate with integrity with a soft, feeling conscience. I'll see to it that they bi-pass the mistakes I've made and shield them from the pain I've endured, self inflicted and otherwise.

In the mean time, I have to work my *** off. I have to be mindful to discern adequate and proper correction and rebukes from those around me and see it as beneficial in my maturity. I also have to dodge certain arrows, meant to harm the demeanor of my spirit, though they cloaked to appear to be for my benefit...

I'll be ok...

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UPDATE: I'll keep this brief.

Best friend relapsed 3 days after arriving home. No one in our community has heard from him since. Freaking brutal...

Got a solid job offer in Nevada. HR was awesome and made an offer over the phone without the need for an audition or panel interview. Some poker friends unknowingly put in a good word for me. Thanks guys!!!

Probation was transferred last minute to Nevada, I have one year of probation with possible early termination if I am compliant at 6 months. Easy game.

Found a joint in Summerlin, staying with friends til landlord returns from memorial day vacation and lease is signed.

Poker game is more solid than ever. Scorp should be up and running in August/Early September. Also its nice almost being in the thick of the WSOP.

Leaving tomorrow morning. See you cats tomorrow night.

I'M BACK BABY...

Gratz on ditching the baby

Really?

1. The child isn't born yet...
2. I am unfortunately on probation, and there is a mandatory no contact order in place while I am on probation that covers the mother and the child. I would't be able to see the kiddo anyways.
3. The mother hates me.
4. The mother hates me.

What is your recommended alternative?

I plan on going back home as soon as I am off probation. Since there is a mandatory no contact order, I figure I should at least make as much money as possible.

Lol at toothsayer taking this guys side. This guy is obviously a dirt bag. Most people who play poker for a living are. Get a paternity test after the child is born. If it is yours then get a stable job and do your duty. Easy. Be a man. When you have sex a child is possible. If you aren’t ready for that then use protection.

As a man he should get 50% custody and not have to pay enormous amounts child support. As a mother, his ex should also get a job and not have to rely on child support.

Child support gets taken advantage of. I knew a women who had 3 daughters to 3 different fathers. She didn't work. She lives off of child support and benefits, and rented a room where she would do chores around the house in exchange for less rent. She smoked cigarettes and drank vodka most of the day, and believed to do meth. Her older daughters were failures in school, her eldest acquiring a drinking problem and has already seen jail time (she's in her mid 20s). The youngest daughter is of age 5, thinks her real father is 2nd's daughter father. The older daughters don't have much a future. Thank the courts rewarding mothers like her for bringing in children into the world that can't be properly raised.

I'm tired people guilting each other for not being feminist, even if it means sacrificing men's equality and abandoning common sense.

I'm a dirtbag? How?