Matthew filed for divorce from Anne when she couldn\u2019t give him a son, but he still lived in their house. One day, she met Harry, an old friend from school, and eventually realized how much better she was without Matthew. Years later, Anne accidentally ran into her ex-husband and couldn\u2019t recognize him.\n

\u201cOh my God! Harry! It\u2019s so nice to see you!\u201d\u00a0Anne exclaimed when she accidentally stumbled into her old school friend on the street. She had left her five girls with her mother, a rare break for her, and wanted to get a cup of coffee on the streets of Seattle.\n

\u201cAnne, it\u2019s lovely to see you too! Hey, would you want to get some coffee and catch up?\u201d\u00a0Harry answered, and she nodded immediately. They went into the caf\u00e9 and chit-chatted until Harry asked about her family.\n

Family vacation packages\n
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\u201cOh\u2026 that\u2019s actually a difficult subject,\u201d\u00a0she began.\n
\u201cWell, raising five children is not easy for anyone,\u201d\u00a0Harry commented, knowing a bit of her from social media and such.\n
\u201cMatthew? What are you doing here?\u201d\u00a0she asked, looking at his uniform and the pretzel tray.
\n\u201cYeah, sure. That\u2019s hard. But it\u2019s more than that,\u201d\u00a0Anne continued.\u00a0\u201cMatthew changed after the birth of our twins. They\u2019re 9 and they barely speak to their father. I think they\u2019re scared of him.\u201d\n
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\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d\u00a0Harry said.\n
\u201cMatthew wanted a boy, and we hoped, but we had two beautiful girls instead. That\u2019s why we got pregnant again and again, but we kept having girls. After our fifth daughter was born, Matthew became another man. He filed for divorce, and I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m going to do,\u201d\u00a0Anne explained about her husband, her hand wiping the sweat forming on her forehead.\n
\u201cWow. That\u2019s rough. But think about this, you\u2019ll be better off without him, right? I mean if he hasn\u2019t been speaking to your eldest girls, then he couldn\u2019t have been the best father to the rest. You already raised them on your own,\u201d\u00a0Harry encouraged.\u00a0\u201cAnd now that I\u2019m in Seattle permanently, I could help. You could move in with me.\u201d\n
Anne\u2019s jaw dropped. She didn\u2019t expect such an offer from Harry, especially since they had just met again after many years. But she knew back in school that he always had a huge crush on her. Still, that offer was too generous and kind. She couldn\u2019t accept it. She changed the subject, and they talked about his successful life.\n
Meanwhile, things at her house got even worse over the next few weeks. They were divorcing, but Matthew still lived with her, acting like he was single, partying, making noise at odd hours, waking the girls, and being a menace to them.\n
Anne would talk to Harry all the time, and his offer still stood. But when Matthew decided to bring a girl over to their marital home, Anne was done. She called Harry, packed, and left the house with all the girls.\n
Their divorce got more complicated when she took Matthew to court to get their big house back. Despite her living in Harry\u2019s house, her soon-to-be ex-husband didn\u2019t deserve to keep their big home. The judge granted her every request based on Matthew\u2019s horrible lifestyle and gave her full custody without question.\n
Eventually, she and Harry fell in love, and he bought an even bigger home for their family. When she and the girls moved in with him, she put her house up for rent and stopped thinking about Matthew for many years.\n
***\n
A year after marrying Harry, Anne had their son, Alan, who was the most beautiful boy in the world, and he had five big sisters adoring him at every moment. Anne couldn\u2019t have been happier.\n
More time passed, and one day, she picked Alan up from preschool and decided to drop by the mall to buy him new shoes. The girls were busy with their extracurriculars, so it was only mother and son.\n
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Anne never imagined she would run into Matthew there. He was working at the pretzel shop, in charge of distributing free samples at the mall, and Alan ran up to him asking for some.\n
\u201cAlan, don\u2019t run away from me like that,\u201d\u00a0she said to him before catching a glimpse of Matthew\u2019s surprised eyes.\n
\u201cAnne?\u201d\n
\u201cMatthew? What are you doing here?\u201d\u00a0she asked, looking at his uniform and the pretzel tray. It didn\u2019t make sense. Matthew worked in an office as an executive. He earned a decent amount of money. He was required to pay tons in child support, but he never did, and Anne didn\u2019t care. She had more than enough for her girls. But he wouldn\u2019t be able to pay what was required with a minimum wage job at the mall.\n
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\u201cI\u2019m working here,\u201d\u00a0he said and looked at the boy holding her with one hand and munching on a pretzel with the other.\u00a0\u201cIs this your son?\u201d\n
\u201cYes, this is Alan,\u201d\u00a0Anne answered, feeling an intense pride that she had a son that wasn\u2019t his. \u201cHe\u2019s Harry\u2019s kid.\u201d\n
\u201cOh, nice to meet you, Alan,\u201d Matthew said, looking down and giving the kid a weird look. Of course, it was not Anne\u2019s fault that she gave birth to girls. The sperm determines the gender, and everyone knows that. But Matthew had decided to blame her for years and checked out of their marriage because he wanted a boy, as if gender was important at all.\n
Luckily, the girls now had an actual father figure, thanks to Harry, who loved them dearly from the first moment they met. They didn\u2019t need him, and Anne never had to see him.\n
\u201cListen, Anne. I didn\u2019t want to ask this now. I wanted to take you to coffee or something. But I\u2019m desperate. I lost everything due to my lifestyle, and I was wondering if we could sell our old house,\u201d\u00a0Matthew asked, his head down in shame.\n
\u201cOh\u2026 well, it\u2019s currently being rented. But I\u2019ll think about it,\u201d\u00a0Anne said.\u00a0\u201cWe have to go now. I\u2019ll call you about the house.\u201d\n
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She grabbed Alan\u2019s hand tightly and walked away from the man who didn\u2019t know what he had thrown away. But she was going to be the bigger person. She sold the house and gave him half its worth, although legally, she could keep the entire thing. But something in her gut told her to do the right thing.\n
Eventually, Matthew asked to see the girls, but none of them wanted that. The twins were teenagers who grew to hate him, and the rest followed their big sisters\u2019 footsteps. Matthew stopped asking about them and stopped calling after a while. They never saw him again. He wasn\u2019t family.\n
What can we learn from this story?\n
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Family is more than just DNA.\u00a0Matthew didn\u2019t want to be a father to his children, and Harry stepped up for the girls.\n
You might regret your actions. Matthew lost everything, including his high-paying job, and it was clear he regretted what he did, but he couldn\u2019t take it back.\n
Share this story with your friends. It might brighten their day and inspire them.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Matthew filed for divorce from Anne when she couldn\u2019t give him a son, but he still lived in their house. One day, she met Harry, an old friend from school, and eventually realized how much better she was without Matthew. Years later, Anne accidentally ran into her ex-husband and couldn\u2019t recognize him. \u201cOh my God! …\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[657,642],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-love-and-relationships","category-moral-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91190,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86452\/revisions\/91190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/echowoven.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}