My Ex Turned My Kids Against Me and Told Everyone I Was Trash Now They’re All Begging to Reconnect

The Smear Campaign and the Loss

My ex turned my kids against me and told everyone I was trash. Now they’re all begging to reconnect.

I’m not interested. Hello Reddit, I plus here.

I’m a 39-year-old man. I was married for over a decade to my high school sweetheart, and we have two kids together: Lucas, 14 months, and Emma, 11 months.

We divorced 5 years ago and the aftermath nearly destroyed me. Here’s what happened.

When my ex Amanda and I started having problems, I chocked it up to stress. I was working long hours trying to support the family.

She started going out more, staying up late, and hiding her phone. I knew something was off but I didn’t want to believe the worst.

Then one day I came home early from work and found another man, let’s call him Tony, in our living room shirtless. He was relaxed like he lived there.

Amanda swore up and down that they were just friends and that I was being paranoid. I wasn’t.

I filed for divorce within the week, but Amanda had a plan. She turned it into a full-blown smear campaign.

She told our kids I left because I didn’t want to be a father anymore. She told our friends and family that I had been the cheater.

She claimed that I was emotionally abusive and that I abandoned them. She even faked screenshots of texts to make it look like I was texting someone named Jade.

Yeah, she got creative. She got full custody, and I got every other weekend.

At first I showed up for everything. I never missed a pickup.

I tried to keep things normal, but the kids were cold. Emma wouldn’t hug me, and Lucas would barely look at me.

They started calling me Mark instead of dad. Then one day Amanda just stopped sending them.

I had to fight in court just to see them again. And when I finally did, they told me flat out they didn’t want to come anymore.

Emma looked me in the eyes and said, “Mom said you left because you hated us”. I cried in the bathroom that night.

Eventually I stopped fighting, not because I didn’t care but because the fight was killing me. I stopped calling.

I stopped texting and I moved two towns over. I changed jobs, got an apartment, started therapy, and eventually got better.

I even met someone, Maya. She’s calm, kind, and knows the whole story. For the first time in years I felt okay.