u/karinkazzz

My ex and I are currently going through a divorce. The divorce should be finalized in about a month, and we have a young daughter together.
I’ve already filed for child support, and he’s been paying it for the last two months. Before that, I hadn’t filed anything because he was sending money voluntarily. But every month the amount got smaller, and eventually he stopped paying altogether.
He works in another country, and my sister works there too. When he found out that I had filed for child support, my sister asked him, “If you had just kept paying, she probably wouldn’t have filed. Why did you stop?”
His answer was: **“I did it on purpose.”**
And that’s the part I genuinely don’t understand.
This question is mostly for men, especially fathers who pay child support. What does “on purpose” even mean? Was it to hurt me? To punish me? To try to stay in control?
Because at the end of the day, the person who suffers isn’t the ex-wife—it’s your own child.
I’m not asking him to spend time with our daughter or to be involved in her life. That’s his choice. But financially supporting your own child seems like the bare minimum responsibility of being a parent.
So I’m honestly trying to understand the mindset. What does someone mean when they say they intentionally stopped supporting their own child? What was he hoping to achieve?

My divorce should finally be finalized in about a month. We’ve been separated for around eight months now.
We have a young daughter together. He pays child support, but he has completely cut off contact—not just with me, but with our daughter too. He never calls, never texts, never asks how she’s doing. Ironically, his father shows far more interest in his granddaughter than he does.
The strange part is this: when I’m lying in bed at night, I still find myself missing him.
But I don’t miss our marriage. I don’t want our relationship back. I’m not sitting here wishing we were still husband and wife, and I know he has already moved on and is in a new relationship.
What I seem to miss is… my friend.
Before everything fell apart, he was the person I talked to every day. We shared jokes, random thoughts, little moments. That version of him feels completely gone now, and I think that’s the person I’m grieving—not my husband, but someone who used to be my best friend.
I’ve accepted that the marriage is over. I don’t want to reconcile. So why does this feeling refuse to go away?
Has anyone else experienced this? Missing the person as a friend while having absolutely no desire to get back together? It feels so contradictory, and I’m wondering if it’s more common than I realize.

My ex and I are currently going through a divorce. The divorce should be finalized in about a month, and we have a young daughter together.
I’ve already filed for child support, and he’s been paying it for the last two months. Before that, I hadn’t filed anything because he was sending money voluntarily. But every month the amount got smaller, and eventually he stopped paying altogether.
He works in another country, and my sister works there too. When he found out that I had filed for child support, my sister asked him, “If you had just kept paying, she probably wouldn’t have filed. Why did you stop?”
His answer was: “I did it on purpose.”
And that’s the part I genuinely don’t understand.
This question is mostly for men, especially fathers who pay child support. What does “on purpose” even mean? Was it to hurt me? To punish me? To try to stay in control?
Because at the end of the day, the person who suffers isn’t the ex-wife—it’s your own child.
I’m not asking him to spend time with our daughter or to be involved in her life. That’s his choice. But financially supporting your own child seems like the bare minimum responsibility of being a parent.
So I’m honestly trying to understand the mindset. What does someone mean when they say they intentionally stopped supporting their own child? What was he hoping to achieve?