when as a single father raising two young sons, we lived in an apartment. Not my favorite type of abode, but due to circumstances, we lived there for a while. It exposed me to situations outside of those from work experience.
A frustrating experience was hearing a "neighbor" beat the hell out of his girlfriend or wife. In one case, the couple had a young child, and in the other, the woman was pregnant. When we called police, in each case, the women refused to press charges, even denying there had been so much as an argument.
A number of the guys in the buildings (there were two, same landlord, same lawn) had recently separated from their wives/ girl friends, and in most cases, there were children involved. Soon we had informal group discussions about such things as the rights and responsibilities of fathers, and dispute resolution with the former partner.
Eventually, my downstairs neighbor invited a co-worker who began coming around. He began to make the rest of us uncomfortable. Nothing he said suggested he had any desire to be a responsible parent, though he fought like hell to get custody. He had zero interst in conflict resolution. His primary form of communication was threats in private, and feigning being a pleasant fellow in family court.
In my journals, I noted that he had a fascination with knives. I don't think he had a gun at the time, but he talked a lot about his hunting knife collection. Before I could suggest that he stop coming over to hang out with us, he was arrested and incarcerated for making a series of threatening phone calls to one of his teenaged stepdaughters. In the months to come, I would have a few conversations with both police and a forensic psychologist that were dealing with him. He eventually came to a sad end, which likely made a lot of people happy.
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