GIVE ME A BREAK:It is unfair that a father must provide a home for himself and his children while paying half the mortgage on a house he doesn't live in, largely because of an out-of-date document

We're seated beside one another on one of those planes that seems to have been superglued to the tarmac, Separated Dad and I. There are people who hate sitting next to someone who needs to talk, and so they stick their heads in a book. I'm not one of those people. The anonymity of travel gives people freedom to express themselves to a stranger - a candour that I find enthralling.

I love listening, I love the way people make sense of their lives through storytelling, and I think that departure lounges, taxis, trains and stalled aircraft are - in our 21st-century world - the equivalent of the campfires of old. Sitting in the dark around a fire, no-one can see your face as you speak. The anonymity of travel has a similar function because, belted into some means of transportation, you see each other only in profile and know that you'll probably never meet again.

So Separated Dad and I are in that situation. He's stressed out because he wants to get home to his three kids in Dublin - though it could be New York or anywhere. He's sick and tired of working 60 hours per week to support not just his children, who live with him, but also his ex-wife, who, by order of the court, is living in the family home with her latest boyfriend. The fact that the court eventually decided to give Separated Dad custody of the children is unusual, and I won't go into the circumstances here, even though they are compelling.

It's Separated Dad's means of coping that interest me. He's not bitter or angry any more.

"It killed me at first, that I was paying half the mortgage in a house where she's living with her boyfriend," he says. "But I've learned that you just have to accept what life throws at you. My children are doing great and that's what really matters."

He's acknowledged that his ex-wife cannot cope with life, and he's relieved that the court decided that the children would be better off with him. This means that he and his children are living with his mother, while the ex-wife remains in the family home. She doesn't work for her living. Separated Dad has to pay not just half the mortgage on the so-called "family home", but a hefty weekly income to the ex-wife.

I try to put myself in his predicament. Say I'm a mother who has had to leave the family home with my children due to domestic violence. I'm working, my ex-husband isn't. Would I be asked to pay my ex-husband a weekly stipend, plus covering half the mortgage on a house that I and the children don't even live in? I doubt it. It's blatantly unfair.

Separated Dad thinks so too. He says it all comes down to the Constitution, which states that a mother should never be forced to work to the detriment of the family. Nothing about fathers in the Constitution, unfortunately. Fathers aren't seen in that way, because the Constitution was written at a time when the mother was the heart of the home - which we all know isn't necessarily true any more. Both parents are the heart of the home, when there are two parents. When there's one parent, why should it matter in law whether that parent is male or female?

But it does matter. Mothers are superglued to the family home in the way Separated Dad and I are glued to the runway.

All Separated Dad wants is to sell the family home and split the money, so that he can make the down payment on a house and start life anew with the children, instead of living with his mother. Makes sense to me.

He has considered taking a Constitutional challenge, but he can't afford to and his lawyer says he'd be wasting his time. Yet Separated Dad feels that he is being forced to work extra-long hours in order to support his children and ex-wife. If his role was equally enshrined in the Constitution with the mother's role, he wouldn't have to do that.

I ask him where he gets his strength from. He says that the Unmarried and Separated Fathers of Ireland group has been really helpful. He likes this group because there are women involved in it too, who come for advice, and there's no feeling of hatred against women. Some other groups that he's had contact with have, he says, been "women-haters", and he's not into that. Some men are using the unfairness of their situation to campaign against women in general, and that scares him. He's spoken to men on helplines who hate women so much that it scares him.

Separated Dad doesn't blame "women" for the predicament he is in. He blames the Constitution. We women need to listen to men like Separated Dad if we really care about equality.