mairisidivorce

[mairisidivorce]

So I want to shoot myself now.

[mairisidivorce]

So.  I have no friends.

[mairisidivorce]

So he finally admitted it...

That the custody schedule he wants, is so that it lines up with his wife’s schedule.   Which is really all I wanted to hear, because for the last year, he has basically responded with vitriol if I even dared suggest I like the same schedule as the kids (implying that I don’t care about my kids, that all I cared about was money, etc etc.)  ... and yet his one goal, from day fucking one was to line up MY kids schedule with his affair partners schedule.   Forgive me if I don’t believe that he had MY kids priorities as first in line right from the very fucking start.

But yeah, I now have nowhere else to talk about this.  No friends.  Keeping the drama away from family, because it just makes my mom worry.  No safe spaces, except for here where I scream into the void.

[mairisidivorce]

And here we go again... again.

After a period of semi-friendliness, I suspect we’ll be soon back to hostility. 

1) Turns out, the reason that Bea was hiding was because she’s pregnant.  This is actually sort of hilarious to me, because thinking about starting over with a newborn (when my youngest is 7) at 41 is like.... nightmare territory for me.  So... good luck with that bud.

2) back to the old schedule issue.  He’s still desperate to match his wife’s schedule (oh yeah, he also got married and didn’t bother telling me.  whatever.)    He suggested that we should split weeks in the summer, and have them attend our local camps.  Issues with this: kids don’t want the schedule.  my older kids are not going to like the lack of perks that my local camp has (can bring electronics, can sign themselves out early in the afternoon and go home), I have no flexibility to swap days for work travel (my dropping off at his camp would add ~2hrs to my daily commute.  Him dropping off at mine is ~20 mins to his daily commute).   I hate the schedule (I have my schedule planned knowing that I can work/do stuff late on M/T, early on T/W - doing week on/week off means “I can work late this monday, but not that one”, makes it difficult to schedule recurring things.    (I am also 100% unwilling to switch to that schedule full time, and don’t want him pulling any kind of bullshit ‘well it worked this summer”...)

Our respective local camps:  my local option doesn’t have camp the first week of summer (the school sets those days aside as “emergency days” (in my area, there are no built in days, every day off school for snow/cold = extra day in June).  His local option does.  So, if I were to agree to a week on/week off schedule - makes sense to have him take week 1, and swap from there... except he set it as Week 1: him, week 2: him, week 3: me (swapping from thereon).    And I know damn well that this is so he can align his custody schedule with his wife’s, but he refuses to admit to this (and if I ever dare suggest that my preference or convenience should have any inputs into the schedule, he accuses me of not caring about the kids.)

....so my go back will be “I think [MY] local camp is the better option, because I think the kids will be happier, but if you insist on week on/week off, it will be “Week 1: him, Week 2: me, swapping from there”.  Let’s see which he really wants - does he want 1 week relatively kid free (e.g. my girls with me, her son with his dad), or does he just want to force the 1w/1w that the kids hate.

[mairisidivorce]

Another one for today

Trying to figure out how to mention this.

... beyond our issues with one another, did I do something specific to offend Bea - to the point where she won't even come out to say hello/exchange platitudes when we're in the same place?   (It was weird, the other day, because I would have liked to say Merry Christmas, to the woman who is going to be a stepmother to my children, and yet, she hid in the kitchen, and couldn't even say hello?)   I'm trying my best, but...

[mairisidivorce]

Thought I’d be OK

My kids were with me from yesterday, until noon today. 

Then they left, and I was alone.  And nobody has reached out to me.

I had no presents under the tree.  I’m not even getting any when I go visit my family next week. 

I’m not ok.

[mairisidivorce]

Here we go Again

My ex, has, from the start, been a) obsessed with a 50/50 schedule and b) wanted a  one week on, one week off schedule.   We tried the 1w/1k schedule for a while.  My kids hated it.  I hated it.  We tried a few other schedules before settling on our current roughly 50/50 schedule. 

He again brought up the 1w/1w schedule, and I again said no - and he’s pissed and has been punishing me for it since.

He said:

Setting aside all the differences between you and I for a moment. I have held this contempt for you since the divorce and how much I had to fight for time with my children. In my view, you only seemed to agree to 50/50 when I presented you with the alternative (read: financial) options that I was prepared to move forward with. You'll dispute this of course but that's the way I remember it while we were sitting at the dining table of your house. Let's agree to disagree on that point because it doesn't even matter. In the end, and you even said as much to me on Halloween, you only agreed to equal parenting time to avoid putting the children through a painful custody battle. At no time did you believe that I was a good enough dad to deserve that. At no time did you think it was in our daughter's best interest to have equal time with me. So you'll have to understand why I have been quick to discount your views on what is best for them

My thoughts on our original arrangement:

a) at that time [of our original separation], if I remember correctly, we had tried a few schedules (none of which were our current schedule, and, none of which really clicked - (and one of the schedules we tried was week to week - which the kids didn't like)

b) the school year schedules were, I'll admit, slightly biased on my side (during the school year only) – and by slightly, I mean it was somewhere between 60/40 and 55/45 biased on my side - however  - see c and (especially) d  on that ‘biased’...

c) at the time,  I was really hung up on "kids staying in the same house during the school week".   I truly thought this would be better for them. (I'm still not entirely convinced that I was wrong here - but that wasn't a '[he doesn’t] deserve 50% of the time,' it was '[he] moved away and that made getting that 50% hard on the kids'  I'll admit that the effect when [he was] living in [town 20 mins away] wasn't as bad as I had been imagining, but now that he’s more than doubled the commute (it’s now 35-45 mins each way), I think my argument is actually MORE legitimate - issues tied to that long commute are literally the ONLY complaints I've heard about the schedule, and these are long term issues that can't be solved with changing the schedule around to switch x days for y days.

d) because of my travel, I don't think what I was proposing ended up too far away from 50/50 (his after the fact extreme resentment makes it seem like I was proposing "ok, you see the kids every other weekend and I get the rest")  (whereas, in fact, at one point, I think I added up my travel and whatever we had as a schedule at the time - literally counting days - and it WAS 50/50, within 2-3 days (over a 4 month period)  - with no "ok, now can we switch this weekend, and that day" negotiations required - whereas now I'm always the one begging for changes, and depending on how mad he is at me, he has the final say of "nah, that doesn't work for me...")   Given his insistence on the one particular schedule, I had no idea if he would work with me on my missed days.

e) and - once we got to something reasonable - (with the 'travel time will be made up for' in the court filed plan) - yes, it was definitely not worth a painful custody battle to shift something like 1 day/month overall (after my travel) - even if I still (at the time) thought that the specific schedule differences would be better for the kids. 

(I’m getting so resentful, because apparently, he’s been making everything more difficult ever since because of this perception (which has ramped up immensely lately, because he again asked for (and I rejected) the week on/week off – implying that I don't care about the kids, which is patently ridiculous.  He thinks I want this arrangement just for some perceived benefit to me?  I think HE wants this arrangement, and has argued for it from the VERY START - because it matches up with the schedule of the woman he was involved with at the end of our marriage.   "What a weird coincidence that I believe the BEST schedule for my children happens to match up exactly with the schedule for my fiancee's much older child even after my children said explicitly, multiple times, that they didn't want that schedule!"   LOL I think maybe I should be quicker to dismiss HIS views on what is ‘best’ due to the obvious bias)

[mairisidivorce]

Ok for him, not for me

This weekend, my kids are with me. 

They realized they left a library book from my library at his house. 

I asked if it was there.  He said he’d check, but no response within a few hours.  An hour or two later I said, ok, the kids will stop by and look. 

Verbatim text exchange:

“Been out all morning, We’ll be home around 2.  I can look then”

“Ok, can the kids come by and look?  They said they have the garage code”

“I mean, I guess so?  I thought your library doesn’t charge late fees”

“the book was from a partner library, so I’m not sure if I’ll get fees from them.  Plus we have some errands to run, so...”

“I’ll look for the book when we get home and let you know.  I can drop the book off tomorrow when I picke the kids up if we have it.”

“Ok, but the kids are going to look?  We are going to the library, and can’t take out books without returning it”

“I’ll swing by the house and look.  If you needed me to look for the book so that you can go to the library today you should have made that known before”

“Why can’t the kids look?“

“It’s here.  When you get here let [youngest] come inside and try on her [clothes.]”

“Ok, well, we’re running our other errands first since you didn’t seem to want the kids there.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want the kids at the house I just wanted to be back here because one of the things I was out getting was [clothes for the youngest] and she might as well try it on in case I need to change something.”

Basically, he was all “no no no, stay away”, until it was clear that I was coming, THEN all of a sudden the story was “no, I just wanted you to come while I was there because I wanted kid to try these things on.”

WTF asshole.  I’m not an idiot.  Why is it ok that he has 100% unrestricted access to my house (has the garage code, because he picks my older kid up on his days), but I can’t even sit in his driveway while my kids go into what is supposedly “their” home.

And please.  I’m not an idiot.  You just didn’t want me anywhere near there while you’re not there.  I think I need to change our pickup plans.  Need to figure out how to wordsmith that for the kids.

[mairisidivorce]

need somewhere to vent.

I need somewhere to vent.  Where I can scream into the void all the shit about my ex.

Our parenting plan is a 2/2/5/5 schedule.  I like this, my kids like this.  He has wanted (from the start) a week/week schedule (kids are 11 and 6.).  My kids when spending a week away from a parent ... don't do great.  They get whiny, they miss the other parent.  I truly don't think it's best for them.    He brought it up again recently, and I declined. 

He had a few points for why he thinks the week on week off would be better for our kids:  

He brought up that I travel for business (on average 1 week per month).  and the kids are "ok" with that - to which I said, the kids don't particularly like my travel, so why he thinks making that the permanent schedule is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

He said that sometimes, my  youngest complains about the short time at his house?  I never get this complaint, but I have a feeling this might be somewhat related to the fact that he moved to a house ~35-45 minutes away from where they go to school - so regardless of what is going on, they don't get 'home' to his house until late, which, especially for the 6 year old means pretty much getting there, eating dinner, and going to bed.   (As far as I know, she is the only one that complained about the 2 days being too short.)

He said that my older kids forget things house to house [because of the frequent switching].  This shouldn't really be a big issue, because my big kids are at my house daily - he picks them up there.  Again, any 'issues' because of this are because he lives so far away.

Back to that - he moved to a house ~40 mins away.   This is because his fiance (/AP) shares custody with her ex, but in the opposite direction.  So this 40 min commute is the best they could do.)  HER custody schedule (of her older child) is the week on/week off that my ex coincidentally wants to have because he says it's best for our kids.  

I asked my kids, I think pretty neutrally, what they would think of a week on / week off schedule (e.g. I didn't imply that this was something I wanted, or something he wanted, and indeed, that I was the one to bring it up might have implied that I wanted it) and their response was an emphatic no.   Their only complaint to the current schedule is the one day (a 'dad' day) that they have to be at school early, so they have to wake up super early there.  And I'm sympathetic - however - he signed a 2 year lease, and starting next school year, their 'be at school early day' is every day they're with him (they will attend a new school that basically starts the same time as their single early day this year).