I agree, BND, Irish. XW has no valid reason to impose on us as she does. She also tries to ask S9 each time whether they want her to stop by or not. Of course they (my S's) always say yes -- and if I were to countermand their agreement, then I would be seen as the bad guy. Grrrrrrrr. I can't win, ...not the way it stands.
I need to talk to the PC again. He's made himself so scarce, but I need to continue to catch him.
FYI, the hateful xMIL lives nearby xW, in this same apartment complex, no less. So you've got me, xW & OM and xMIL in three separate apartments, three separate buildings, but in the same complex. Almost seems like my worst nightmare -- only thing worse would be if we were under the same freaking' roof!
Well, Mondays at the very least are not going to work out for me "reciprocating" the morning visits. They spent last night over at OM's place an hour away -- hadn't shown up at her mother's place this AM before I had to leave for work.
It's all a bit too clear that xW has far too many resources and advantages against me in playing these games of hers. Right now I'm just out-gunned.
I think I'm going to need to keep pushing after the parenting coordinator as my prime recourse.
Side note: xW and OM just had to squeeze in some camping this weekend -- they couldn't bear to let me have a good experience with my S's without trying to one-up me again. They pushed it despite heavy thunderstorms and torrential rain, which had been predicted all week long. I didn't find out about it until I called Friday Night -- S9 told me where they were, and I thought to myself how idiotic it was for them to tempt fate like this.
Thankfully, the weather finally chased them out of there by Saturday evening.
I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that they would put themselves and my S's in harms way, even knowing all the severe flood and high wind alerts and warnings. But foolishly persisting until it was already breaking loose atop them was just... insane. Anyone in their right mind would have canceled the trip under such circumstances.
(I can only imagine what would happen were I to ever do anything so reckless with our S's lives.)
I stayed indoors myself. I tried to lay low and to get a few things done in the apartment, more unpacking and settling in.
NC~ It just shows how much poor judgement she has when it comes to the boys. Such little regard for her own children only to just like you said "one up" you, and for what??? what exactly is she gaining doing this crap.
Showing up on her doorstep wanting to see the boys i think is a fabulous idea... I bet she wouldn't like it. You definatley track that PC down, why is he making himself scarce. Isn't that his job?
Hope you had a good weekend and were able to enjoy yourself.
Take care and I hope you are going out doing things for yourself.
(((((hugs))))
me: 37 H: 44 Married for 18 years this june S7 S3 porn issues, and much more... since 7/06
Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
I managed to "catch" the boys Friday morning, having failed to do so the prior days their mother had them. Even so, it was when she was dropping them off at her mother's place, not at her own -- so xW could not really experience the full effect of being encroached upon.
I will try a little harder to catch them before she heads out each day -- which, I am gathering, is earlier and earlier every day.
xW sent me an email on Thursday, telling/warning me I had better make arrangements for daycare since she was going to split things up. I have mentioned before that xW (once again) wants to re-jigger the childcare provisions -- this time she wants to only cover her own expenses and leave me to cover my own weeks, beginning with July. This includes, by her plans, for me to begin to pay her mother directly for her so-called "childcare services". xW now suggests I contact my atty and work out a written modification to our agreement to make this happen.
Mind you, xW hasn't even given either of our L's and update to her increased salary situation since I first asked for this close to a year ago, so as to be able to recalculate the child support supplement I give her each month -- and yet now she wants me to incur the legal costs to making her life easier, as she perceives it?
No, xW is playing games again, and I am just not inclined to play along. I am indeed going to make my own daycare arrangements -- entirely -- and so I will begin phasing out her mother's service altogether once I figure out an alternative.
I did manage to track the PC down, if only briefly. It seems I am either getting his voicemail or catching him when he's tied up with another client. xW got him as well just the day before. It seems we're both following up on counseling for S5. xW got the PC to give us a referral back to a place I had lined up for S9 three years ago, but had let go. The reason the referred to place was dropped back then was because they admitted they could not really provide help for kids with Asperger's, which S9 needed. My own personal reason was that xW had "poisoned the well" there with the counselor by shedding her crocodile tears and blaming me for everything wrong in our M, our family and with our S.
So I am loathe to go back to that child counseling center.
In any event, I tried in the short time available to the PC to appraise him of the changes that had happened since we last spoke. The xW's wedding, my moving, S5's emotional issues (including the one incident of rejecting my custody exchange) and xW's efforts to campaign our S's on removing them to OM's place and changing schools.
The PC was most concerned over the school change actions. But he seemed more interested in playing wait-and-see, rather than taking initiative to thwart xW from continuing with her plans. I must assume he just doesn't want to believe that xW is capable of such duplicity.
It hurts me to think that he will give the benefit of a doubt to provable liar and cheat. But given everything that has been said before, I am finished with being surprised by that.
I have had a very good three day weekend with S9 and S5. We played and ran errands on Saturday and Sunday. We went to Church of course. Today we went to a local fun park and had a blast. Go-carts, laser-tag, etc. (I really like it when I can wear one or both of them out.)
And when we're home they keep gravitating back to playing Lego Batman on the Wii -- they don't ever seem to tire of it. But I did manage to get them to take breaks by watching the various Batman movies -- they've now seen all of them except The Dark Knight.
It was a pretty packed weekend, despite all of the video game time. Fun for all of us.
Playing your former wife's game of intruding on the morning routine only hurts you. It's a test of wills between the two of you that probably confuses the kids.. and might make you look a little like a stalker. If you truly want to see your children when she has them, why not just wait at where they're being dropped off? Or why do it at all?
And about the change in daycare expenses.. Instead why not ask for a modification in child support based on the change in salary for the former spouse? Your lawyer knows how things work and can best advise you. If she wants to formally change childcare expenses, it's her choice to go forward, not yours. And it can open a whole can of worms for her if she does. Especially if she's planning on moving.
Their mom continually interferes with your morning routine which is disruptive, invasive and disrespectful. It would wig me out, too. Since she knows your time schedule, suggest that saying goodbye to the kids in the morning at school works better for all. Then you can take them for breakfast, get donuts, go to the store for something then get them to school. Break her routine.
And you're in a tough position with the PC since most states feel it's better for children to be with their mother as long as she isn't a cracking smoking lesbian prostitute. Or at least that's the standard in Connecticut. Promptly enrolling your son in the child counseling center would be good, providing a safe established environment for him to feel safe, share developing a rapport with his counselor for this summer and the upcoming school year
Anyway.. these are imperfect suggestions and perceptions that may or may not benefit you. In the end it comes down to what works for you, your children. What's best for them. And if something makes you really mad, try and identify what it is that is causing that gut reaction. Reactions that are disproportionate to the event usually are triggers for something completely different.
xW now suggests I contact my atty and work out a written modification to our agreement to make this happen.
Of course it is your responsibility to pay legal fees to modify the agreement so she gets more money. Silly you for thinking otherwise! LOL
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No, xW is playing games again, and I am just not inclined to play along. I am indeed going to make my own daycare arrangements -- entirely -- and so I will begin phasing out her mother's service altogether once I figure out an alternative.
Excellent idea. I am sure you can find daycare for the times you are responsible for the kids. And won't that burn xw and xmil'S hides.
"You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." Jon Kabat-Zinn
Yes, I have to agree -- unless I truly feel the need to see my S's every morning they're with their mother, there's little cause for me to do so. My gut instincts tell me that it would be just returning tit-for-tat, fair or not. And you know what? I really do not feel so insecure that I feel the need to impose myself on them. It would be different if my S's were actually requesting my visit, but they're not -- and that actually gives me a level of comfort.
You see, the real problem with xW "dropping by" to visit our S's during my week has less to do with xW and her attempts to horn in on my parenting time, but what this might be doing to my S's. xW's core reason for doing this is her own deeply-ingrained insecurities. She has allowed her insecurities to lead her completely astray from the ideals she professes, so much so that the image she wants to portray as a goodly, upstanding person is a complete sham, a facade to hide the very insecurities and foibles that cause her to so stumble.
Furthermore, I am concerned with her efforts, conscious or not, to make our two S's just as insecure as she is. She may deny it publicly, but it is so painfully obvious that she wants both S9 and S5 to be so attached to her that the cannot function without her. She wants our S's to be so utterly needy of her that I will not be able to effectively parent them.
This in turn triggers my own degree of insecurity. I love both of my S's beyond measure. I want them to need their father as much as their mother. (Or that I do not want them to depend on their mother to the express exclusion of their father, I suppose.)
But I also love these children enough to recognize that undue dependence on either parent will ultimately harm them. As such I find myself genuinely disgusted with xW's fawning attempts to keep our S's tied to her apron strings. I do not want to make the same mistakes she is making.
And I can say that while I do truly miss my S's and would relish as much time with them as possible, I do not feel the need to impose myself on them. I have zero doubt that were I to also make a habit of dropping by xW's place each morning to see our S's, it would aggravate her to no end. But that alone is not a good enough reason for me to do so.
So I have decided that I will not force the matter -- if I see them in passing on my way to work, I will certainly stop and greet them with hugs and kisses, otherwise I will carry on during my week of "solitude" with stoic dignity.
I am counting on her eventually tiring of this game of hers, especially as I continue to make the effort to move us out the door each morning sooner than she can arrive.
I am certain this represents only but one means by which she "babies" our two boys, and much of this takes place under her own roof -- so there's nothing to be done about that. Thus I have to continue to work on them from "my end", shaping their characters -- at least to the degree that is in my power, of course -- so they will learn and grow up as wholly integrated young men free of the debilitating insecurities and character flaws that their mother seems to now laud and embrace.
(Unfortunately, even as a moderate counterbalance to her extreme co-dependent, insecure influence on them, I undoubtedly come off as more "cold" and lacking in "compassion", if only by degrees. It's a charge she has long sought to pin on me as would-be justification for ending our M. But I have at last learned to ignore her accusations, and to leave it in God's hands to shield my S's from her distortions of my motivations.)
Thanks for the words of advice, Gyps. I truly appreciate them. You may consider them imperfect, but given the greater imperfections in the World about us, they are very much more appropriate than one might at first think. Nothing in this world is perfect, after all.
xW created this crazy situation we are now in, but she seems to not want to accept her share of the costs, both monetary and otherwise, that these "games" demand.
But that is just who she is, and how she has been even during our M. She feels that I, as the H and now former-H, am supposed to shoulder the greater costs, on her behalf -- for anything and everything. Funny thing is that while I gladly accepted the greater burdens while M'ed to her, now that we are no longer M'ed -- and especially since she went and M'ed someone else -- I am under absolutely no obligation to her, not directly, even if she is the mother of my children.
Some day she might figure this out. I eventually did (thankfully).
Seriously, I think you should do it!
Silly you for thinking otherwise! LOL