Sorry, I have to vent. I broke the no contact rule last night. Ugh. There is no good that comes from telling your ex what you REALLY think of them. After all, there is a reason you are divorced. It's not like you are going to suddenly be great friends afterwards, or all those communication problems suddenly "fix" themselves after the divorce. It's in our parenting agreement that we can tell our 4 y.o. Goodnight every night she is with the other parent. It's also in our parenting agreement that we each get two weeks during the summer and that we had to give at least one months notice to the other parent, in writing so we could plan our vacations around it. I asked my ex numerous times to tell me days he wanted and he kept putting me off until finally he said the first two weeks of august (essentially). I made my plans according to that and now, a few weeks later, he wants to change the schedule. He has proposed (tried to demand actually) that he gets one week this summer and another week over the holidays. There is no way I would agree to give up my holiday time with my daughter for him. Our agreement is during the summer and we have a set schedule for every other holiday throughout the year. There is a reason that parents need a parenting agreement filed with the court. It is to ensure no bickering or fights over time with their children. I am satisfied with the agreement. I have resigned myself to joint custody. I may not like the man, but he has legal rights to our daughter just as I do. When she is with her dad, I try to stay out of it as much as possible. I know that it isn't about me when she is over there. I call each night and ask her about her day and tell her I love her. In general I try to keep my calls at night short and precise so I don't take away from their goodnight times. But I don't get the same consideration from my ex when I have our daughter. It is still all about him. He tries to tell me what time to put her to bed and what to feed her, like I haven't been her mother for her whole life and suddenly he is a great dad. Last weekend was fathers day and he asked if he could take her early on Saturday for a camping trip. I agreed and off they went. On Monday I came home to find a certified copy of a handwritten court motion asking the court to force me to joint custody because I was trying to alienate my daughter from her father. Handwritten. Sloppily. Why? Well, he apologized and said he knew the court wouldn't do anything but he filed it for me to see how "serious" he was about the situation. Up until this moment, I had gone out of my way to keep the schedule standard and still make allowances to be friendly and communicative with her dad. But now.... There's no freaking way I can spend any time with this man. So the no contact rule comes back into play and I delete his emails and text messages without reading them and will only speak maybe three words to him at 8pm when he calls for our daughter. Until last night when we argued on the phone and he tells me I am delusional and not a functioning member of society. I work full-time to pay my own bills (no child support or alimony because he is unemployed) and I am finishing my degree in Computer Information Systems. He actually mocked me for being 28 and still in college. This from a man who doesn’t have a job, has had a trust fund pay for every bit of college he has completed, lives in his parent’s house, drives his parent’s car, doesn’t have health insurance for himself, let alone for our daughter (that’s all me) and now has the preschool teacher from our daughter’s former preschool pregnant. I am delusional according to this paragon of virtue and sloth. I am proud of who I am and what I do. When I was with this guy, I didn’t like myself at all. Part of the reason I wanted out of our marriage is I looked long and hard at myself and I realized that as long as I was with him, I didn’t like myself very much. I don’t have to prove anything to him, or justify my feelings or get him to see why his actions have hurt me. We are divorced and yet he is still trying to control me, degrade me, manipulate me and he gets angry, really angry, when I won’t behave like he wants me to. Like I said, I don’t like the man. I don’t respect the man or want to spend anytime with him, yet when he has custody of our kid I have to just let it go and deal with it.
-------------------- Everything now is as it should be.
|