Hey Ioavva, I just caught the post about the kids.
Sounds like they've been thru a lot of change and are showing it. They will calm down when things are more predictable. Maybe you and H can talk about each DD and agree on (generally) ways to treat them. Realize that they're not china dolls, so insisting that the older D's get their own drinks (and helping to clean up the mess if they spill) is the only way for them to eventually learn. Compliments go miles with kids, so ooing and ahhing about one's ability to be Mommy's helper will lead the others toward helping, too, especially at times when you're at your rope's end.
I imagine you're fighting off some guilt with the kids, too. Be on guard against overcompensating for kids' bad behavior etc... and work hard to treat them normally (as-ifing with kids, if you would).
In terms of sex, this is one DBing male who thinks you are doing exactly the right thing. You are not competing with OW, you two are starting to piece the R together, and it just plain fits. If it were me, it would be helping me to grow closer with W, as I watched her over time stay healthy and grow in independence and self-assurance.
I appreciate you noting about this happening near your period. I have seen drastic changes in my W depending on that, and it amazes me how the "sky is falling" conclusion I end up with turns to "its all better now!" a few days later. Try to cut yourself some slack for a bit, huh?
Final note: It is wise to give yourself a break from D4 when you think you're about to lose it. Before that point, consider shutting everything down and asking for quiet snuggle time with her. Just the 2 of you, eyes closed, sitting snuggled on the couch. I've found this to work like magic with S5 even after the most blazing acting out and button-pushing he does. It calms me down, gives him what he wanted in the first place (my attention), and teaches him how to self-manage his mood. It also feeds my confidence as a parent when I would have been really doubting it a few minutes earlier.
I'm going to sit him down and talk to him next time I see him as I'm coming to the end of my patience as far as 'taking things slow' is concerned.
His version of'taking things slow' and mine are very different. The way he takes it slow inhibits the development of a proper R. He gets to see me sometimes, he decides if we go out, what we do and keeps it a secret from people so he can have a implication-free get out clause.
I DON'T feel used by the sex, but I do feel used by his living arrangements. If you imagine he took me to court to get my kids and then he lied to them about his cirumstances and then he's basically had people doing childcare for him ever since while denying me the R I want with my kids - well, he's never had to take responsibiity for his decision to have them.
So when he won't let me take part with their home ed yet he has people at home cooking their tea and ironing their clothes and babysitting them (instead of me) that makes me angry.
I don't know how to raise the subject without coming across as attacking.
Re the boots - this pair I've been wearing for 2 years and they have holes in the soles so I'm getting rid of them in a couple of weeks anyway. He's seen me wear them every time we've met. I think the subject came up because I told DD's 1 and 2 not to kill the ladybirds and that might have reminded him. Plus, over the last 3 yrs since the separation while I have got more lax, he has got more hard-line. He's gone quite religious over it and is training in various subjects. He wants to be a clinical herbalist and he's been making enquiries to move to this ecologically sustained community, so when ex-ow and bf move, he will have a whole load more people helping.
I knew about this plan from last December and told him then that I was going with him and if I didn't I was leaving him for good, i.e, no more sex or anything else. He accepted this, so I will either end up milking cows somewhere and planting organic veg with a lot of eco-warriers or we will go our separate ways.
Right now I can't imagine leaving him after the progress I have made the last few months and I don't want to but if it happens like that I will have to, as I can't sustain a no-commitment thing forever.
He did say ILY which is a massive change after 3 yrs but I guess I'm waiting for him to prove it.
I think I need more time with my kid's as to me they still feel like strangers when they're here only the first time I did overnight on mother's day it wasn't completely wonderful so I am in 2 minds about it. I want us to parent them as equals rather than he says when I can have them then the rest of the time I am not involved.
Re DD4 - I put her in her bedroom and turned radio up in living room because I felt like I was getting overly stressed and it's a good idea to just be in another room when that happens. I was going to cuddle afterwards but she'd fallen asleep.
Thanks for your comments re the sex. This is the dilemma I have as everyone has a different opinion. It felt natural to me and I can't say I ever felt used over this issue, just in relation to children issues.
No I don't feel cheap following sex, I feel happy and generally can't stop thinking about him for 24 hours afterwards, can't stop smiling, can't concentrate on my work, keep singing etc..bit of a hopeless female, really
It makes me feel more confident in the R because I think physical touch is my LL and I only get down when he's late, dossn't call or I haven't seen him for several days.
I think sex has a similar effect on him as right before he said ILY he launched into this impassioned speech about how I always do it to him (make him want me) and how I'm so good at it and he can't get enough of me etc, plus some other things too explicit to write on here which is why I didn't post it the first time and then his speech ended with ILY in a really sort of passionate way - so I think he feels some of what I feel in a male way.
Hence I find it difficult to be completely anti about sex.
He started being nice to me a few months before D, then said 'happy annivrsary' on our 9th wedding anniversary which was 5 days before D. He pursued me A LOT in the last two weeks of December (texting me 5 or 6 times daily, phoning up, asking me what I'm doing, nipping round for coffee, telling me what he's doing in life, in 2 hour convos etc). Then we accidently slept together on 30th Dec and I said 'what's going on?' so then he told me wanted to 'take it slowly' and work on our R. He told me he was moving house probably late this year so I said if all went well I would go with him, otherwise we would cut our losses. He agreed.
So far we have been working on the R slowly, but I get upset ocassionally if I think it's too slow, IYKWIM.
There you go! He's coming around, Ioavva. This trust in you re mothering seems like a big issue in your sitch, especially after the custody battle.
IMHO, I'd focus solely on this for the day, working to relaxed and in the moment with the kids, and leave the R convo for another time. In fact, Ioavva you might wait 2-3 days to do so, letting your mood shift and your successful interactions with the kids today (I predict so!) to sink into you, the kids, and indirectly, H. My intuition tells me this is not the time for an R talk (after a stressful day over the weekend/growing doubts and tension about R/are you still mid-period -therefore hormones may affect your ability to be at your top game as-ifing, etc...), but you know your sitch best.
Too much ridigity is never a good thing, so H becoming more so regarding vegetarianism is a red flag for me. Yet, his asking you to watch the kids is a nice way of testing the waters.
You will win part of H's heart and confidence via your Rs with the children, Ioavva. Regardless of H, they need and deserve you in their lives. Not sure if this is his view, but a mother or father never 'babysits' their own children. They are your children, too, and you and they deserve each other very much. I truly hope you can enjoy each other today!
G said you don't babysit your own children. You mother them. I agree. JO, when someone babysit, they don't own the children. It's a hired position.
Comment to your H, something like you don't want to feel like hired help, you are a mother and you can mother the children, but don't considered yourself hired help. You might have to tone it down a little, but not much.
The goal is to get your H to se you are the other "parent" and his "life partner" to these children. Not an emotionally frail female child care provider.
If I visited your family today with your H and kids, would I see a mother taking care of her kids or would I see H's girlfriend taking care of the bf kids?
I am not saying you should be there today and I know that is what you want. Sometimes we have to give up the old patterns we used and put on the new role, act with it (mother role) for a while so it sticks and feels comfortable.
Do you have any plans to fall back on if one or more of the kids gets on your nerves or acts out? Mothers do, usually learned from experience.
Kids came round, that went okay, except I had to tell the 2 oldest ones to get off the roof as they'd climbed up the fence and jumped from the top of the fence onto the roof of my house and were walking around up there.
DD2 has had two broken arms before including an operation to pin the bones together which has left her with a scar on her arm, so I am not crash hot on her breaking it again.
We did that art I told you about from the art set I bought and I made them popcorn. The popcorn machine was really over-zealous and popped out the corn so hard it started going all the way across the kitchen and even went in my clean washing. The kids were squealing with laughter and I had to stand in front of them so they didn't get hit by any flying popcorn, which was hot.
Then I melted some butter, golden syrup and caster sugar and mixed the popcorn into that with the help of DD1 - hey presto, home done butterscotch popcorn, and loads more than you'd get in a shop.
They all lined up with their bowls (a bit like Oliver in Oliver Twist, lol) and I filled them, then they ate them in the front room.
DD3 drew all over the outside of my house but I didn't care. It looks okay, let the council complain. She drew a hopskotch pattern on the floor and then started skipping.
I played computer games with them.
Then their dad turned up and it was okay to start with. He looked quite smart in a black shirt, shirts aren't him normally, he's more of a baggy jumper and jeans kind of man.
I made him a coffee - he talked about this meditation technique he's learning and then he asked me what I am doing about dd4's education. I said I am sending her to nursery school because she's on her own here with me and I work a lot, writing and stuff and she sometimes gets bored so I think she would love nursery school.
He said she's too young, she's only 2. I said it doesn't start till September and she'll be 3 then. He said don't send her full time. I said I wanted to send her 3 times a week to the nursery school and twice a week to the Steiner toddler group we go to already.
He said isn't 5 sessions rather a lot at that age? I said well, 2 of them are only toddler group and that isn't stressful, plus I stay with her at those ones, so it's only 3 times a week really and it's what I did with dd3 when she was that age and she was fine.
I told him if she didn't like it I would take her out. He said what about school? I said I don't know but if everything goes okay with us then he would be home eding her anyway as it's not fair to send one and not the others.
He made this noise - can't describe it on here - but he always makes this particular sound when you have said something he finds pleasing and he made that sound so I figured that remark had his approval.
Then we talked about our sitch and I wish we hadn't actually because it's against DB'ing and I know why. I told him it was really difficult for me to see him and then wait 5 days to see him again, never have any say with the kids etc and make plan to go out and then not go.
He said he did try to accomodate me. I validated that an said he has been brillient and I loved Shrek 2 and the way he has been treating me like a lady etc and I appreciate all the effort that he's put in to us. But I said I got scared when he then walks off and I don't hear from him for days, it makes me wonder what I have done wrong. He said it is the same for me, this is my heart on the line also. What if you leave me?
The 'What if you leave me line' made me cry in front of him and I've never done that since DBing - Damn! I said he knows me better than that and apologised for crying, saying 'I know you hate emotion' He said 'Not always.' He said he was scared in case I stopped him from doing the things he does in his current life, that if I went with him and the kids on one day, I would expect to all the time. I assured him I wouldn't and told him I prefer him doing family visits alone as he gets on better with them than me, but it would just be nice to go to the home ed meetings ocassionally so I can be more involved with dd's. He said he understood that.
Then he said 'I'm not sure I can be faithful to any woman, after what we have been through.'
I looked the other way and said nothing.
Then he took my hand and squeezed it and said he wasn't rejecting me, it wasn't me, it was him and his issues he has to work through, and that we have only been having an R since December and that isn't long.
I said I'm counting 3 years, not since December. I said 'what do you want me to?' (rather exhausted from 2 yrs of DB'ing).
He said 'Wait for me'. Flippin' wait for him! God, the man asks a lot.
Then he said see you Saturday and they went. On the way out the door, he hugged me because I looked awful. DD4 burst into tears and DD3 hid in the garden because she didn't want to leave and then burst into tears also.
Now my friend has cancelled so I can't take DD4 ice skating tomorrow (I needed an able-bodied person) so I am upset about that too.
I feel like the crappest wife and mother on the planet. I mean honestly, why did she pick a cripple for a mother?? Other mothers could have just taken her skating without needing another person there
Not a good day. I loused up DB'ing, and now I'll be stuck in tomorrow.
It's feels like babysitting now, after everything and he refers to it as babysitting if he asks me to watch them so HE can do something, whereas if it's just ordinary contact, or I ask to have them, he doesn't call it babysitting.
I feel like an aunt to my 3 older dd's, in fact once when I went to dd2's birthday 20 months ago and I didn't know any of the adults there so I introduced myself as dd2's 'birth mother' rather than her mother. It was automatic till I'd said it, then I realised what I'd said. She hasn't lived with me since she was 4, and it does make a difference even if it shouldn't, or maybe it was all the legal stuff, I don't know.
I think you misunderstand the source of my previous depression, though. It was never the kids that caused it, it was my break up with H. I never had any trouble dealing with the kids apart from when I had PND with dd1.
I was always their main child carer, breast fed them to toddlerhood, bought all their clothes, dressed them all, made most of the childcare decisions and did the majority of the care as H worked outside the home and my job is part-time and from the house so it made more sense for me to look after them.
He has only done most of it with them since he left and took them with him. The depression was an issue to the court but by the time it came to trial I was recovered and then they just said the kids have lived with him for so long it's not fair to move them (what they call in legal terms the 'status quo' argument) and he had OW so he was a 2 parent family and could offer them more than me as a single parent (I'm not kidding, they did say that about single parents).
The only reason I ever get stressed out with them is when I'm stressed out with him. I.e, if he's upset me or something is on my mind about the R, then the stress gets to me and carries through into my parenting even though I try hard to act normal.
When everything is ok between us, I feel ok therefore I am more tolerent of the children's behaviour and can cope with crying/tantrums better.
I have worked a great deal over the last 3 years for my M not to affect them so much, but I still have odd days where it does.
or we will go our separate ways.