Number 8, still too late for DB to work.

[cw68]

Journaling... what a day. H is doing up the paperwork and isn't liking the reality of the situation. So he lashes out at me. After months of saying we can do this on our own, we start disagreeing at the start, before anything is even remotely set he flips out.

We are disagreeing about custody. He immediately wants it to be 50/50 and I want it to slowly go there. I have been the kids' primary care taken forever. The arrangement we currently has had worked. My belief is it should stay like this as we transition houses and as we really split up, since up until now we had more a lot more together as a family. I will be going back to work soon and really don't think that drastically cutting the amount of time they spend with me since I've stayed home with them for the past seven years is a good idea right now. Not to mention my H has traveled a lot for work over the past four years and I'm worried that he'd have to keep changing the days and the kids wouldn't even have the stability of knowing where they would sleep each night. I know my kids and really believe that stability is the thing they need most right now.

Yes, in the past in arguments I've told him he wouldn't ever get 50% custody. My bad. For the past few months, especially the past few weeks, I've done everything I can to reassure him that that's not actually how I feel.

So I get this email today in response to a reply of mine to an earlier email where I spelled out the above, assuring him that my plam is to have the kids end up 50/50 and to do that in the not too distant future:

"I honestly don’t believe that the arrangement will change in time. The kids will come to accept it and once you have majority custody locked in and are getting significant alimony and support payments, why would you have any desire to change things? After all, you’ve told me numerous times in the past that I would “never” get equal custody and I have no reason to believe that your perspective has changed. Also, I’d then be in the compromising position of having to explain to the court why I agreed to reduced custody in the first place and why it now makes sense to modify the agreed upon arrangement.

I guess I have a really difficult decision on my hands, spend all my savings, create a lot of bitterness between you so that I can convince a bunch of total strangers that I’m deserving of being an equal parent, or just accept that I will have a less than equal role in D7's and S5's life and moving forward with them in the best way that I can.

It is an impossible dilemma and I can see why custody battles can become so contentious, costly and emotional. "

Typical H. It's all or nothing. Either he immediately has 50% custody or he will have less than an equal role in parenting. Nothing in between.

So I called him. Asked him if he really wanted to get lawyers involved. He said he didn't know. I told him that nobody would win in that situation and the kids would definitely loose. Told him he would regret it and once he went there, he couldn't ever turn it around. I told him I was offended at what he was accusing me of and that he was threatening me with a custody battle. He denied threatening me with it!

I swear, there's someone else. Someone else who is putting the screws on him to file and is filling his head with what he accused me of in his email. He swears that he isn't, but if he is and he's been lying to me, he'll regret it.

He'll regret going to a lawyer, too. I have something on him that could look very damaging to him. I could probably keep the kids from him if I used it in the right manner. When the incident I'm talking about happened (and I don't want to go into details) I told him that he could trust me, that I had no plans on letting any judge know of the incident. That I understood what had happened and knew that it wasn't what it could be made to look and I wasn't upset or anything. (Actually, it was kind of funny in ways.) It hasn't been mentioned since and he's telling me that he can't trust me?!

He calmed down a bit. He came over to join me in looking at a rental house that he is probably going to move into when his lease is up. Then when we put the house on the market, he'll move in here and I'll move into the rental for the long haul. Liked the place. Weird in many ways, and the kids will miss our yard, but it's in a little community with a pool and I think that will make up for it. It's just a few blocks away, still right by the school and in the neighborhood where their friends are. It only has two bedrooms, one of the bedrooms was turned into a loft area. I think the kids can still share a room for a while and the loft right next door to their bedroom can be their area. Homework area, play area and my desk/computer.

I digress, sorry. When he first came over, I asked the kids to take their carseats to Dad's car and I had to have a private word with their father. I went over to him and said, "We have to do this the right way, H. If we don't the kids loose. We cannot screw this up too. Our married is ruined, we cannot ruin us too or the kids will pay." He said he agreed. We left. Anyway, after seeing the place H was taking the kids to dinner. He asks if I wanted to join and I said yes. (I'm really trying to build a friendship with him, we have to do that for our kids.) During dinner the kids were talking about the house and I asked H where he thought he might live after the house sells. He looks at me and says, "Probably in one of those double-wides right there. You'll have all my money." As if I'm supposed to feel sorry for him? DAM. I don't feel sorry for him, this is the "solution" he chose.

Oooh, another thing (this journaling tonight is making me feel better). As we were driving to dinner we passed his old place of employment. I said, "I should call Hussein (the CEO) and see if there's anything for me there. Hussein loves me." Hussein really does love me, he's one of the nice gentlemen I've ever met. So H says, "You should, you're right he does love you. You can tell him your [censored] husband left you. He'd love that, he hates me anyway. He'd hate me more for leaving you." I said, "Really, he hates you? I never knew that." H: "Well, he probably hates me since I left." Me: "H, btw, if anyone hates you, it wouldn't be for what you're doing to me, it'd be for what you are doing to the kids." Man, it felt good.

Spoke to the MC we are going to next week to try to improve our communication. She's awesome and we talked for at least 30 minutes on the situation. She was very supportive of my feelings and told me he probably does have someone waiting and to prepare for it. She said she was committed to helping us through our problems for our kids, though said he probably won't just snap out of it and realize the errors of his ways. I told her not to worry, I know now that that isn't going to happen. He's too far gone.

Now I'm seeing him for who he has become and I like him less and less and feel less like I'm losing the good guy I married. He isn't worth too many more of my tears.