8 months into it, first post

[EJohn]

Thanks for the welcome. My post is more of a history and it was getting quite long since I started 8 months into it. I have more to add to get up to date. That's where the questions will come in. I haven't read any books. Read many websites, and spent a lot of time on here. So....

After I got my apartment, things got better. Not as in the relationship, but I was feeling better. I had a place that I could call home with my children, and I wasn't freeloading off of my parents. Things were still pretty tense between us. I was having a lot of trouble understanding why, and she wasn't willing to talk to me about it. At times she would act like she wanted to talk, then retreat. She had cried during the temp order hearing, and called me the next day saying she had thought about talking to me about it, and just getting everything out there. But it didn't happen. After that I tried talking to her about it, and she would just clam up. So I stopped trying to talk to her, and left all communication to email, and short phone conversations about the kids. No R talk, no small talk. Kids only. I had resided myself to moving on with life without her. We occasionally would have emails about the R, but they were about how our R would be going forward with the kids. Since they she was done with work before me, she'd pick them up from daycare, and then I'd pick them up from her house. It was pretty hard to have to see her almost daily, and I wasn't always happy to see her, which I would assume didn't help. I knew she was bringing the OM around the kids, almost immediately after I left, maybe even before, which I do not agree with. (who does really)

There were quite a few days that I'd pick the kids up, and his truck is parked in the drive way. We had an agreement early on that he would not be there when I picked up the kids. It happened occasionally before the temp order, but after it was everyday. I felt, at the time, she was doing it on purpose to hurt me, but looking back, I don't think she thought she was doing anything wrong. Her friends have told me as much. Anyway, one day when I picking up the kids, I politely told her, if he's going to be here when I get the kids, then she can start dropping them off when I get home. I left it at that. The next day in email she accuses me of being an A@#. I politely responded that I was reminding her of our agreement, and that her dropping them off by me would be a good compromise, then he's in her life, not in mine. Actually, all she had to do was park the truck in the garage, I just don't want to see it. It was like a knife in the heart each time. The emails went back in forth, I was polite and straight forward IMHO, she was rather mean and hurtful. The conversation ended with her saying "I really miss talking to you"

more later