We had agreed in September that, if she took M/W, even though Tuesdays are generally "her" night, that I would pick the kids up on Tues and feed them before they went to Mom's house, so that she didn't have leave work early 3 days in a row.
You know, one of those nice, cooperative, "co-parent"y things.
So, being a bit of an a**, I drew a boundary this morning. I wrote this:
"No, it's not OK. You can pick them up at child care. That agreement was predicated on the earlier understanding that you would pick them up on M/W so that I could work. You unilaterally canceled that on Sunday. So I see no reason to fulfill my end of the bargain."
Her response, calling my bluff:
"I will be there at 6:30."
To which I responded, "You can be anywhere you like at 6:30. I won't be there. I don't know where the kids will be. Tonight is your custody night, so I'm sure you'll figure something out."
Let her call the attorney.
Another thing, push for the 50/50 joint custody, don't let her get out of that, you don't care if she wants less child custody - why would you help her and enable her there.
She has kids, the responsibility of having kids is making time for them. You don't have to be nice and do the "co-parenty" thing, you know better than that.
Stop being nice. Stop doing favors.
Tell her please go to the attorney, in fact I would tell her "I encourage you to do this, I've changed my mind, you're going to have them 50% of the time whether you want to or not, you chose to have kids and be a mother, you're not going to weasel out of it now, I'll have them 50% of the time, and you will have them the other half of the time, I'm not worried about your job or your personal life especially if you don't care about mine. The kids didn't choose to be born and the kids didn't choose this divorce, you did, now live with those decisions and make the best of it, I'm not going to take the kids full time so that you can enjoy the sweet life at their expense, too bad but it's not going to work that way and I doubt very much that your attorney is going to force me to have the kids full time, in fact i'm going to tell you right now that he's going to tell you that you better take the kids 50% of the time or this is going to get very expensive for you - that's my decision, see ya, BA BYE!"
She is so used to controlling you and telling you what to do and how things are going to go that she has forgotten one little thing... you're not together anymore, she doesn't get to tell you what to do or how things are going to go anymore. She controls herself and you control you. You seriously need to push back and let her know that the kids aren't going away anytime soon, if she thinks that, she's sadly mistaken and stop doing this "nice co-parenty thing", seriously you get nothing out of that at all so stop offering!
SHEEESH!!!!
Incidentally I went through the same thing at my end, my W told me I was controlling her by making her take the kids 50% of the time, I told her in no uncertain terms that the kids need both parents and that neither of us have a choice in this, we chose to have kids and now we have to parent those kids until they're adults and I wasn't going to have the kids 80-90% of the time just so that she could have an easy life - sorry, child support dollars aren't enough, the kids need both parents - that was my decision and although she bitched and complained about her situation was hard and that her work schedule was this and that I just told her, I have to go through the same thing and I've been doing for a while already and it was time for her to be an adult and do the right thing regardless of how it affected her personal life - I seriously didn't care for her excuses, I just told her "DEAL WITH IT!"
Stop making excuses for her SP, just make her deal with it, it's the reality of the situation, you've had to deal with the "SUCK" for quite some time, you're allowed to let her experience the same thing otherwise you might as well just lay on the road and let her run over you with her SUV and get it over with.
