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.
This is one of the few areas in which I would disagree with Rob and Puppy. SP has questioned the quality of STBX's parenting. While he could force the issue on the quantity of time she is responsible for them, he will have very little to say about the quality of that time, barring physical abuse or outright neglect. While I think having both parents fully engaged in the lives of children is important, I don't see that with STBXMrsSP.
Now that I think more about it, I agree with you.
Puppy
Are we saying that she is incapable of being their mother?
Or are we just giving in to an adult women's temper tantrums, "I don't want to do this, I just want to have fun, fun, fun!!!"
I'm assuming that since she's not an invalid, she's able to work and earn a living, that she's somewhat functional.
She's choosing not to have the kids as much because they're inconvenient, not because she can't be their mother and spend time with them. She isn't physically abusive with them from what I've read, does she neglect them when she has them, have the kids said this? If it's just about her "convenience" well then I wouldn't give a $hit, too bad, life isn't always convenient and why do you have to care about her convenience. Have you thought about how you're going to manage working full-time, travelling long distances to/from work/home/picking up kids and are you going to be able to maintain that pace for years? Just so your wife's life is more "convenient"?!
- I wouldn't enable that. - I wouldn't put up with her bull$hit. - She does what she does and acts with such crappy behavior because you do put up with her bull$hit.
Seriously if you go this route, why not cut off all visitation entirely! If you do go this route, what are you going to do with regards to explaining this to your kids? You can't leave it up to her because you're deciding she's not capable of anything.
Are you going to tell your kids that "mommy doesn't love you enough to want to spend time with you, mommy doesn't want you living with her, mommy is too busy for you, etc."
Nice!
Let her put on her big girl panties and discuss this with the kids herself, she's digging this hole, let her bury herself in it.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't put up with this bull$hit, I spent too much time doing this in my own situation and what turned it around was no longer putting up with her bull$hit, she's an adult, let her figure it out.
SP if your career requires extensive travel, maybe you need to consider moving to an area closer to work which also means having the kids attend new schools - it sucks but I don't see you pulling off your current career track, having the kids full-time and performing these commutes between home & work & picking up the kids for a long time, too much of your personal energy will be expended trying to accomplish this, you'll burn out become bitter and angry and that won't be a great environment for your kids either.
