Been real busy with work. Fighting a chest cold, and cough. Weary.
I just put my two S's to bed -- Fridays are the weekly changeover days, and I hadn't seen them in a week.
S9 has a school make-up day tomorrow -- for having been out three days due to snow and ice. No rest for us after all.
It's been a long grueling week. I'm not in good spirits right now. I had a long conversation with my two S's following an incident with their mother's call to them this evening.
I picked them up after work, as usual for the start of my week with them. It seems like it was no time before the two of them started talking about OM and their mother. I ignored their words on said subject matter and calmly steered us to other topics. No big deal.
But it kept popping back up. It became tiresome hearing about OM. It is all too apparent that xW constantly plays him up for my S's, always sings his praises and keeps them all focused on OM and everything to do with him. After her continual carpet bombing all areas of their day-to-day existence with words involving OM, it's no wonder that S9 and S5 are now parroting her words even to me.
I managed to hold the line, calmly and nonchalantly changing the subject each time to something more relevant to whatever we were actually doing, like eating dinner, watching a cartoon, etc. -- that is, until xW called for their regular nightly phone conversation with their other parent, in this case their mother. She talked first with S9, and then with S5. At one point S5 asked his mother point-blank about "Mr. OM" ad whether he was there with her on the other end of the line.
I was stunned, not expecting at all that either of my S's would ever ask their mother something like that in front of me. I was starting to worry that maybe xW would think I had put S5 up to asking such a question. But then the OM got on the line and began to have a conversation with S5! He was acting as if he were my S's parent, brazenly saying he was right there with his mother and that they missed him, etc., etc. (I stayed out of it, kept my cool, but it was all I could do to not pick up the phone and tell OM to STFU!)
I let S9 finish the call and hang up.
After bath time I sat them both down and had a bit of a talk with them both. I gently queried them about why all this concentration on this person, Mr. OM. I eventually got a picture out of them and I think I know what's been going on. xW has stepped up her campaign to promote her OM to my S's, to sell them totally on her and him -- and she's now telling them that they intend to get married -- or more precisely: she intends to marry OM. (I'm thinking to myself, "Whatever".)
Either way, it's no big surprise there -- but the shameless attempt to brainwash my kids is going too far.
So starts a long conversation with my two S's trying to prepare them for some possible events headed our way. We discussed what M and commitment really are, and how many people take a contrary flippant attitude towards such values.
As for their mother and OM, I tell my S's I have been predicting these eventualities and assure them they should not give too much "energy" to whatever comes up. The actions their mother takes with Mr. OM should be of no concern to them. They are to love their mother and give respect to her and the OM, but OM deserves no other consideration. He is not their parent, nor would he ever be. His friendly appeals to them should be taken with a grain of salt. In reality he may honestly care for them or he may not. I don't want my S's to put too much stock in a person who has a history of wooing both mothers and their children only to move onward later to "greener pastures". Once the knot is tied, his attitude might very well change towards them having secured their mother's affections.
We, my S's and I, talked at length about a number of things, but these are the things that weighed the most on my heart.
I am deeply saddened that their mother has preached so long and hard about never involving our children in "adult matters" -- whilst in reality she's been constantly peppering them with her views on M, on D, on adultery and on OM. Likewise she has been poisoning my S's against me with subtle words. At one point S9 started to relate to me about something his mother said to him about me. He began by saying, "She said 'It's not just that your father is a bad person, but that...'" and then he trailed off -- I asked him to continue but he said he couldn't remember, and changed the subject.
It might be that S9 was taking what his mother said out of context (I doubt it), but in any event I am convinced she is trying to have my S's draw the conclusion that I am really a terrible person who somehow deserves to have been betrayed and cheated upon. (And I have already established the fact, by her very own words to me, that she has attempted to use me as a model of bad behavior to which my S's should avert from.)
I am sooo weary.
There's no end to her treachery. Frankly, I don't care even if she marries that faithless baffoon (it'll never last -- one or both of them will cheat on the other all too soon.) I just want them to leave my S's out of their quagmire. Just let me have peace alone with my kids and away from her world of insanity and lies.
I guess my rant is over for now. Just wanted to get that out there. I know some will attempt to read me the riot act regarding the OM and defend him as a stepparent. Whatever. I'll warn you I'm just not sympathetic to arguments about how such miscreants are to be respected as another parent to my kids. That's a load of cr*p. I've now read a number of those books about how to smooth the path for kids going through D and the aftermath of blended families. While most of them have sound advice, all of them gloss over the situation where A is involved -- and certainly don't address those cases where the OP and the WAS are morally bankrupt flakes. To many of these pop-psy books are mostly focused on greasing the skids of D under the merest pretense of what is best for these children.
