Am I stupid?

[dday101798]

Hi Wildaces,

I'm not going hunt around the boards to where else you may have posted your sitch, so I'll just answer you here and hope you double back and see it.

First, thses forums here are for WAS' to support each other since the rest of the board is for folks like yourself, the LBS. But if you have a question of a WAS (or former) you can certainly try and shout it out here.

That said........

Oh brother, is what you posted shades of my life in August of '08. My W did the same, gave up on the M, OM came along and was the greatest thing since minute rice, moved into her dad's place, with OM , and had me fearing for the kids.

We started off initially "splitting" our two sons by verbal agreement. And here's where things get tricky. I too, was not very upset about her being with OM per sae, but soon things boiled on the topic for various reasons mainly to do with the kids.

And here is where my warning starts to you.

Not too soon into things, my elder son then 11 who is special needs, latched on to OM. OM became his male role model in life and soon there after, was encouraged by now (x)W to call him "dad". This began to boil my blood and things deteriorated between (x)W and I to the brink of what you fear, (x)W would snatch up both kids at her lesure (s/p) and I often wouldn't see them for days straining my relationship with my sons at the most trying time in their lifes.

My hatred of OM consumed me for taking my place. Getting tired of coming home to an empty house, missing holidays, and (x)W not only taking the kids but important documents from the house at random, I tried everything I could to stop it. However, as I'm sure you may know by now, there's nothing you can do, until the D and parenting agreements, she can take them whenever she wants. Finally after a physcial attack on me (don't laugh, hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn, let alone one in WAW mode) I drew the final straw and filed an order of protection barring her from the house, and un-intentionally the kids.

Long story short, her answer to that was to push the D, demoralize me to all her friends and family and turn me into your fear, a 72 hour a month "parent" June of '09.

Now, here's your hope.

After all the fight I put up. After all the "I just care about OUR kids, you can have OM" conversations I had with her, and after 9 long months of her waking up to our kids just wanting to have 24 hour access to their father as any child would and resenting her for taking that away, (x)W "came to". She realized I had my faults that I did not contest in our M, but what she had done was just so wrong. OM was not the answer. OM was not, is not and will never amount to what to growing boys need most, their father. And most of all, that I had professed to her I knew my faults in our M, and recognized hers, accepted and forgave them. And what got her most, was the fact that I only had those 72 hours a month, but I used every minute of them to be the best dad I possibly could.

And here we are today, putting our lives back together as a family.

Will your sitch turn out the same? Only time will tell. Time, is a key thing to all this. No, time IS the key thing to all this.

I'm certain there are some skeltons in your closet that pushed your W to do this, no?

Deal with those. Forgive yourself for those so that you can begin the long process that takes TIME to forgive your W and accept why she has chosen the path she is on now.

In the interim where the kids are concerned, if you truly fear she may just up and take them, SEEK LEGAL COUNCIL NOW, don't second guess it, DO IT. Establish a enforceable LEGAL, written parenting agreement right now.

Other than that, you can't "let it go", but you can let her go. Focus your TIME on you and the TIME you have with your kids.

Let go of hope. All you can really hope for is that one day this will all seem like a bad dream. Until then, until you can wake up from this nightmare, protect youself and protect your kids.

Sorry if that's long winded.