setting boundaries when not clear if A is over

[Piano]

blownaway65, thankyou again for your advice. Sorry you need to keep telling me over and over what I need to hear most. I am taking it on - albeit slowly, as I work through acceptance of my sitch - but confident I am on the good path to self-protection. The turning point has been this week - I think because my H is interstate & somehow I feel relieved by that!

What keeps tripping me up though, and I don't mean to harp on, is that in my sitch (after having being cheated on and left by my H without any chance of R) there's an unborn baby thrown in to complicate matters!! It's this point of difference which really has me stumped.......

I hope you will stick around and keep offering your advice ... clearly I really need it.......

Newmama, also thankyou for sticking with this. I hope I can clarify some things in this post. I wish I could say I am not clear because of the pregancy hormones and fatigue etc, but that would be disengenuous! I AM confused, and I can see it when I read myself. But let me try to respond to your points now....

Quick clarification of the main things: the bottom line is that my H does not want to reconcile with me and wants me to move on. I am due in two months. He says he wants to be a father, but is unclear about how much he can put in. Let's face it, he's interviewing for work in another state as it is and is likely to get that work soon. He has also made it clear he will go back to live in Europe (for life) at some stage (my guess, a matter of months/a few years).

I see my problem as this: how to DB with a WAH who does not want to R, is probably not going to be living in my city/country (sooner or later), with a baby on the way, and he keeps saying he wants to be a father.

I am trying to figure out a self protection strategy that involves contact only around finances or the baby. Why NC? Because, like many here, I think the break with H is important for my healing and sanity, and b/c I am hoping to 'shake my' H up in the long run. I want to work on the M down the track, if he changes his mind.

If there was NO BABY, I would go the NC, "Tough Love", road. Cut of all contact, so I can heal, and so he can realise what he is losing.

But there is a BABY. So what do I do? Just because I am about to be a mum does not mean I am no longer married to him, love him, or want to DB the marriage.

Where co-parenting is concerned, I think I can't start the process now, while I am trying to heal. It's too confusing to have to sit in a co-parenting therapy session with him and hear all his nonsense. The first time we did it (and the last) I got hurt and angry all over again hearing his (what I thought) irrational views on fatherhood & concerned it porvided an opp for him to tell me all over again how our M is over and to give up hope.

I walk away upset, and it takes my mind of caring for the baby... My focus returns to him, not me and the baby.

Why did I opt for the co-parenting in the first place? Well, I was hoping to be STRONG enough to be able to sit in the sessions, not talk about the R, and that out of that the co-parenting talk would 1. wake him up to the reality of this baby coming very soon (he's quite disconnected....! despite the 'talk') and 2. perhaps make him face his actions and see what he has done to our M and future, and perhaps - just perhaps - help him come to his 'senses' vis a vis our M.

As for our legal system, he has 50-50 parenting rights. Same as in the US, I'm guessing. So I can't refuse him access to the baby. But he is really vague about the input he wants to have...and said once that he wont challenge me on any custody claims I make (!!). Tell me, what sort of "father" actively looks for work interstate and says he's eventually heading back overseas for good, away from their baby??? Someone settling for not much of a relationship with his child, is what it sounds like to me. This is not someone promising to be a 'around the corner' co-parenter. It WONT be 50/50 caring role. Clearly, I am going to be doing most of, if not nearly all, the parenting by myself.

So why continue co-parenting classes?

The only reason I would even consider continuing the sessions would be in the hope that it will wake the guy up to his contradictions, as I've already said (sorry, I know I am guilty of repeating myself alot). I mean, this is the guy whose first statement in co-parenting counseling was "I love this child already, and I will be it's father".

Well, yes... technically he IS and will be the father, but where will he being the "PARENT" in that?

I just don't think I can sit through any more sessions with that inherant contradiciton driving me bananas!

As for the OW, you're right Newmama, he can co-parent while or if he is still in a relationship with the OW. But the reason I wanted to make some sort of boundary statement to him was, again, to shake him up and find out where he is 'at'. Plus, I suppose, having her there would add insult to injury. Though I know that's not a good place to think from.

I know that's not what we are supposed to do (be worried about what they are doing & who they are doing it with when they have seperated from us & said it no uncertain terms that our M is over) but I just can't get a handle on how to have contact with him around this co-parenting business.

I guess I could do what you have done, and restart the co-parenting therapy post-birth - that is, if he hasn't skipped town.

You know, as I type this, I'm starting to think maybe he doesn't want to co-parent, he just wants occassional access (flying in every couple of weekends to say hello to the baby, and fly out again). What a crappy way to be a "father", if you ask me!!

As for the issue of trust.. I don't know how to 'read' what has he done to me clearly yet, as I find it all really nuts and confusing. I'm getting there...but very slowly.

You'll be happy to know I have booked in with a DB coach, and I am seeing a L next week. Didn't want to see a L, but we still have shared bank accounts, assets, etc...and I think I now need clarity given that he is making moves to live interstate.