Today is a down day for sure. Not only because the kids go to her today until tomorrow night at 7PM but also because I've been pondering things. I'm REALLY glad I got to take my daughter to the concert yesterday, and NO I didn't see or sit with the WAW at all.But even though I had fun with my daughter, it was still somewhat torturous, because thats the first time I've been to the show in a couple years ( they have it every year) and it was something we used to do as a couple, plus knowing she was somewhere in the crowd, but not even sitting with us.
I know on an intellectual level what I can accept as far whatever she's done, doing or planning to do with the EX, I know this because I can accept it and deal with it and let it go if it means in the end we are reconciled. Of that I am sure, in fact thats one of the few things I AM sure of right now.
But I started analyzing some of the other clues I heard the other day when we spoke face to face for four hours and some of the other things I've been told recently via text.
If you go back a couple posts/pages. There was a moment in our conversation when I expressed my frustration to her that she now had everything she wanted that I wasn't giving her. And she replied with " I don't have everything I want because I don't have you !" which I didn't acknowledge visibly but was a HUGE boost for me mentally. Then there was also the fact that she didn't recoil when she was starting to get upset and I took a chance and stroked her shoulder.
But then I remembered something else she said, earlier in the same conversation that I didnt pick up on immediately. At one point she promised me that she would never let our kids call him "Daddy". Well , why even say such a thing unless this is, in her mind , a long term R with him ? It just doesnt make sense and sounds so final.
She also mentioned NOT wanting me to " only have supervised visitation ". Which I have NO reason to think is even something I would need to worry about. Sounds like something fed to her by someone, maybe her attorney. Guess I'll have to look into what the guidelines/parameters are in this State for such a thing to try and figure out if this is a bluff of some kind.
I'm not worried about beating the allegations in the TRO, ( maybe I should be, not because anything actually happened, it didn't. But for how it can be spun ) but I have the audio CD from the County Dispatch Center of MY Non-emergency call to them the night before SHE made the allegations, where I predicted that's what she would do.
Even though she's already agreed to drop it, it sounds like she's considering holding it over my head as a cudgel to bear if I don't agree to what she wants as far as custody goes, which she has made clear is for them to live with HER, with me having unlimited visitation/staying at my place, which she said she would agree to in writing.
Then today we exchanged texts that were civil up till the very end. In the texts she cautioned me that ALOT of people were supposedly interested in seeing me arrested for even speaking to her, something that she NEVER mentioned the other day. I asked who these people were that all of a sudden were saying this, since we just talked on Fri and there was no mention of such a thing. I said I didn't want to talk about it now, but I DID want to hear more about this soon, since less then 48 hours later no such thing was even on the radar.
The fact is I KNOW Im not in a position to fight two battles at once. Im already stretched to the limit and borrowing money just to fight the TRO allegations. The firm I have are well known experts in dealing with this stuff and the owner of the firm sort of knows me and is being extremely generous with working with me on fee's, but he's made it clear although he knows how to handle custody/family law cases, its not his specialty or something he wants to get involved with outside the scope of the immediate issue's surrounding the TRO. So that means having to hire ANOTHER, different attorney for the custody issue, and thats just about impossible for me to swing right now and for at least the next few months.
Plus the fact that it is well known that judges are particularly reluctant to upset the " norm " when it comes to kids, this originally worked in my favor , for obvious reasons. But if I give in and let them stay with her, then when Im in a financial position to actually fight her, she will have had several months of them living with her which will mean an uphill fight.
My God this is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO difficult and confusing to figure out what to do.............................
I KNOW deeply what I WANT, but its a monumental struggle to figure out the different decisions to make to give me the best shot at making my wants a reality.
I KNOW that me having primary custody will toss a huge monkey wrench in her plans and there's at least a 50/50 chance it will force her to re evaluate her decision to separate.
I seriously doubt I would be so twisted up about this if it was ANYONE else but her EX.
ARRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I asked a couple pages back and never got an answer. Has ANYONE ever gone through a nasty custody battle and still wound up reconciling with each other later ????
