Thanks KD - after reading your post, i realized that maybe i have not painted the picture clearly enough.
i believe that has to do with my own emotions running so high, and my terribly long posts.
Your S needs to spend time with his dad. Your S needs to spend time without either parent... your S needs to be 10... if he's always with you, he may try to take on the role of surrogate H... that's not good...
s spends time with his dad: every other week for the whole week except when h is 1)working/meetings or seminars or 2 )is with ow
s spends quite a bit of time on playdates - both at my house and at his friends houses. i also make sure that he gets alone time with h's parents, whom he is very close to. they come and pick him up and take him out or to their place, especially on the week he's with me. they don't seem to ask h to do that, only me. he has recently started going there more frequently with s - for many months it seemed as if he was avoiding them too, but that seems to have changed recently.
as for surrogate h - i saw it started right in the first weeks after the S - and i talked to s and made it very clear that I was the one who was going to take care of him and me, not him, that it wasn't his job on any level. i haven't seen any signs of it at all. once he understood that, he reverted back to his usual ways and comes to me for comfort when he needs it. i do allow him to show me how to use some of the equipment - things like the mower or the compressor, which he's very proud to do, but it's clear that it's my role to take care of stuff and take care of myself and him.
the reason that i have taken on and agree to taking s as much as i can is the following:
in the first months after h moved out - i absolutely did not offer to take s even once when he was with h. but then i started noticing that since h had other stuff to do, in the evenings, he started to leave s all over the place - mostly at his son's friends houses, and was picking him up and giving him dinner as late as 9. he had legitimate reasons - board meetings, seminars at the uni, work stuff
so i told h that i would rather he offered s to me or his parents, so that s was in a more family situation rather than at friends. i said that i would like first priority over having s before he went to friends, as i would like to see him as much as i could.
in some ways i've watched h sort of use that to his advantage a few times, but for the most part, i've just had s when he's working and then he's come right away to get him. and most of that time has been a playmate.
i think the only thing that's difficult for me, s and the rest of the family is that to us is seems that h blows s off - runs hot and cold. when he's there with s he's very present with him - extremely so, but when he's not - it's like s doesn't exist for him, especially when he's with ow. but there's a lot of inconsistency - sometimes contact everyday, sometime none for days
so that's the picture of what's going on, i think.
maybe another post later to describe what i have been doing to try to change things
zig
me 46 H 38 M10yrs T 11 S10 BD ow 8/11 h filed 9/25/12
"if i could define enlightenment briefly, i would say it is the quiet acceptance of what is"
