Separation at 17.5 months

[adinva]

Adding more of our discussion on child visitation because I've been accused of shaming H, and that is true, a couple of times over the last 18 months I have said something intended to make him feel ashamed of himself. Whether he did or not I don't know. I've tried not to, as much as possible.

Child Visitation: I noted that the agreement said the husband shall have liberal and frequent visitation, to be no less than two (2) days per week. I said I just wanted to understand how he saw that in real terms, like, did he mean to take them every single weekend? I said I was glad to see he wanted them more than what I thought he'd ask for, two weekends a month. He said it was just what his L told him was standard, and it didn't matter to him whatever worked was ok, that sometimes the kids would be busy or have other plans and he just felt like he didn't control how much they'd be with him.

I said, it's a legal contract I'm signing that says I give them to you no less than 2 days a week. That is enforceable. I recognize that we'll want to be flexible and reasonable, but two days a week is pretty clear in here.

I said, I thought about it and think it could work really well if you take them Thursday through Sunday every two weeks. Then you have four straight days with them and still have half of the weekends on your own. But you'd need to get them to school and activities, and stuff, could you do that? H hadn't thought about it.

H said, well on some weekends they want to hang out with friends, and I said yes, so when you're parenting them, you'll drive them to their friends and be in charge of knowing where they are. It's part of being a parent to do that, so I think it's important that you're on for that sometimes like I am.

H said, I thought some people see their kids on like a Wednesday night. I wasn't thinking that the two days would be full days. I told him in my opinion two days per week doesn't mean you visit for a few minutes or a couple of hours to take them out to dinner and that's one of the days per week that you have them. I said, I'm not an expert in this either but I want both of us to really understand what we're signing before we get into it. I think the people with Wednesdays have an agreement that says something like "two weekends a month plus Wednesday evenings."

On the way back from Starbucks we went more into this. I said (for the second time in 18 months), "I'm prodding you on this because I'm honestly trying to get you to say you WANT something. You act like this is all up to boilerplate and schedules and what I say, and I'm trying to get you to say if you WANT to have a relationship with your kids or if you don't really. I mean it - if you are just overwhelmed with the responsibility and just don't like being a dad and really just want to visit them now and then say so, I won't tell them.

But if you WANT to be with them and parent them and drive them to school sometimes or whatever, I want to hear that. I don't want you to later say you have no relationship with your sons because I had them all the time or I got between you. Whatever you want I will get out of the way and do all I can to help them have the best relationship with you that you can.

I'm doing that for them. They need a dad in their life as much as possible. They need to know he wants them. They need to know he values them, if he does. I don't expect they're going to make this easy for him - they are teens and they're already acting mad at him. It's going to take work for all of us to convince them that he cares, if he does.

And if he doesn't, which he can either tell me or I can read from his actions, I hope to not set them up for disappointment by pushing H to take on more than he wants or is capable of.

We did talk about H's friend, who hasn't lived with his 15yo son since the boy was taken away by his mother at 8weeks. He has fought for custody and visitation and has his son, who lives out of state, for a few days at a time during school breaks and a couple of weeks in the summer.

He is Disney dad. He bought a boat to entertain his son, rents a beach house. Takes him paintballing, movies, ogles women with his son. He has never driven his son to school, has never worked on homework with him, has never sat with his son after a hard day or disappointment. When his son is with him and gets bratty, the dad gets mad and tells him he doesn't need to come at all if he's going to act like that.

I talked to H about this and asked H if he wants to come by and take his kids to dinner and drop them back off afterward, or have his kids live with him for a day. There's a difference. I'm not judging anyone else's custody agreements, I'm just trying to offer H more than what he thinks he's going to get.

By the way, we really don't talk about H's dad much, who left their home when H was 2 and his oldest brother was 14. H did visit his dad regularly but H says his dad was not a good person and so there are no correlations between their relationship and what's going to happen with our kids. In the last 20 years I've never met H's dad, they haven't spoken, and we only heard some news about him once at a family gathering about 15 years ago.

This guy, H's dad, is such a piece of work that he named his second first born son the same name, first middle and last, as his first first born son.