Gonna be different now, (butterfly in hurricane).

[adinva]

A mother shouldn't keep a child from its father unless there's neglect or abuse involved...and in this W's perception there is indeed. This father didn't know how to care for the child's basic necessities of life, and had never expressed an interest in learning until browbeaten by complete strangers in an online forum. This mother wasn't using the child as a weapon, but this father was...using the child to try to manipulate his wife into coming back to him.

You begrudge your wife a fair portion of your income and try to avoid paying it because she's living with her parents and using them for childcare. You act like your child support payment is income for her when it's actually CHILD SUPPORT, for the child. You act like she and your child together should subsist on much less than what you subsist on because you have a full time job as an engineer. You know, the mother's quality of life is the child's quality of life. And you act like the back amounts that you're paying now, which is because the court thinks you should have paid it before, is part of a windfall to her. The extent to which you paint yourself as a victim - and exaggerate to try to make your case stronger - is astounding.

Financially it hurts to separate a family into two separate parents. But the one-sided way you approach the issues, where it's all about you and your money and your house and your good job, and how undeserving she is because she's just a student and doesn't have a home of her own to live in, just is so off-putting. You'll negotiate back and forth, I would hope, until you wind up somewhere in the middle of what each of you wants. But acting like you're being taken to the cleaners, over back-payments and child support, does not make you look good.

It also really is troublesome, and it's not the first time, that you rail and complain about something and then try to claim the exact opposite is your real position. You are so angry at her, so you want to write her a letter to show you're not angry. That is disingenuous. You fault yourself for having forgiven her so easily, but you continue to blame and malign her. That's lying too. You want to appear a certain way, but the words will be hollow until your thoughts and deeds back them up (and then the words won't be necessary).

I think individual counseling might be a great way to work through your anger in a healthy way, get honest feedback on when you're BS'ing yourself, and develop some real empathy for the woman you believe you love. You've been given a tough hand and it's a sign of strength to get help coping. You've got a huge opportunity for personal growth ahead, if you stop working at winning your wife back and work on healing yourself instead.