Well, had my meeting with STBX. Couldn't have gone worse...
Ended up with me saying I would not subject myself to this any more and getting up and leaving.
He insisted that I was not allowing him access to the children. Said i had to nominate particular days when I would allow him to have the children.
I responded by saying that at no time had i ever 'disallowed 'him to see them. That he had always been encouraged and allowed to see them whenever he wanted. I asked him to ring them and organise to see them whenever he liked.
He refused and said he had to insist that i nominate some days and make the kids go with him (he didn't say where). I had to tell them to go with him and make them do it.
I explained that they were not young children any more and that I didn't know what their plans were - it's school holidays and D17 is now 17years old. She goes out with her friends at various times and usually at short notice - that's how kids do things these days via phones and now that they can drive. Also, she is working in her holidays to make money and I'm not sure which days or when. (as it turned out when i picked her up from work tonight she said that she'd been rostered on every day of the holidays. I said that's too much, but she said she needed the money.) S14 on the other hand has made it crystal clear that he doesn't want to go anywhere with stbx.
Anyway, stbx was insistent and got more and more agitated. I said that i understood how awful it was not to see the kids all the time and how hard , but he told me I was being condescending.
I said I couldn't make a time for tomorrow as he requested, as I needed to check with the kids. I asked him to give me time to speak to them this evening and to get back to him with some times. He went ballistic.
He said he would take full custody of them. He said i had done nothing when S14 told him to F off at the supermarket on the weekend. He was outraged at this and said i had no control over S14. He also said I screamed at him so people could hear when i told him to leave us alone when S14 was so upset (My belief is that I did not speak loudly at all, although the check-out operator would have heard).
In the end, he called me a 'bunny boiler' - which is sort of ironic as I am the W, not the predatory mistress who texted him that she was "going to ruin his life".
That's when I said i wouldn't take any more and I got up to leave (although he strode out of the cafe before me).
As he walked back to the car, he called S14 to ask him to come out with him. S14 refused. STBX asked him to come out with him tomorrow and S14 refused again.
He didn't ring D17 but i think that he knows that he will get a frosty reception after refusing to give her her phone for 4 days recently.
I suppose i should have just said "OK, come over at 11am tomorrow morning and pick them up".
What would have happened was that D17 would have been at work when he arrived, and S14 would not have gone anywhere with him.
Then stbx would have gone ballistic again, like he did the last time he insisted on coming to get them at a time that they were not available (due to sport and work).
I don't think there's anything I can do. He just keeps making impossible demands that set me up: damned if i do and damned it I don't.
Can anyone suggest a way of dealing with him? Can he really believe that he can force two adolescents to go out with him against their will?
He is like an increasingly agitated mad man. Nothing I say can be agreed with - when we met, I said how awful the Boston situation was and asked if he had heard any news. He replied in a nasty and dismissive voice: if it were in a third-world country we wouldn't have even heard about it. Only 3 people were killed.
