Maybell VI

[Maybell]

Meghan, I think my thread is about to lock so I'll answer you here.

I've been quite clear with my mother about what, how, and why I'm trying to fix my marriage. But I've also been really hurt and emotional and all she sees is the hurt. She thinks in terms of black and white so if someone does a bad thing they are a bad person. She has burnt a lot of bridges that way and until this past January I knew to not ask her advice, because it is invariably "cut them off." She is a conflict avoider par excellence. Also, she takes EVERYTHING really personally. (One of my other SILs once said she'd rather go shooting with the guys than shopping with the ladies and my mother locked herself in the closet to sob and I had to calm her down and coax her out.)

Sometimes, though, you just want your mom and when things got really grim I turned to her. Big mistake.

So I need to reboot for this long-haul stage of our separation and part of that will be dramatically reducing the amount I lean on my mother.

Also, I'm looking for inputs here, especially from dads...

I've seen that a lot of you have arrangements that the absent parent at least comes by to tuck the kids in from time to time during midweek. My H doesn't do that. Our agreement is that he has the kids every other weekend and as he's able during the week every week. He hasn't yet taken them midweek at all. There was talk of the five of us having dinner last Thursday before I brought them down here but he had to go out of town so it didn't happen. He doesn't call or text them every day either, and S8 especially gets upset by this. How much is reasonable to expect him to participate with the kids? I'm trying to avoid needling him -- my two older kids have the means to chase him down on their own but only D11 does very much; S8 wants more and so he rarely does. He doesn't want to chat on the phone, he wants to be with his dad. S6 does even less.

Sometimes I think H doesn't realize how important he is to us. Sometimes I think he does but that we don't refresh him so he avoids. I don't know what to do to get my kids' need for their dad met while balancing everything else we're trying to accomplish.

What if I sent him a text this morning saying "Kids were disappointed not to hear from you yesterday." ?? I feel it's his responsibility to maintain his relationship with them, not theirs to pursue it or mine to remind him. But I don't want my kids hurting.