I don't feel like there is any co-parenting happening. H is MIA except when he calls the kids or when he has them for the weekend. He (has always) delegated all decision-making and discipline to me.
See my blithering post on why this might be. Make it possible for him to co-parent with you. Offer him information. Give him the chance to do the right thing. And if he does it, praise it. I can tell you from where I sit, that co-parenting IS an issue for him.
If he chooses not to follow through when you've made it comfortable, then you'll know he's just a plain jerk. But you're going to have to work at it awhile before it becomes a consistency.
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t is so hard to figure out how to navigate this whole idea of letting go when my housing situation depends on him. So long as we keep everything joint and he keeps paying for mortgage and upkeep I can stay in the house. But at some point we're going to have to figure out where this is going so I can find a new home in the small area that I'm trying to stay in (for myself as well as the kids). That sort of keeps me stuck, although frankly if we end up selling the house and I get my own place it won't be any more pain than what I've gone through. I just want to know how to plan for those sorts of things. If we do sell the house, though, it will be a hurdle for him to jump if he ever wants to reconcile.
Maybell, do you guys have a separation agreement? I don't mean anything legal or filing.
Shortly after my XH moved out, I told him that we needed to meet with a mediator who could help us navigate the murky waters of financing 2 households while our R was in limbo. It helped A LOT. In fact, we used that groundwork as the basis for our D once it was filed. But it gave us both rules of engagement. In the early days, we followed it to a T. Later on, we did what worked for the family.
Let the mediator help you come to some sort of understanding. That's in fact the document we created: a memorandum of understanding.
Once we knew what to expect, it let him go off in La-La land and let me work on the stuff I could work on without that worry sitting right in the middle. That's like waiting for the shoe to drop, right?
"There are only 2 ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
