I'm still going to sit on it for a day - just to ensure I can remain calm and reasonable.
In some ways I'm pretty lucky. I'm on excellent terms with my In-Laws and to the best of my knowledge he hasn't made any attempt to throw me under the bus with them. The fact that he moved in directly with his girlfriend right away would kind of give the lie to any explanation anyway.
My MIL is actually coming out next week for D6's birthday (gotta get used to typing "D7" soon). She's staying with me the entire time. I was going to ask STBX to pick her up to the airport so that I wouldn't have to take time off from work. I guess it says something that I felt like I had to run it by her first. She said ok and that she would like to see him for a few minutes.
And as for friends - most of our mutual friends are in Iowa - and I have no idea if he has reached out to them. He shut down his Facebook account the day of BD, which was previously his primary method of communication.
So really - in terms of how he represents things - the only people at issue are the most important ones - our daughters. I'm ok with him being vague. He could even say that Mom and Dad couldn't get along. I'd be fine with that. There was more to the conversation he had with D6 that I didn't originally post, because she was a little more vague about it. He apparently said something about how he grew up as a simple cowboy (yeah- his grandparents had a farm - but he's from upstate New York, for pete's sake), and it sounds like there was an implication that I am some sort of materialistic city slicker and that was part of the problem, too. I'm not going to bring that part of it up with him - because I'm not as sure about what was said - but it does give me a little bit of a clue about where his head is at.
BTW - this fabulous paradise in Iowa that he was so fond of? It was a small 1950's ranch house on a beautiful acreage that was way too much work for us to maintain while we both worked full time. It really degenerated during the years we lived there. And it was cold. We spent thousands of dollars to heat it every year and it was still perpetually chilly. When we bought it, STBX talked a big game about all the work he was going to do to make it more comfortable - but it turned out he didn't really have the skills or the motivation. Yeah- I wanted to live in a bigger, better insulated house with a modern kitchen, some closet space, and a yard we could take care of. Guilty.
I've posted a lot about this one little issue. The truth is that STBX and I speak very, very rarely right now - so, since I am initiating an actual conversation - I guess I'm giving it a lot of thought.
