A few updates...parenting continues to be a challenge with STBX. I do feel a little sheepish as I had been complaining about his lack of responses to general emails - and I discovered that my email provider had suddenly started diverting them to junk mail. Thankfully, none of them required responses on my part.
1. D7 complained that her dad's house is spooky. Apparently there is a lot of skull decor around the house and she is afraid of it. I told her she should let him know that it bothers her - and then sent him a quick note to let him know she wanted to discuss it with him. Apparently he just told her she really wasn't afraid of it and she is still bothered by it.
2. As I mentioned on Mozza's therad, last week was Open House at D7's school. We had previously arranged to meet there (he was going to return D3 and keep D7 for the night). The minute he saw me, he bailed and then sent me a text asking me to text him when I was done so he could leave with D7, because he had already seen all of her projects when he volunteers there on Fridays.
3. STBX has Wed, Thurs and Friday off. During the summer he will keep the girls on those days. I will be taking every Monday off to help with child care and my parents are going to pitch in on Tuesdays. I asked him if he wanted to use any vacation time to cover some of the Tuesdays or to take a full week with the girls and he said he didn't have any vacation time available. At BD - he wrote me a lengthy email extolling how he wanted to be an active dad and he had a lot of vacation time to use to "help" me out. Now it has all magically evaporated (I went back and checked - since BD he has taken 5 total days of PTO and in addition to the amount he had banked at BD he gets 3 weeks a year). Two guesses about who he spent it with.
What can I say? I find all of this discouraging. In addition, the night of the Open House, I had just finished reading a book about the long term effects of divorce on kids (Wallerstein) and, good gravy, it was depressing. I realize that not everything in it applied to our situation and that there's a lot I can do to make things better for my daughters, but still, it really put my head in a sad place.
Anyway - I was reflecting about everything that has happened since BD and I thought I would share this since I see a common theme on a lot of threads right now is fear that the divorce will happen too soon. After BD, I did everything I could to slow things down, got STBX to agree to a waiting period, GAL'd like a mad woman, read all the books, hired a DB coach and followed all of the advice. And then he broke our agreement, filed for divorce anyway and revealed he had been living with OW, despite assurances. The part about his living situation was a deal breaker for me. I "dropped the rope" (or my definition of it) at that moment and aggressively helped with the divorce. And you know, believe it or not, that has actually been the one thing that helped make some positive changes. Before, I felt like he was actively pushing against me. Now I've given him nothing to resist and I think it's a whole lot harder to see me as the enemy.
Obviously we've got miles to go. The D will be final soon and maybe then he will relax even further. Who knows? While I worry tremendously about my children, I've never worried that I personally will be ok. I've known that eventually I will be better than fine. I can't say the same with full confidence about my kids, but then, what parent can?
