Newby here, desperate for some advice

[JRuss]

JRuss,

Is your fear that you won't have custody of your children? Or maybe a better way to ask that is, what is it that's keeping you in a state of perpetual fear?

No, I think my wife would absolutely let me have 50% custody. I think one of the thing's she's running from is having had too much of her identity get enmeshed with child-rearing and domesticity, so I think she fantasizes about having less to do on that front. And me having to go it alone when it's "my week" would, in her eyes, show me all that she had to go through when I was just working, trying to help, not really understanding my role, etc.

My fear really stems from missing that 50% of the time with my kids. I know well meaning people have said that 50% that's really great and focused can be better than 100% where the parents aren't happy, and I guess I can see it on one level, but it's the little things, like watching my daugher give her mother a hug, or the three of them singing silly songs -- I just really am scared about losing the times where all four of us are together. Those moments, hearing about the little things, like the little one has a splinter and watching how he psyches himself up not to be scared of the tweezers.

Then I'm just really worried about how the two of them will handle a divorce if it comes to that. Life is hard in the best of circumstances. Adolescences is brutal for everyone, let alone when you have to throw in a divorce scenario. I know people say kids are resilient, and they'll adapt and, eventually thrive. But some don't, and the data really seem to say that, actuarily speaking, the best results,assuming there's no abuse, is for marriages to limp along, even if they aren't happy. My D12 is extremely sensitive and seems to have inherited my anxiety reflex-- I have no faith this won't be a disaster for her, even if we have the loving, peaceful divorce my wife seems to think would be possible.

Probably more than you needed, but that's it, in a nutshell.