Affair discovered 3

[STH17]

Last week butted heads with W over who would be taking on the burden of driving son back and forth interstate now that son has started 4K. I dropped off son on his first day (Oct. 1) and W came along in my car to show me where to go for the dropoff. I have told her I can drop off son on Mondays at school if she drops him off at my house Friday afternoon/evening. She pushed back on that, saying she isn't going to drive through rush hour traffic anymore to get son to me. She told me I could drive all the way to pick up son.

Since I thought it clear W was not going to give me what I wanted, I asked my mom for help with the driving. I can't take 6 to 8 hours out of my week every week to do all that driving myself. My mom agreed to drive son to me twice a month on Fridays. I think I can do the Friday drive once a month and spend a weekend at my parents' with son. I have two priorities, first is spending as much time with son as I can, which to me means not giving up Friday nights or Monday mornings, and second is getting time to work on my master's project.

My IC advised me to tell W that having time with son is important to me, and focus on that in negotiating rather than me rigidly setting down times I expect to have son delivered to me. I was all ready to discuss with W last Friday immediately after my IC appt, but W texted saying she didn't feel comfortable negotiating with me on the phone, and she would send me a proposal in a few days. That was 5 days ago and no mention of it since. We both are typically bad at following through on those kinds of commitments, and I doubt W even saw it as a real commitment to send me anything. So I think it falls upon me to make the next move still. I committed to my men's group to send W an email tonight to get the ball rolling, but now I'm writing this post instead after not knowing what to say in my email to W.

Recommendations welcome. I have an idea of what I think I'd settle for, which is for W to drive son to me one Friday a month, with me taking him to school every Monday and splitting up the other Friday pickups between my mom and myself. I don't want to lead negotiations with that and have to settle for less, which is why I was waiting for W's proposal, but I could be waiting for something that never comes. We haven't talked about this weekend yet, but I made plans to babysit for my sister so I'd likely drive down to get son this week.