[11dmnds]

Looking for advice, I've practiced full NC unless it has to do with questions about kiddos and then I wait and respond short answers later. I want the message to come across that I don't live my life sitting around the phone waiting for a text from him. This weekend he sent me a happy birthday message that was passive aggressive and I ignored it.

Two days ago he sent me a message asking for my address again (I've already given it twice) and stating that he paid $xxxx for the paperwork to be filed and he thinks I should pay for half to be fair (No thank you, I'll pay my OWN lawyer to review said paperwork, I'm not going to help him pay for the D he asked for). And he said he wanted to pick up kiddo the next day and keep for two days because he couldn't take him over the weekend.

I was a little irritated because he has rearranged the visitation schedule (that he asked for!) two out of the two visits so far for him but as my friend pointed out, at least he was making an effort to see younger kiddo (he has largely been MIA since he moved out, I can count on one hand the number of times he spent time with kiddo since we started this whole thing. He made several excuses of course.)

I didn't reply to any of this because the last time he did pick up kiddo for visitation he stated he would pick him up at this time on Saturday and drop him off at this time on Sunday (and was late picking up and dropping off, lovely) So I expected a follow up text with times stated. Heard nothing throughout the day yesterday . . .

Until I did text him back to confront him about a shared account he overdrafted ("What happened with this?") and asked what time he was picking up younger kiddo. I got a sketchy answer back about the account, no mention of pickup, and snapped at about the lack of bidirectional communication (meaning, he is pissed that I ignore him when he texts me) I still assumed he was coming to get kiddo.

As yesterday was a work day, I expected a pickup in the evening. Younger kiddo and I packed a bag, set it by the door, and waited. And waited. And I took kiddo to the pool to distract him and I could see him checking each vehicle as it drove by to see if it was his dad. Oldest kiddo (who is sleeping at the house for now because he didn't want to move his stuff to my apartment with college around the corner, he will come over during the day and hang out but chooses to sleep in his room at the house) said H came home after work and was at the house when he (oldest) left to come see us.

Finally, I got a text that said (keep in mind I asked him earlier during the day what time he was coming to get kiddo with no response) that he wanted to get kiddo that morning and that was the reason why he texted me the day before and he would take the blame for not being more clear on that. (I didn't respond)

I knew he was lying and I thought to myself "Well if you are sitting at the house why don't you come pick him up now?" and then I realized the reason why was because H was heading to GF house instead. Sure enough, when oldest kiddo got back to the house that night, he said H was gone. (Side note, oldest kiddo is legally an adult now, but he spends most nights alone at the house because H isn't there. H is at GF house. It's not illegal that he is leaving oldest kiddo alone there all the time but it is in poor taste in my opinion. Oldest kiddo comes almost everyday and hangs out at the apartment and raids the fridge. H doesn't seem to have any interest in either of his kids anymore.)

Younger Kiddo was upset when it got dark, he said "Wow, Dad hasn't come by yet" and I replied "I'm not sure he is going to come, buddy" and he said "So we packed for nothing!" I went and picked up stuff to make banana splits to try to cheer him up.

My friend said I should say something to H about him bailing on kiddo. I was worried that if I said something last night that H would feel guilted into picking up kiddo and then be mean or snappy to him. I've heard him on Facetime snapping at kiddo for calling him while he was busy doing whatever and Kiddo just wanted to play a video game with him online. I can't protect my kids from who H has turned out to be and I also can't keep them from getting hurt from his actions but I also don't want to try to force him to spend time with them if he has no interest in doing so. I'll be discussing this this my IC as well and have almost wrapped up setting up the child therapist for younger kiddo.

So my two issues are, the lack of respect H has for my schedule by rearranging the visitation to suit his schedule (or being late for pickup and drop off) and the dilemma of holding his feet to the fire to actually show up for visitation and risk him taking it out on kiddo.

Anyone had a similar experience? At this point all I have done is annotated the times and lengths of visitation (and no shows) in case my lawyer needs it. Funny thing is he has childhood trauma from his dad bailing on him, he remembered sitting for hours waiting for dad to show and dad never came. Crazy that he doesn't see he is completing the cycle with his child now. That is where the child therapist is going to come in for my kiddo. And my role in being the stable parent who wants to spend time with both kiddos.

Anyone have any thoughts?

**One last bit, in recent sessions with IC, I finally realized that I had been controlling in the marriage because I was trying to make him into what I viewed as a better/worthy person. I was pushing back at the ways he treated me with no respect and was always nagging about how he should treat this person or that person and would fuss if he made bad choices. When we split up I kept saying to my IC how I was so surprised at what a selfish awful person he turned into and she finally got through to me that he has always been this selfish awful person and I was trying to control him to make him into what I viewed was a good person who did the right thing and treated people the right way.

Now that I have released that control I'm seeing the full view of the person he truly is and has always been. I also realized how much energy I invested in trying to have that life of the "right" person for me and the "right" marriage and that our core values don't line up. It's very freeing to release the reins and stop fighting against that.

As I said before, divorce busting was the path for me to take to fix myself rather than fix the marriage. I didn't even know I was unhappy until I got through to the other side and then I realized how simple happiness is. I still have more work to do to get him completely out of my head, I hope to eventually get to the point where he doesn't register strong emotion with me, but wow, there are a lot of days where he doesn't even exist in my head and it's not until I get a text message from him that I'm reminded that I have a crappy ex. Funny thing about those texts that I ignore, even though he is in deep with his GF I feel like he is testing to see how quickly I'll jump at a reply. Not sure if he is temp checking to see if I'm still hanging around hoping he will come home. I think its about his ego more than anything else, not that he actually wants be but he wants to be wanted by me. Sorry bud, that ship sailed.

I thought recently, if he ever did the work to try to come back to me could I take him back? I don't have faith that he can "fix" himself to magically have respect for me and value the things I bring to the table. But now with how he has hurt both kiddos I don't think I could ever truly forgive him. Screw me over, hurt me, treat me badly, but never my children. HIS children. I don't think I could ever scrape together enough respect for him after this for how low he has fallen in my eyes as a father.