Thanks for the hugs, Gerda. I have to agree with everything you said. My trust in X as a parent is below zero and I hold my breath every time he has S2 in his care. I recall LH19 (or someone on the Newcomers board) admonishing me that I had no right to distrust X as a parent when I'd once trusted this man enough to father and care for my children. That, to me, just ignored a huge amount of context. I'd imagine that many of the custody disputes over there are between two people who genuinely love their kids and want the best for them. It's hard to explain the difference between those people and someone like X, when for all intents and purposes, the situation looks exactly the same, and a judge would see it as such.
I definitely feel stronger for it, kml. And you may be right about his avoidance. There's been 11 months of garbage from X since his first request for increased time-- stonewalling, threats, lies, accusations about my parenting, a kidnapping scare. But the end result is the same-- he has yet to agree to anything that would formally increase his parenting time. The ENTIRE time I've been saying "Yes, as long as XYZ". Where XYZ is things like "You provide your physical address" or "You provide emergency contact information" or "You confirm that S2 has his own bed" or "the arrangement is age-appropriate". The fact that my agreement is conditional, which it has to be for S2's safety and wellbeing, seems to trigger something pathological in X that makes him fight and prevaricate.
Even now that I've agreed to the Christmas arrangement that he wanted, he still hasn't responded to move forward with the increased share of time. He has showed up for his visits this week, but hasn't responded to emails to confirm the new parenting plan. There is nothing holding up the start of the new plan except his signed agreement. I do think that part of this evasion is an unwillingness to be held accountable with a legally enforceable plan. He has built evasive language into nearly every clause of the plan, ie. 'XYZ unless otherwise agreed'. Which is fine, I can handle that. He has always had a pathological aversion to taking responsibility in any area of his life. I'd guess it's because if he never commits to something, nobody can say he's ever failed at anything. Deep down, he's a very insecure person.
