Well, I’m back from the soccer tournament. Had a lot of fun even though D18’s injury limited her to about 20 minutes of playing time in the first game before her injury worsened. It was still a lot of fun though. Went on an awesome solo hike one morning and the scenery was amazing. It was pretty busy with soccer stuff most of the time, but I did get go buy some clothes, go to a lame bar, and socialize a lot. I’m naturally fairly anti-social but I’ve noticed that the actions I have been taking for months have now become habit and I now feel like one of the more social people in many of the groups I’m in.
There were only 5 adults that stayed at the same hotel as the team (coach, me, W and 2 chaperones), so I spent most of the down time having drinks with them. W mostly stayed away, which was nice. I’m good friends with the coach too, so it was nice hanging out with him. As planned, I chose to embrace the awkwardness between W and I, and one of the chaperones definitely made things awkward at times. She asked a lot of innocent questions that led to some weird moments. W got to explain how we met each other and then got to respond to how awesome it is that we’ve been together since high school. Another moment was grabbing drinks at a restaurant and the bartender gave me a combined bill for me and the chaperone. He apologized and said something about how it seemed like we were a couple. It was tough toeing the line between having good conversation and trying not to cause any issues, but it seemed like I found the right balance.
So on to the current concerns. The day before we left, W came home crying after talking to her cousin, who is her closest family member, but lives a few hours away. I was taking a shower and W came into the bathroom demanding we talk. Apparently D18 spilled most of the beans about our sitch to W’s cousin’s daughter (Sorry if this gets confusing). The daughter told her mom and her mom called W to talk about it. W blamed me saying stuff in front of the kids (my truth darts the other day), for her whole family now knowing what’s going on. (I don’t think her whole family knows. They barely talk to W’s cousin). She also said that the stuff with OM was “very recent”, like that matters. She only considers a PA to be cheating apparently. Anyway, a few more truth darts came out. Not nearly as dramatic as last time, but she left the bathroom.
Later W said she is taking D5 with her to stay at her friend’s house, where she stayed for exactly 1 day months ago. I told her she isn’t taking D5 and that we’d discuss it at an appropriate time. She asked if D18 wanted to go stay there also, which she declined.
On Sunday, I got a text from W while she was in her hotel room saying “I’m not leaving the house until I have a legal parenting plan in place. If you have any suggestions on what you would like, please let me know and we can see if we can agree to get me out of the house and moving forward.” I responded “This is a big decision that I don’t want to take lightly. We can figure out the specifics when we get back.”
She responded with another red flag text about not feeling safe in the house because I yelled at her with the kids there. I did not respond. Obviously I’ll take the same precautions about her text as last time she did this, which was the only other time I’ve raised my voice at all in 8 freaking months. W also said she won’t be paying bills when she leaves. I’ve got a list of things to talk to the L about this week. I have IC tomorrow also. But I am planning on taking charge with this portion. I understand that whatever parenting plan is set up now is likely to be the plan for the future as well, so I want to make sure I get it right.
Last thing is that W is having D18 go to IC with her tonight. D18 doesn’t really want to go. I don’t want to get too mixed into their relationship and D18 knows and understands this. I did warn D18 that W likely is bringing her there with an agenda in mind. I told her that if it’s to keep their relationship from becoming even more strained, that’s fine. That’s D18’s reasoning for going. That was also her reason for spilling everything to her cousin – she wants her mom back. But I said if she is made to feel guilty, made to feel like her opinions are not valid because she’s too young or doesn’t really understand what’s going on or anything like that, she does not have to be there. I told her to express her feelings truthfully and not to feel ashamed of how she feels, regardless of what those feelings are.
We’ll see how it goes. It was nice to get a break from the chaos and I was happy that I barely noticed that W was there. The separate rooms and cars were absolutely necessary so thank you to all who reinforced that idea when I was wavering.
