H hates my mother as much as I do and he wouldn't want her mothering him or our dd's. Apart from all the issues to do with her which I have described, we can't stand her parenting style which previously she always tried to force on our dd's or force us to bring them up the way she wanted and then when we put our foot down and said no, she would try to force us to parent her way via CPS.
He knows he doesn't need to forgive her to get my forgiveness. He is aware that forgiving her is likely to make me angry - it's why it took him so long to tell me they have had phone contact.
I think that his reasoning is that he is trying to fix everything that is wrong in his life, i.e, he's making a big effort to fix our M and repair the damage done to the kids in the custody battle, and now he figures he can 'fix' his R with her as grandmother of his children.
He admits, though, that my R with her is beyond repair and that he doesn't want a personal R with her, he's doing it 'for the kids' (I think she would treat the kids the same as she treated me, but that's beside the point to him).
Regarding the disagreement, I think there were faults on both sides now I look at it. He responded to my letter in a really negative way, 'I can't see what you're getting so stressed about' and when I said these are my feelings why I don't want this, he didn't discuss it at all but just said 'that's not going to happen' to everything I said which made me feel as if he wasn't listening to me or didn't care what I thought.
I knew from the outset he would not change his mind as he doesn't do parental decisions with me and never has - I have always felt they are 'his' rather than 'ours', like I am a giving birth machine and he just takes over afterwards.
I just wanted to say how I felt because I don't want to turn into one of those W's who stays silent and does everything he says to keep the peace and then 30 years later, flips and walks out with MLC. I want an open and honest R even if he does control all the child rearing decisions.
I told him this and he said my opinions do matter and that's when I went wrong because I asked him how they matter and I should have just shutup. That's when he launched into the 'OMG, it's always like this' remark.
But I honestly don't think I'll do another letter as he has never wanted me to do any active parenting of our kids, just general stuff like playing, washing, feeding etc and maintenance of them but not anything that requires real responsibility or decision making.
I think I should just try to accept that I will never have the mother role I want if I want my M to work.
