Life After Divorce Support Group

You are absolutely right your children do not need to be exposed to the ex sleeping with the girl friend. Do you have a court order for the custody arrangement and was this addressed? From your post it sounds as if the children are sleeping in the same same room with them? Your ex should have better sense than to do this to the children. I would try and discuss with him and the effect this has on he children and try to stay focused on the children's needs. If his doesn't work you may have to revisit the custody arrangements.

I understand how this feels although my daughter is older my ex brings the girl friend along on the rare occasions he does see her. But I am very close with her and we talk about it and she is doing ok, but again she is older.

You also state you haven't worked in 7 years sure you have you maintained your home and raised your kids. Perhaps you have some marketable skills that you haven't really thought about. Why don't you write a list or call an employment agency and they will give you a test to see what skills you have. If you find out that you truly need to get skills contact your community college to see what they have to offer; there is grant money out there to pay for classes for single Mom's.

You are going through some serious life change and you will feel lonely, sad, alone at times which is normal just try not to linger their too long. I hope all goes well for you.

My ex is a pilot and when he is at work, he is out of state, so the custody arrangement right now is that he has them when he is in town. Well when we made that agreement he was only home 12 days a month, and rarely on weekends. He at that time said he will have to start working more in order to afford a place of his own, and pay me child support and allimony. Well he has worked his schedule for most of the summer and fall so that he has all weekends off and 15 days off a month. I am not happy with this, especially since he is spending the time with his girlfriend rather than our boys.

I have discussed with him how this is affecting the boys. Kept the focus on the boys, and their feelings, left my feelings on the thing out except to say that it is totally inappropriate to have her in his bed with the boys (and her girls) just feet away. I don't care if they were camping in a trailer. There were other options. Now that he has moved into his house for the last month and has no one to answer to, when he is in town, she sleeps over. Since I made a big deal about her not sleeping in his bed, he supposedly has the boys sleep with him in his bed and his girlfriend sleeps on the air mattress in one of the boys rooms. The boys don't have their own beds yet at his house.

I get the pleasure of hearing how much fun this woman and her kids are from the boys. I smile, and tell them how wonderful that is that they are having fun with her and her daughters, meanwhile, it tears my heart out for her to be playing Mommy to my boys!

Top it off, they are drinking while the boys are there. This was another thing that He is not supposed to be doing. He has a drinking problem and agreed not to drink while the boys were with him. I have smelled beer on him several times since, and yet he swears he isn't drinking.

The divorce was final Sept. 4th, he's been seeing her since June, that I can prove. Hurts to know that for all he said he loved me, wanted to save our marriage, he could replace me so quickly.

For goodness sakes, I am the one that wanted the divorce, I filed and yet I am still not truly ready to date yet. I have gone out on a few dates, but it still feels like I am cheating on my ex and all I did was go out to coffee once and out to dinner another time. I don't know how he could move on, let someone else touch him, etc!

Your divorce is new and it doesn't matter who wanted the divorce it still hurts that you had to do this. You are healing and you probably are not ready to date yet. I felt the same way when I went out on a few dates so I backed off and took some time to heal so I could move on with no guilt and other baggage we sometimes carry.

About your kids he has a girl friend and you have to realize that this what he has decide to do however you do not have to allow things to occur that are not in the best interests of the children. This includes behaving inappropriately in their presence and if the drinking poses a problem for him to behave as a responsible parent while the children are in his care then as a parent you will need to step in to make sure your children are in a safe environment.
Unfortunately, in these type of situations we have to endure situations because of the children.

In time you will learn to not allow some of the stuff that is going on not to have much of an impact on you as you will be busy doing the things that you like as you move on.

Becky,

I so know how you are felling. My ex just left me three weeks ago, but he has been seeing another woman for 2 months. He is an OTR truck driver and so is his new girlfriend who is now his team driver. He just took my middle son in his truck for two weeks with this other woman and I am devastated and missing my son who is now traveling all over the US. This is very new to me also and we haven't even started with custody, visitation, child support or even the divorce yet. I need to get started before he does. Things are in my favor as the only residence he has is a PO box that belongs to his girlfriend's mom. Hang in there..I know that things will get better for both of us.

WTF???
Seriously, after reading your post I thought my stbx was posting a prank on me after somehow finding this site. Your life mirrors mine to a degree that is creepy.

I am/was a stay-at-home father to two boys aged 5 and 7. My stbx used to sleep in the camper and I swear that her boyfriend was in there on more than one occasion. The boys knew of him before I ever did. They spoke of him on the 4th of July and I found out about him on August 17th.
I was the one trying to save this marriage though. My wife was the one seeing someone else.
Yet I have pointed out - many times mind you - that she is putting her selfish wants/needs/desires before her own childrens and I am left having to pick up the pieces. They need her to pay more attention to her and when they bring it up she accuses me of brainwashing them into hating her. She is always texting thiis guy in front of the boys. To the point where they make comments to her to pay attention to them. Nothing to do with me. I'm not there to see it.
I miss the "relationship" and family as well. And not having the boys with me everyday is a pain I don't think I will ever get over. They are my life, my world, and my reason.
And I too am in need of a job. Yet, as you pointed out, there aren't any out there. Especially for someone like me who hasn't worked in nearly 8 years.
And I too feel as though I am not doing a good job in protecting or providing for my sons.

I brought them to a local food pantry recently to stock our cupboards. They met some other kids there and had a cool time helping to pick out items for the house. When my stbx found out about it she had a hissy fit. Said that this was part of the brainwashing and that I did not need to go to a food pantry. She even told the boys I took them there so they would feel guilty and sorry for me and turn against her because she was the one who made Daddy poor.
I only brought them there because they are pen on Tuesdays and Thursdays at certain times of the day. The boys were with me and we needed food. Nothing else to it.

This has got to be one of the hardest things about getting divorced. It's a tough pill to swallow, but you somehow have to come to terms in your own mind that you have no control over what your ex does. Look at it this way, you have to be willing to give an ex all the rope he needs to hang himself. And from the sound of it, he will. Trust me.

I have two ex's. And one was like yours, controlling and abusive. One thing you can count on... the more you fuss and gripe over what your ex does, the more fuel you'll add to the fire. He'll just fight harder to prove that he is in control. If you don't like something he's doing, he will make it his mission to do that thing just as big and in-your-face as possible.

I heard some advice early on after my first divorce, when my kids were still little. Just make sure YOU always act with honor. Don't ever say anything against your ex in front of your kids. Don't ever disrespect him, or be spiteful, etc. Your kids will watch. They will see who has their best interest at heart and who puts them first. At 5 and 7, it may take a while... but you'll see. It will pay off for you in the end.

I keep my feelings about what he does, and who he does it with to myself. He sees no emotion from me other than what is best for the boys.

His girlfriend came to his house while I was dropping off the boys to him. I smiled sweetly at her, said a polite hello. Hugged and kissed my boys and said goodbye to her, told her to have a good time. All the while with a smile and a nice tone of voice. Then I left.

He has no idea how much this bothers me. I did tell him it was inappropriate to have her spend the night, just days after we signed the divorce papers and we told the boys we were no longer married. I told him at that point that he had gone back on the agreement we had to keep our dating life separate from the boys until our relationship got serious. I told him how the boys cried to me about him not spending time with them, and they didn't think he cared about them anymore. But everything I said, I said conserning the boys.

All arguments and discussions take place away from the children so that they are not brought into this. I am doing just what my Dad did, never speak bad about the other parent, no matter my feelings. Always re-inforce that their Daddy loves them.

When he tries to pull power plays and treatens court, I call his bluff, and that is just what it turns out to be. I am getting stronger, and more able to stand up to him in a healthy way. He can not manipulate me as much, and I don't stick around for the verbal abuse. He has to deal with his own crap, not me. He can't handle not having control over me, too bad, his problem not mine.

I am doing the counseling, both individual abuse counseling as well as group abuse counseling. I am doing the work I need to do to not repeat the same relationship over again.

The stronger I get, the madder he gets.

Oh and nothing makes him madder than when I offer to watch the boys so he can go out with his girlfriend. Makes him mad, not sure why. I would think he would be happy. He is out of state when he works so when he is in town, he has the boys. I would think he would be happy to have some alone time with her.

I am acting with honor, especially where my kids are conserned. They don't see or hear any of what is going on from my end. I keep everything as much the same as I can. I am the stable parent, and I hope in the end they will see that. He is playing super Daddy and taking them to the park, to the water park, Chuck-E-Cheese's, etc and yet they are still craving his attention. Someday they will see his selfishness on their own, and make their own decisions about him. I doubt that any of this will make them love him any less, but at least they will some day understand why Mommy and Daddy aren't together anymore.

I hope he will not continue to feed them the crap about us not being a family anymore. That realy made the boys upset! They of course didn't say anything to him, but once they were with me, they were crying and just so upset! I reassured them that we would always be a family, we just live in two different houses. He told them this BEFORE we told them that we were divorced!

Anyway, things are going up and down. Now he won't let me take the boys to his family holidays when he is out of state. So they can't go to them. They should be with a parent, and I still have a good relationship with his family, and have been invited, but now dis-invited because he threw a fit and won't allow me to attend with the boys.

Said he was going to take me to court, force me to leave the boys on holidays with his family. I called his bluff and asked my lawyer about it, found out he doesn't have a leg to stand on. Soooo I am hoping he will get over his little fit and allow me to attend with the boys at his family holidays so the boys can be there. (we are just talking Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter)

He doesn't want me to have anything to do with his family. He wants me out of his life. He wants to say I can't even have contact wih his family. Well they are contacting me! They want to continue to have contact with me!

Now my 5 yr old's birthday is coming up and I have been invited by his family to come to his family's birthday party for my son, and a nice's combo birthday. My ex won't allow me to come.

Not sure if I should push the matter and go or just not go.

I don't want to make things harder for my son, but I don't want to not go and have my son be upset I am not there too. Trying to figure out what is going to be best for my son.