jaygarren1
New member
Tl;dr ex and wife fight constantly(screaming and throwing things) and bad mouth me and his mother which functioned as mommy 2 for the first 6 yrs of her life. Daughter now has no desire to visit with her father and he makes no attempts to establish/fix their relationship. Not sure if I should keep making her visit or let her make the decision to have less visitation with him.
So my ex and I split 8 years ago when our daughter was 1. It wasn’t an amicable split but we shared custody 50/50 originally (he was an incredibly uninvolved parent but more custody means less child support so that’s what he asked for). Although our custody split was 50/50, I was mainly co-parenting with his mother. I left the condo and all of our daughters things with him, but he’s not the type that can live alone. Since the woman he left me for didn’t want to move in with him, he moved in with his mother. His mom is great and took care of said daughter during his custody time while he went out constantly. His mom and I coordinated doctors appointments, daycare, etc and things worked well that way for about 3 years. Needless to say she and my daughter are very close.
After about 3 years I met someone and started dating. For some unknown reason that made my ex extremely jealous to the point it culminated in a DV restraining order and me moving 60mi away since he was constantly defying the order and the police thought I was trying to use it as custody ploy. We agreed to keep 50/50 custody until she began school, after which he’d change to every other weekend, with summers and alternating breaks which worked into to still be 40/60. I know what it’s like growing up with a dad you rarely see so I wanted to keep them in contact as much as possible. He was a shitty partner but always good to her.
Three years ago all of his friends started getting married, having kids and buying houses. He’s a keeping up with the jones type so met a woman, got engaged after 6 months. At that point his mom had been doing most of the parenting for him but he has to put on a good show for the new woman and suddenly started claiming his mother was overstepping her role as grandmother, she’s not the parent yadda yadda. He ended up moving in with the fiancé and cutting his mother out of his and our daughters life. Daughter was 6 at the time and did not take well to this. She didn’t mind the move but not seeing her Grammy and having her dad bad mouth her all the time took it’s tole. On top of that my ex and the fiancé bicker constantly and it stresses our daughter out. My house is relatively drama free with the normal sane rules of not yelling at each other, no name calling, etc. His temper started spilling over to our daughter with him yelling at her when she misbehaved, calling her thinks like a little shit. Despite all of that she still wanted to visit him and enjoyed summers at their place.
He married the fiancé the following year and moved to a nice house. He thought that would make our daughter want to live with him the majority of the time and took me to court over it which was not successful, mainly because our daughter didn’t want to go. He mad mouths me a lot around her, and constantly says things like, “you made me really sad that you don’t want to live here in my nice house.” This makes her feel bad and does the opposite of what he’s hoping for. I’ve tried to explain this to him but he keeps insisting I’m putting ideas in her head. He’s constantly berating her about not wanting to talk on the phone for extended periods of time, which just makes her want to talk to him less. He’s also cut back on visitation nixing all but summer break because he says he’s too busy. Despite all that she still liked going to his house and spending the summers there.
This year he and his wife were supposed to welcome a daughter in January but she was stillborn. They took it hard and while my daughter says it was only a little sad it was her first experience with death. On top of that her fathers mom was diagnosed with cancer. She’s a stage 4 cancer survivor so while it’s expected it’s not easy. I took the initiative of letting our daughter spend some of my weekend and school breaks with her Grammy since she might not be around much longer. This pissed him off, since his wife hates his mother (she didn’t contribute $ to their wedding) and is the one that implemented the 0 contact rule that he’s gone along with. I understand that they have their differences but our daughter shouldn’t have to be punished for it. She left for the summer in but barely made it halfway until she came home. She cried the whole summer and was just miserable to the point that he dad brought her back. Ever since then she’s had zero desire to go to her dads. She whines every time it’s his weekend and constantly tries to get him to delay picking her up. I’ve tried talking to her about it but she’s 9 so a little limited in what she can express. From what I’m able to glean from our conversations she doesn’t like how much he and his wife fight, and she doesn’t like that he doesn’t know her interests (she’s into art and he constantly tries to make her sporty). She doesn’t like how he talks about his mother and I and it makes her dislike him. I’ve tried to talk to him about it but he says I’m making it up and trying to poison her against him. I never say anything bad about him and don’t ask leading questions either. At this point I don’t know what to do. She’s miserable every time she has to go to his house but won’t say anything to him because she’s afraid of making him sad. I also don’t know how to bring it with him because he’ll think I’m just making it all up.
So my ex and I split 8 years ago when our daughter was 1. It wasn’t an amicable split but we shared custody 50/50 originally (he was an incredibly uninvolved parent but more custody means less child support so that’s what he asked for). Although our custody split was 50/50, I was mainly co-parenting with his mother. I left the condo and all of our daughters things with him, but he’s not the type that can live alone. Since the woman he left me for didn’t want to move in with him, he moved in with his mother. His mom is great and took care of said daughter during his custody time while he went out constantly. His mom and I coordinated doctors appointments, daycare, etc and things worked well that way for about 3 years. Needless to say she and my daughter are very close.
After about 3 years I met someone and started dating. For some unknown reason that made my ex extremely jealous to the point it culminated in a DV restraining order and me moving 60mi away since he was constantly defying the order and the police thought I was trying to use it as custody ploy. We agreed to keep 50/50 custody until she began school, after which he’d change to every other weekend, with summers and alternating breaks which worked into to still be 40/60. I know what it’s like growing up with a dad you rarely see so I wanted to keep them in contact as much as possible. He was a shitty partner but always good to her.
Three years ago all of his friends started getting married, having kids and buying houses. He’s a keeping up with the jones type so met a woman, got engaged after 6 months. At that point his mom had been doing most of the parenting for him but he has to put on a good show for the new woman and suddenly started claiming his mother was overstepping her role as grandmother, she’s not the parent yadda yadda. He ended up moving in with the fiancé and cutting his mother out of his and our daughters life. Daughter was 6 at the time and did not take well to this. She didn’t mind the move but not seeing her Grammy and having her dad bad mouth her all the time took it’s tole. On top of that my ex and the fiancé bicker constantly and it stresses our daughter out. My house is relatively drama free with the normal sane rules of not yelling at each other, no name calling, etc. His temper started spilling over to our daughter with him yelling at her when she misbehaved, calling her thinks like a little shit. Despite all of that she still wanted to visit him and enjoyed summers at their place.
He married the fiancé the following year and moved to a nice house. He thought that would make our daughter want to live with him the majority of the time and took me to court over it which was not successful, mainly because our daughter didn’t want to go. He mad mouths me a lot around her, and constantly says things like, “you made me really sad that you don’t want to live here in my nice house.” This makes her feel bad and does the opposite of what he’s hoping for. I’ve tried to explain this to him but he keeps insisting I’m putting ideas in her head. He’s constantly berating her about not wanting to talk on the phone for extended periods of time, which just makes her want to talk to him less. He’s also cut back on visitation nixing all but summer break because he says he’s too busy. Despite all that she still liked going to his house and spending the summers there.
This year he and his wife were supposed to welcome a daughter in January but she was stillborn. They took it hard and while my daughter says it was only a little sad it was her first experience with death. On top of that her fathers mom was diagnosed with cancer. She’s a stage 4 cancer survivor so while it’s expected it’s not easy. I took the initiative of letting our daughter spend some of my weekend and school breaks with her Grammy since she might not be around much longer. This pissed him off, since his wife hates his mother (she didn’t contribute $ to their wedding) and is the one that implemented the 0 contact rule that he’s gone along with. I understand that they have their differences but our daughter shouldn’t have to be punished for it. She left for the summer in but barely made it halfway until she came home. She cried the whole summer and was just miserable to the point that he dad brought her back. Ever since then she’s had zero desire to go to her dads. She whines every time it’s his weekend and constantly tries to get him to delay picking her up. I’ve tried talking to her about it but she’s 9 so a little limited in what she can express. From what I’m able to glean from our conversations she doesn’t like how much he and his wife fight, and she doesn’t like that he doesn’t know her interests (she’s into art and he constantly tries to make her sporty). She doesn’t like how he talks about his mother and I and it makes her dislike him. I’ve tried to talk to him about it but he says I’m making it up and trying to poison her against him. I never say anything bad about him and don’t ask leading questions either. At this point I don’t know what to do. She’s miserable every time she has to go to his house but won’t say anything to him because she’s afraid of making him sad. I also don’t know how to bring it with him because he’ll think I’m just making it all up.