Anonymous wrote:Split from my emotional abuser. To my surprise, he basically, didn’t take the custody he was offered, so the kids live with me 100% and visit him.
You cannot survive for another 10 years living with him, and your kids will learn lifelong awful patterns. It helped me to recognize that all my choices are bad. My only option was to pick the least bad one.
The least bad option is separating. Even in the worst case scenario, with only 50% custody, you will be able to achieve the most important thing - a calm, loving and stable home for your kids.
After separating, for years I thought the right thing to do was to co-parent. With a normal co-parent that may be true, but with an abusive or mentally ill parent, the best thing is to grey rock, communicate only by email text or other written forms, and parallel parent.
Now I take no responsibility to coach or support DH’s parenting. He is a grown man and can reach out directly to school, aftercare, activities, etc. I do not help or communicate on anything unless critical to kids (like healthcare). When he comes to pick up kids, he waits on porch or in car. We have very little interaction, which is better for kids. If he starts getting cranky or nasty with to me, I simply stop responding.
Over time, with very strong and consistent boundary enforcement, he has learned implicitly, that if he wants any interaction at all, he has to be polite to me or he will be excluded. YMMV.
New poster. PP, how are things going with your kids? Do you feel they are learning wrong messages from the time they're with him and picking up his behaviors, or do they instead come home understanding he's got problems and maybe even complaining to you about dad? I would be very afraid kids would pick up on bad behaviors and/or hear and absorb negative, nasty things said about mom, while visiting with dad. Even on limited visits. How do you avert that, if you even can avert it?
|
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}