Ugh.
Another weekend flew by. Saturday went by pretty uneventfully up until about 7:15 PM. Then I get a call from my wife, she cheerfully asked me to see if the kids wanted to come over to her apartment for the night.
My oldest was playing basketball in the garage, the other two were jumping all over the house. They had made special “beds” of each of my two couches hours before and were more than a bit settled in for the night. I knew way before asking that they had no interest in spending the night with their mother. There she was on the phone though, plowing headfirst into disaster like always. I tried subtly, to prepare her but it didn’t help. I asked the kids (genuinely even, I didn’t try to bias in any way) and without any thought or hesitation they all gave it a resounding “no”.
I called her back and prepped her by saying that the kids were already settled in for the night, a little more notice and I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a problem. She went off the handle, not yelling or anything, but accused me of not sharing the kids and hung up. I gave her and myself a few minutes to collect our thoughts.
When I did call back I reminded her that the kids need a schedule, you can’t be yanking them out of their routines like it’s nothing. Not when a divorce is in progress anyway. I even went as far to say as that I thought she was ready to spend more time with the kids, we needed to start trying to figuring out how to divide our time with them more evenly. Did this help?
Nope, since I didn’t put my foot down, and drag the kids kicking and screaming over to her place last night, I obviously had no intentions of sharing the children. Today, I tried to arrange for her to take them for most of the day until our little Super Bowl party we had planned for this evening. She sulked, and said she had plans, and the third time I called back she said she would call me later. She did call later, just to my oldest though, and proceeded to cry about how much they hurt her last night by not coming over. Remember that my wife never spoke to them last night, they had no clue of course.
My god. I knew during all of our years of marriage that she had some child like tendencies but this incident pissed me off. I calmed myself down, and asked her to explain just exactly what she had told our daughter, even though I already knew. Whatever conversation she had the second time with my daughter worked, but damn. Just when you think, someone would never sink that low, they prove you wrong.
Fej
My oldest was playing basketball in the garage, the other two were jumping all over the house. They had made special “beds” of each of my two couches hours before and were more than a bit settled in for the night. I knew way before asking that they had no interest in spending the night with their mother. There she was on the phone though, plowing headfirst into disaster like always. I tried subtly, to prepare her but it didn’t help. I asked the kids (genuinely even, I didn’t try to bias in any way) and without any thought or hesitation they all gave it a resounding “no”.
I called her back and prepped her by saying that the kids were already settled in for the night, a little more notice and I’m sure it wouldn’t have been a problem. She went off the handle, not yelling or anything, but accused me of not sharing the kids and hung up. I gave her and myself a few minutes to collect our thoughts.
When I did call back I reminded her that the kids need a schedule, you can’t be yanking them out of their routines like it’s nothing. Not when a divorce is in progress anyway. I even went as far to say as that I thought she was ready to spend more time with the kids, we needed to start trying to figuring out how to divide our time with them more evenly. Did this help?
Nope, since I didn’t put my foot down, and drag the kids kicking and screaming over to her place last night, I obviously had no intentions of sharing the children. Today, I tried to arrange for her to take them for most of the day until our little Super Bowl party we had planned for this evening. She sulked, and said she had plans, and the third time I called back she said she would call me later. She did call later, just to my oldest though, and proceeded to cry about how much they hurt her last night by not coming over. Remember that my wife never spoke to them last night, they had no clue of course.
My god. I knew during all of our years of marriage that she had some child like tendencies but this incident pissed me off. I calmed myself down, and asked her to explain just exactly what she had told our daughter, even though I already knew. Whatever conversation she had the second time with my daughter worked, but damn. Just when you think, someone would never sink that low, they prove you wrong.
Fej
posted by Fej at 10:30 PM
4 Comments:
She's just feeling left out babe, she's obviously unhappy and lonely and now she's going through the 'testing' period, Some of the shit my mum used to say to us about dad...
Basically, she (however irrationally) is blaming you for 'taking the kids affections away' and she's trying to 'prove' it's not true.
It'll backfire. But in the meantime, you just keep on as you are... It'll pass.
*hugs* good luck with the trial thing - the kids can sort things out for 'emseleves.
That's a tough situation. You are really a good Dad.
Ugh is right. It's amazing how clueless she is. Selfish and clueless.
C
A schedule really is important and good for you for putting your foot down and sticking to it!
When I was going through my divorce, my ex complained that he never got to spend time with the kids, which was absurd because he could have had them every weekend if he so desired and he knew it--it was finally drawn up in the court papers; all he had to do was give me 48 hours notice. Once it was actually on paper, he saw them just three times within three months and then left for Australia in 1997. He's been there ever since and nary a word from him to either of my children since his departure--which has included no phone calls, no cards, no correspondence at all whatsoever.
I swear I just don't understand him.
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