would ex husband ever give up controlling behaviours?

[divorcing mama]

Eh?

Wow thanks for so many replies.... I am a bit confused about some of them

1) I left with the baby to stay with relatives so I wouldn't be yelled at/talked down to/ forced to go out with the baby ( I was still recovering from childbirth and my wound was painful) and the baby wouldn't have to live through toxic environment ...my ex had some drinking problem too.... He would come home scream at me for the smallest thing just because he was drunk. But as he was forcing me to go home with threats, I was afraid and decided not to eventually. The nurse who followed me recommended shelter etc as soon as she saw my situation before I left home.


2) nope I don't have any new relationship , neither was it the reason I left. I do however hope one day my little baby will have a good make role model- either his dad steps up or I find someone.

3) I never denied his access, but he was very difficult with any set of schedules that I suggested, and was denying the fact that we need to make schedule because he claimed that I had no custody so I had no right to make schedule, however he never suggested any schedule in any way.

4) CS - I am sure the court will decide and I am not worried. Just the fact that he shows no interest in the baby that makes me sad.

5) you are all right about not worrying about what's going on when he is with the baby. However I am hoping someone can share the experience of " ex becoming less hostile as the time goes by?" Type of story? Or does it truly exist?

[divorcing mama]

WOW, I hope the two of you have been properly entertained with your little 'experiment'? I fail to see how any of this sarcasm is useful to divorcing mama? Have you forgotten that the original poster is a human being with feelings. You criticize her for leaving with the baby when she stated that her Ex was abusive?

This site is starting to resemble a schoolyard full of bullies ( in a very bad neighborhood). Hateful advice is no advice at all.

Try putting yourselves in her position ... Oh no, that could never happen you are both way to smart for that.

Thanks Janibel! I indeed did not understand some of the posts and " experiment" also didn't find anything funny or sarcastic. I am truly just hoping people who had gone through what I did to give me some insight/words of wisdom.


I am not sure about the legal side of seperation, but before I left I did try taking my ex to marriage counselling, calling baby professional to come over to go through parenting tips with us....,, all waste of energy since he would sleep through the session or not practising anything the marriage counsellor said or suggested....


He was very rough with the baby too and every time when we argued, he would do something to the baby to make me mad. That wasn't tolerable either.


Anyway enough of me trying to justifying my reason to break up and take the baby with me. Whats done is done. Need to move on. Lawyer has been working on my case and we are going to court.

And I am in this post isn't exactly seeking legal advise- more like real life wisdom.

[Straittohell]

Well, the post that Links first put out there was the one that was sarcastic, but you would have to know Links to understand that. He basically told you a bunch of common fallacies about custody and parenting post-divorce in an attempt to make fun of some of the things you said, but you ironically believed most of what he said to be something that you agreed with.

Want some real life wisdom? Here it is, completely without sarcsasm. Regardless of what happened in the past, you need to give this guy a chance to be a dad. Yes, you're going to find that there are a lot of people on this forum who support 50-50, and yes, many of them are actually women!

There are a large number of mom's out there who "can't understand why their ex's are still high conflict after the relationship is over", but at the same time belittle the contributions of the dad, never give him a chance to fail or succeed, and try to relegate him to every other weekend. You are not the first person to state things like "he's impatient with the baby, and he never took an interest in the care of her for these first four months". It is the common battle-cry of a mom that doesn't want to share her kid. Read through the dozens of past posts on this board, and you'll see it too. I am sure that you guys have all kinds of problems beyond that, but you need to manage your expectations and figure out a way to work with the guy.

The thing is, successful co-parenting in a 50-50 doesn't require a ridiculous amount of communication. My ex and I exchange a few emails throughout the week about coordinating extracurricular activities and expenses, and that is about it. By and large, I trust her to run her house, and she trusts me to run mine. If you make the decision to trust and work with this guy, and focus on helping him succeed as a dad, it will help prevent SOME of the high conflict behaviours that you see.

[Beachnana]

My daughter went through a similar situation. Her ex screamed involved Dad but with his drinking problem and personality that put his own needs first he has failed to follow through with any actual parenting. Often its best to let them dig their own hole, by their own means.

Joint custody is the norm and this refers to the legal decision making regarding education, health, religion and not the amount of time each parent has the child. Its good that you are have legal representation and will be able to make informed decisions.

As you have a lawyer it is probably best you do not communicate with your ex without consulting your legal council.

Do not expect any great change in your ex's behavior regardless of his personal life. Do not spend much time worry about your ex's life its not your concern.

And yes you will get plenty of scarcastic and sometime nasty comments on this forum. Some posters have completly different situations which cloud their objectivity. They have been burned by their ex so assume everyone is out to do the same. But amongst the " poor taste" posts will be some good sound advice which will help you understand the decisions you will need to make.

The reality is you have to be fair and assume that both parents want equal parenting time but in the end you can only lead a horse to the water but you cannot force them to drink.

[DowntroddenDad]

Divorcing mama,

Forgive us if we come across as jaded.

Many of us have been falsely accused of many things by our exes, and many of the things you accuse your ex of, we've been accused of.

You left the matrimonial home. If you did so without a valid cause you in effect abducted the child. If you did have reason to leave, I hope you have it very well documented or it will come to hurt you in the end. If you felt in danger, you need to show a pattern.

He may be an uninterested father, may be a bad one, but you don't have the right to deny him access unless your child is in danger. If your fear for your child's safety, go to the CAS.

As others have said, give him enough rope to hang himself. Offer him access, be flexible, log every time you give it and every time he doesn't use it. This may come in handy if he later decides to go for 50/50.

Accept the fact that some people have a harder time than others being a father. It may get easier as the child gets older, some people are daunted by babies.

[divorcing mama]

Divorcing mama,

Forgive us if we come across as jaded.

Many of us have been falsely accused of many things by our exes, and many of the things you accuse your ex of, we've been accused of.

You left the matrimonial home. If you did so without a valid cause you in effect abducted the child. If you did have reason to leave, I hope you have it very well documented or it will come to hurt you in the end. If you felt in danger, you need to show a pattern.

He may be an uninterested father, may be a bad one, but you don't have the right to deny him access unless your child is in danger. If your fear for your child's safety, go to the CAS.

As others have said, give him enough rope to hang himself. Offer him access, be flexible, log every time you give it and every time he doesn't use it. This may come in handy if he later decides to go for 50/50.

Accept the fact that some people have a harder time than others being a father. It may get easier as the child gets older, some people are daunted by babies.

CAS was involved and did recommended us to stay seperate/

I never denied access?

I only received a lot of hostile actions and I am hoping he will stop one day

[wantmyfreedom]

You will get alot of feedback on this site. Some of it will be jaw dropping. Just ignore the sarcasm and ignorance. Some people bring their own baggage and anger into these threads.

You indicated that you left your home because it was a toxic environment. Going forward your legal counsel will advise you regarding custody etc. I'm going to focus on the question that you asked and not try to go off topic too much.

The toxic behaviour will not stop. Regardless of a new relationship or any other circumstance for that matter. The toxic individual will always engage in toxic behaviour. Its about control. Now that you left, the toxic individual is losing control. Losing control is their worst nightmare. This fear of losing control will fuel irrational emmotional reasoning. The toxic behaviour will get worse.

Now most importantly it is up to you to disengage. The relationship is over.

I strongly suggest a third party to facilitate access and exchanges. That way the access or lack of will be documented for court. In addition you will no longer have to endure any more toxic controlling behaviour. Offer your ex equal parenting time.

[DowntroddenDad]

CAS was involved and did recommended us to stay seperate/

I never denied access?

I only received a lot of hostile actions and I am hoping he will stop one day

By leaving the home without an agreement in place for access, you denied access. Before you left, he didn't have to make arrangements to see his child. Unless and until an agreement is in place, he has the same rights as you do to see the child.

Please understand me, I'm not taking his side or suggesting you aren't telling the truth. I'm looking at it from the legal perspective, not the emotional one, which is what you need to learn to do.

I'm suprised CAS would recommend you separate, usually what they rule on is whether or not the child is in a good environment, whether the parents are doing a good job.

As for his hostile actions, he is no longer your spouse, you need to learn to let go, and ignore. Cut back on the communications, go to email and keep it "business like". Just refuse to respond to anything abusive.He has as much power over you as you give him.

Be patient, it does take time.

[wantmyfreedom]

DowntroddenDad is right about separating emmotional vs legal. From a legal standpoint you made a unilateral decision regarding your child's residence. It can be seen as you undermining the other parent.

By offering equal access via a third party you can squash that. Good luck.

Leaving an abuser will be the hardest thing you will ever do and yet the most rewarding.

[Rioe]

My extra thoughts:

My ex never participated at any care for my son while I was home, abusive, controlling, I had to take the baby and leave because I couldn't deal with it anymore. Now that he is mad at me for leaving and trying to claim how much he loves the baby and wanted time with him( to win a joint custody)

When you were together, those were the roles you each took. Now that you are apart, both of you must find new roles. Hopefully that means your ex will step up as a father. Even if you have proof that he was abusive to the child, you can have his access supervised until he demonstrates better parenting skills.

however in fact he hasn't paid any child support

You probably don't have access sorted out. You need to know the access before you know what CS amounts to use. Right now, it looks like you are dictating access, and he is likely using non-payment of CS to combat this.

2) has always complained about the drive he has to do to come and see the baby

You are the one who moved away, so it is YOUR responsibility to do the driving for his access. He is right to complain.

3) misses a lot of opportunities to see the baby because of "work" ( in reality, golf, trips...etc). And NO he doesn't want to take care of the baby more than 2 hours....

If he wants to start with two hours access, then you do the drive, give him his two hours, then drive back. He'll either work up to more, or he won't. I bet without the drive being on him, he'll miss fewer opportunities.

I heard from others that once the ex moves on and gets into a new relationship it will get better? Is this true? or would he want to show off he is a "super daddy" and gets even more controlling by wanting to have the kid all the time?

You can't count on that sort of thing. Deal with the situation you have now instead of worrying about future changes.

[Straittohell]

Rioe nailed it again as usual. It is hard to accuse the other part of being high conflict when you've moved away, and make them drive a long distance to "see" the baby.

He's probably feeling like he's already been relegated to 'uncle' status, and who the heck wants that?

If you've moved far away with the intention of it being permanent, and him being a in a position where he can only do a long drive to "see" the child, you are pretty much setting him up to have minimal time with the baby. You're sowing the seeds of conflict yourself.

Also, pretend for a moment that you might actually want him to have the kid overnights and/or 50/50, how can that possibly happen when you're far away?

Why do you think you had a right to create that distance?

[dinkyface]

I don't think we know that there is a great distance, the original poster (OP) hasn't said. He could be grumbling about 20 minutes.

As the child grows older, visitations will be longer duration with less frequent handovers, so there will be less back & forth. When the kid starts in kindergarten, handovers can be indirect, via the school.

[stripes]

Rioe nailed it again as usual. It is hard to accuse the other part of being high conflict when you've moved away, and make them drive a long distance to "see" the baby.

He's probably feeling like he's already been relegated to 'uncle' status, and who the heck wants that?

If you've moved far away with the intention of it being permanent, and him being a in a position where he can only do a long drive to "see" the child, you are pretty much setting him up to have minimal time with the baby. You're sowing the seeds of conflict yourself.

Also, pretend for a moment that you might actually want him to have the kid overnights and/or 50/50, how can that possibly happen when you're far away?

Why do you think you had a right to create that distance?

I don't think we know enough about the OP's situation to question her actions. Her ex may have been raging and threatening and out of control, or she may have had a quarrel with him (not uncommon in the exhaustion of a new baby) and walked off in a huff. He may be complaining about a drive of five minutes, or a drive of five hours. Going forward, I think the advice here can be summed up as:

-take steps (talk to a lawyer) to ensure he is paying child support, regardless of whether he exercises his access. There are plenty of other threads on how to figure out how much CS he should be paying
-do everything you can to facilitate his contact with the baby so he can build his parenting skills, including maximizing time with the child. This may require sacrifice on your part, especially if there's a lot of hostility. Having a schedule for gradually increasing his time with the baby, having a third party present for handovers of the baby, or looking into some form of supervised access are all options here. It may take him a while to build up his child care skills, but he should have every chance to practice.
-don't expect anything to change if/when he finds another partner. Things might improve, or deteriorate, or stay the same.

[stripes]

(I'd also drop the language of describing everything about the ex as "controlling". From what I can gather from this site, everyone thinks their ex is "controlling". The word almost doesn't have any meaning any more).

[DowntroddenDad]

(I'd also drop the language of describing everything about the ex as "controlling". From what I can gather from this site, everyone thinks their ex is "controlling". The word almost doesn't have any meaning any more).

Indeed!

My ex called me controlling, yet at other times she called me apathetic. Her definition of controlling included me trying to have inputs into parenting my kids. She thought as a SAHM she should have the only say. Controlling was also asking her to live up to the mutual agreement that when the kids were all in school full time she go back to work.

I also had a GF call me abusive. It almost ended the relationship. I was shocked and horrified. What she meant was that she thought I said sometimes said things to hurt her. But what I hadn't understood was that she had been physically and mentally abused for a long time by a husband with mental health issues, and that she was inclined to see bad intentions where none existed.

From what I've learned from being around people who have been at the short end of controlling and abusive relationships is that it isn't an occasional misunderstanding kind of deal, it is an ongoing power struggle situation. If you want to establish that in court, you have to show an ongoing series of events. My GF couldn't prove it in court, because she only called the police once for physical abuse, there were other occasions, but since she hadn't reported them, it was he said/she said. Even though he was diagnosed with a serious mental illness.