To regret leaving my coercively controlling ex-husband

I think you did the right thing. This way, you’ve missed out on a lot. But you’ve shown them another way to live, which means they might not try to control their partners. They’re still in your life. You can explain things to them as adults. Also, I’ve seen women stay in abusive relationships and become shells of themselves, turn to alcohol or lose all reason. Then they lose far far more.

@Hellodarknessmyfriend Ive read your posts but not RTFT. What makes me sad is that despite the years apart, a new DH and a DD, he is still controlling you.

I say this kindly as my DM was in the same situation. She’s now having therapy for PTSD and has been getting stronger, more self-assured and more confident as time goes on. I feel like I’m watching her grow up!

Ultimately you need to take away his control, he’ll never give it up. My DD was seen staking out my mums house 30+ years after they divorced! When he loses his control over you, you get more say in enforcing you time with the boys and what they are told about your break up.

See a therapist and boot him out your head x

Can I ask which country you are in please OP?

So are they choosing dad's house at the moment? I'm so sorry.

You need to do all you can to look after yourself and get happy and make them have the best time with you and remind them that always have a home with you whenever they like. There are decades ahead of being their mum and they may come back more to you in the future xx

Pipe down seriously 🙄 (hungry caterpillar).
If OP is the poster I think she is her ex used the fact she was having another child to make her boys feel they were being replaced and didn't want them to have anything to do with their sibling.

@Hellodarknessmyfriend sometimes life only gives you really bad choices and you have to try and find the least bad thing and because there's no way to know what would have happened had you stayed you regret what happened when you left. Its understandable after what your ex has done and he's still harming you too, adding to that trauma. You regret going, I regret not going sooner because he's damaged me so much and especially because of what he put our eldest through because I stayed. She was recently sobbing and overwhelmed because he's been getting angry and shouting at her. Along with the damage he did because I stayed I also regret deeply what she's gone through without me there.

There are rarely good choices when the man you loved and had children with turns out to be an abusive arsehole. You try and find the least bad choice, you try and protect and support them. You did what everyone believes is the best thing, you left to protect them, you don't know what you might have ended up regretting if you'd stayed. An abusive man has harmed you all, and is continuing to do so, none of your choices make you responsible for the harm he's done. I hope when your boys get a bit older they'll start to see through him and come back to you. Whatever happens in the future, I hope you can find some healing and contentment with your DD and your DH. You deserve that.

No, it could be a reason why they don't want to visit more often. It's not a blaming game but more of a reason. So pipe down.

Ah there’s the inevitable victim blaming! Thought we’d lost you. Nice to see you rise above all the progressive, supportive chatter and shit on it like a pigeon. Well done there! Mum went on to find happiness with a good person and had a third child, a sibling for her older two sons. But… let’s turn this into something blameworthy! 🙄

Hang on you haven't mentioned your other child about to start primary school.
So ten years ago you left, you then married and had another child who is now 4.5-5yrs old.

Maybe that's a reason why the elder ones don't stay more. A 17yr old and 14yr old won't want to share mum with a 5yr old I don't think.

My ex was like this. Even before I left he told me that I’d never get custody of the kids if I left.
You’ve done the right thing.

I feel sad for you. Hopefully when they are adults you can tell them exactly why their dad had custody and you didn't. You did the right thing leaving though.

Yes I was told not to cry in court too. It's mind boggling.
The family courts are a strange and topsy turvy world and I am sorry you had to experience it.

You were still right to leave. That wasn't a life.

But I know only too well that you don't really "escape" from someone like that, as they just find new ways. And my heart breaks for you

Sorry, I worry that I’m deviating from the thread a bit by shouting from my soapbox. But you’ve forgotten your worth and your place. That makes me so sad for you. 😔
That letter you wrote is invaluable. That letter is your resistance. Your tears are bullets! I risk falling into a pit of purple prose here, OP, but you have hope, you have love, you have resistance. Your sons would be subjected to their dad’s same terrible influence had you stayed together. Believe me, from experience (I stayed far too long), I got a front row seat watching me NOT protect my children from their abuser. Quite the shitshow that I stayed far too long at the fair for. I get to live with my failure. You have emancipated yourself. And your sons still have access to your liberating love, which they may not always know because they’re still kids, but they feel it to the bones, believe me.

Oh OP. It’s so sad. Your sense of purpose has been so undermined. We live in a society that puts so much value on the aesthetics of being mothers and parents, but what people don’t know until they experience court is how erased motherhood has been. We’ve supposedly levelled the playing field by being inclusive to dads and therefore co parenting ‘as a team’. But the mother, the heart of the world, really is being erased. If we stay at home to raise children to be functional and empathetic members of society, we’re seen as lazy, financial non contributors (even though we’re voluntary cooks, therapists, doctors, entertainers, listeners, cleaners… we are the family scaffolding and nobody can argue with me on that). And when the marital shit hits the fan, husbands/fathers immediately go for the jugular: “Well, I went out and earned. You stayed home with the kids. You did NOTHING! I’ll drown you in court with my financial strongarm.”

If we work and outsource childcare, we’re accused of being disinterested in our children, shirking responsibility, chasing careers, being selfish. Mothers can’t win and the family courts depressingly prove this time and again by listening to embittered, abusive fathers controlling the narrative and poisoning the mother’s reputation at any cost, regardless of the loss the children will carry (and mum too, this goes without saying). How much we lose to a system that costs us our reputation is a heartache most mothers, very fortunately, will not be able to relate to.

@Hellodarknessmyfriend Why would it sound strange? You're not ready to let it go.

Perhaps a part of you wants the reminder of where you once were as an indicator to where you were once and you don't want to go there again.

That's another way your sons could have lost you if you hadn't got out, as you would have been more and more suicidal had you stayed.

You're a good mom as you are there for your children and provide the love and stability they don't see at home. They will know it within even if they don't express it outwardly.

They have your husband and you as loving, stable, happy parents. They will know the difference

Many Boys at 14-18 won't see the bigger picture, they'll see him as a good dad. Hopefully the enlightenment may come later. Hang on in there. Even I didn't probably appreciate how great my mum always was until much later.

@Hellodarknessmyfriend That's the problem. We fight and try to stave off the mental health side, and it doesn't help. It just supresses it, so it comes out sidewards and, in many cases, worse.

Oh God, the old British stiff upper lip, of chin up, be strong does nothing to help.

I've had on/off years of different and specialist therapy. What I've learnt about tears are that they are healthy and a surrender/acceptance of what is. If we weren't meant to cry , we wouldn't have tear ducts. I had to learn to cry.

I'm glad you found happiness again with a good man, as I have too. If you had stayed, you would never have found the love and stability you have now. Remember that 💖

Family court, in the UK, upholds and perpetuates abuse. At its core, family court is the absolute definition of systemic misogyny, just like the Met. And mothers are imprisoned, held captive, by a system that consistently undermines the importance of our role as mothers, destroys the already threadbare trust between separated parents, and exacerbates the ongoing weaponisation of children in cases, giving zero fucks about the longterm emotional instability and trust issues those children will carry into adult life, created by abusive parents and upheld by the court’s bad decision to predominantly support and empathise with the abuser. And oh yeah, CAFCASS can go fuck itself twice over. What a wasteful resource.

You have my arsenal of sympathy OP. And I’m sad that because your voice was invalidated and unheard because the abuser’s was louder and raucous (men like the sound of their own voices and the predominantly male world of the justice system and family courts will be full of male judges liking the sounds coming from their own kind- birds of a feather- and women who have forgotten how to empathise with their own), you now live with the weight of deep regret. I hope you can find peace in your day. Your love for your boys counts for everything. I hope it’s enough to undo the damage their father has undeniably inflicted upon them. I hope time will be your ally and your sons will rise from the ashes of their father’s deceit. Courage OP. Live to love your sons, if nothing else. I wish I had a solution for you. Love has to be enough, even when we doubt its power.

I know a woman in your position and I know a man like your ex. In the woman's situation, she's counting down until they are 18. Your children are adults longer than they are children and they will come back to you. As for the man, his adult children play the game of favouritism, to his face. Behind the scenes, they know who the better parent was. He thinks that he gets small victories, but nothing will make him happy. If you would have stayed, you'd be teaching your boys that abuse is acceptable. You could have list them as adults and they be LC with their future family.