Punished for 'affair'?

This in spades !

Thankfully this is a tiny tiny minority of women who would likely have had longstanding significant mental health issues prior to the cheating, if they had a breakdown as a result. Cheating is very far from unusual, but that scenario (ending up in a psychiatric facility) is in comparison. I don't think using extreme examples is helpful.

Most women would not abandon their children and leave them with dad due to dad meeting someone else, as we all know.

All that aside, this lady didn't cheat. She ended the relationship, which is entirely her choosing and does not absolve the father of his responsibilities to his kids.

If he’s the type of dickhead who is being deliberately obstructive, then the situation needs to be presented to him differently.

I’d have no problem explaining to him that if he won’t do any overnights etc then my new bloke will stay over as he’s keen to help me with DC. If that’s likely to enrage him, then he might change his mind. With these blokes, asking or begging for what you need is never going to work. You need to do the opposite.

My response to any unpleasant bloke who is threatening 50/50 custody if I didn’t want that would be to say - great, time for me to have a social life!

You think being sectioned is the same as abandoning? I bet I'd be hard pushed to even find a thread on here by a woman who's partner has left her, so she refuses to see the kids or have more than one at a time. Stop making excuses for shit fathers.

Yes, I've seen women ending up in residential psychiatric facilities because of it.

No, but on a separate note breaking up a relationship doesn't mean the fathers responsibility to his children are no longer there.

He's not doing his share of parenting, and it really isn't to the benefit of his children. A decent parent doesn't use their children to grind down their ex. If he showed up as a father, on the terms that work best for his children, respite wouldn't be an issue.

So he can have 1 child at a time for a few hours to spite OP because he doesn’t want her having a social life and you think that’s ok? He gets to have 7 nights a week to do as he pleases whilst making it difficult for OP, how’s that fair?

She didn’t cast him aside, she fell out of love. No one should stay in a relationship they are not happy with. She doesn’t now want him to be nice she wants him to be a parent and have both his children

So if a man ends a relationship, the woman is free to abandon her kids and you would think that's fair enough?! My fucking arse you would. Pure misogyny.

Stop being ridiculous. Taking one child at the time is ridiculous, he's their father! It's astounding to see so many women prioritise a man and his tantrum over innocent children, I doubt you would ever make excuses for a woman using her children as a weapon. Shame on you.

I don’t understand how you even start a relationship with someone else in the first place when you keep going on about always having the kids with you. Surely while you still lived together and the children weren’t in school you had them even more? Did you start dating with them?

Either way you arrange contact with the children between both parents because it suits the kids and the parents. The contact is for the relationship between the mother/father and the kids not for the purpose of going out or dating.

We’re just not going to agree, clearly. You think he should be able to parent “on his own terms” but she has to suck it up and work around him as penance for daring to end the relationship.

Dress it up how you want, ultimately it is pure misogyny to expect a woman to be punished for the massive sin of wanting to have sex.

Thank god women aren’t able to just parent on their own terms! Millions of children wandering the streets as mum had decided she can only deal with one at a time etc.

So wounding that you abandoned your children ?

Their own FATHER shouldn't look after them?! What planet are you on.

WOW the hard of thinking are out in force on this thread. The misogyny from other women really saddens me.

OP you didn't have an affair. But even if you'd had 10 affairs, this man still has responsibility for his children. And should WANT to maintain good relationships with them.
You deserve (and need) a break.
Unfortunately I think with men like him the only response is to completely disengage, don't argue with him, and make alternative arrangements.
He gets to look both children together or not at all. No wonder you met someone else, the bar was low with this idiot.

How dare he. Wish you all the best and hope things improve.

It also doesn't mean their ex they wanted nothing to do with should provide their respite.

He's not shirking his responsibilities. He is taking the children on his terms (i.e., one at a time).

OP is complaining as he won't take them both so she can get her leg over. It is not unreasonable to decline this request.

Great use of pork there! 😁

The father in this case was told repeatedly that the relationship was over, but chose to ignore it until OP met someone else - who wasn’t the catalyst for the marriage breakup, but for the change that would inevitably have been made. And instead of choosing to take responsibility for his children and forging a relationship with them, DH is punishing all of them and laying the foundations for alienating his children when they are old enough to understand the choice he made.

And despite all of this there are posters here insisting that OP should be the one to leave because she’s the one who had ‘an affair’. Despite the fact that DH has made it clear the children are her responsibility. I don’t see many women putting that on fathers who leave.

It's not just conservative it's overtly misogynist.

I'm so sorry, I don't know how you make someone not be a dick to his children. Hopefully things will settle down and he'll rethink.

I don't know how miserable you're supposed to be, and for how long, before MN will accept someone who cares for children that society doesn't GAF about has a right to move on from an unhappy marriage.

My 11 year long relationship and marriage ended because my husband had an affair. He left me and got another woman pregnant after my own fertility struggles. But yes, I rebuilt myself and my life and moved on.

And now years later, as a mother, there is no way in hell I would have taken any of that pain out on my children and used them as pawns to hurt my ex. No matter how wronged I was. There is no excuse for it - they are children, the father is an adult and the parent and needs to step up.

Confused by your response. Of course he could have ended his relationship with her on the same terms. That’s my point - adults can end relationships with other as they choose.

But this is about his relationship to his children as a father - he shouldn’t get to shirk his responsibilities to his children regardless. Are you suggesting since the OP no longer wants to be in a romantic/sexual relationship with this man any more she should “bear the responsibility” of him being a subpar father?

FFS I despair

@Margot2020 Only read the first few pages but cannot believe the tone of a lot of these responses. People on MN are so incredibly purist about “affairs” that this seems to cloud everything.

I take it you've never had a cheating partner then ?🙄

If you had, you'd understand how wounding it is.