Feeling drained having to parent with my ex. Has anyone else been here?

I am going through something similar, my daughter is five. He is more hands on than your ex but refuses to pay any maintenance and is self employed so gets away with it. CMS arrears are over £5000. He is very controlling and kicks off if I ever dare to call him out or say no. It is so exhausting. I am hoping in a few years I won't have to communicate with him as much because at the moment I dread every single message. It's awful. I'm so sorry you are going through this too.

He sounds exactly like my ex. Everything is a battle, it's exhausting.

How I have found some semblance of peace is to live as though I am a lone parent. I never make plans that rely on him. If I want to do something or need to do extra work, I find child care elsewhere. I won't give him the power to let me down. When he did hold up his end he would use his 'helpfulness' against me which was just as bad.

I don't tell our child about visits until they are 100% confirmed.

I am very careful about what I share with him. If I know it will trigger an outburst from him and whatever has happened has no major lasting effects on our child - it's not worth sharing.

Finally, I really recommend using AI to help with responding to messages. I really struggled to not react or defend myself but doing so only fueled the fire. Now I feed tricky interactions into AI and it gives me grey rock responses and I've found it to be quite reassuring!

It's really hard but you have to protect your peace. You can't change him so you have to change how you approach the situation unfortunately.

It all sounds very familiar @purpleflowergirl
Alcohol is the route cause of all our issues. I would get so frustrated and angry on my daughters behalf, until it dawned on me that me being stressed affected them too.
Now I try to have a plan b, try to not show the slightest reaction, keep communication to a absolute minimum.
Is the joint calendar working for you ?
If not scrap it ,go back to email that you only check when suits you or something you can just block if you need to.
It does get easier and by the time your daughter is a teenager he might regret not stepping up when she decides she has other places she would rather be.
Good luck

The court isn’t going to hold him to account either. If he breaks it then he breaks it, the court isn’t going to force him to parent his child or punish him for failing to.

@Holshicupwhat it will enforce is communication via an app for example. If he doesn’t turn up for handover then he doesn’t turn up! CAO or not, makes no difference to that but what it does do is records and agrees it so if he breaks it OP can record that. Right now nothing is holding him to account, and OP doesn’t seem to be able to enforce boundaries. A CAO provides boundaries.

The problem with this, for OP, is that it won’t actually help practically whatsoever.

You can go to court, you can get it written and agreed that he will do EOW, but all that actually means in practice is that OP has to make the kids available for contact at those times. It does nothing at all to force him to show up and actually take the kids, he can still cancel/not turn up/change his mind, no court is ever going to be able to do anything to actually force him to be a parent.

The only real benefit of formalising an agreement here for OP would be that if you get something formal, and he fails to show up, get your evidence and you can then apply for further CMS to reflect the fact he is doing less.

As other posts say lower your expectations. You can't change anyone's behavior and it will just cause you never ending stress. My ex was so utterly unreasonable and unreliable,letting his children down at the drop of a hat and in turn I couldn't make any concrete plans.
Going to court wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference.
Look at what you can do to make life easier and take away his power.
Get to know your daughter's friend's parent's and help each other out ,this has been a godsend for me, we have the odd sleepover and it's the only way I could get a night off! Look at childcare options, breakfast clubs, after school clubs and childminders. You may be able to claim some costs back through universal credit.
It will get easier as your daughter gets older and communicates directly with him and is less reliant on you maintaining the relationship.

CAO now. See a solicitor. Then it’s enforced that it’s EOW or 70/30 or whatever reflects the right amount. You can be really specific in the CAO too about handovers, communication etc.

@purpleflowergirl 50/50 doesn’t work for many parents and it means you won’t get CMS money. Never agree to that. 5 nights with him out of 14 is a fairly standard agreement. Would he do that? Think carefully about how much you actually want her with this man.

If you aren’t married you can still ask for a court agreement that’s going to be adhered to. Do you give permission for dd to go abroad with him? Check that out too. I assume he’s on the birth cert?

Go to court and do 50/50 parenting, he can’t get out of it then!

Yes I agree with the other poster. CMS, communication app and court agreed childcare arrangement.

You need to stop viewing him as what you view as a father and start viewing him as the inconsistent, controlling toad of a man he is.

Reduce your expectations to zero, I’m sure he will still find ways to disappoint you but honestly you are looking at him as having the potential to be a rational, reasonable person and he isn’t one so don’t treat him as one.

Go to court to get a CAO in place for very specific access arrangements, handover places etc. it will also allow you to travel for holidays etc I would stop trying to negotiate with him, he’s using it to control you.

300 is that agreed between you? Or is this via CMS?