Long story short, my son's (7) dad is not a nice person. Went through family court, spent a long time on supervised contact only. Fact finding found in my favour for emotional abuse, coercive control, racism, neglect of our child when in his care, aggressive behaviour etc. He had no contact for a number of years as court would not allow it. They then decided he had changed his ways (he hasn't).
Our son is quite obsessed with him which would be nice if I didn't know what his dad was really like. I still see glimpses of his horrible behaviours but I have don't everything in my power to have zero contact with him, as he raped me in the past (resulting in our son) but not enough evidence for the family court. So I cannot stand even being near him as I'm still very scared of him.
Our son sees him ever other weekend for a day as thankfully he lives hours away, and for a few days during every holiday. He has done a number of things in the past when our son has been playing up, and reacted really harshly, but generally he is hiding his behaviours and filling our son's head with 'you should come and live with me'. I think he's good at hiding it as he doesn't have him for long periods of time so it's easy to maintain the perfect dad facade. He showers him in gifts which I cannot afford and keeps trying to get him to add him on the playstation so they can play together (I've said no so I'm the bad guy).
Half of me is glad he doesn't see that side of his dad and sees him as a hero, but the other half is dreading the day that goes wrong, and ashamedly I am envious that he sees his dad as this incredible person and I am just boring mum. Kids are inherently selfish so of course they are going to gravitate towards the gift giving party dad.
Son is now saying he would love to live with him. He's 7, I don't take it too personally, but sometimes it hurts because of how abusive I know his father to be.
Has anyone any advice? Does the mask wear off? I'm scared of how wrong this might go for both of us.