To call it a day with DP as his "ex" wife books yet ANOTHER holiday on one of her custody weekends and he just sucks it up.

That’s just how parenting works. It can never be 100% predictable. Especially when they are teens. They get sick, injure themselves, forget to tell you about events, gets jobs, lose jobs, stay out till the middle of the night, sleep all day, lose their passports, drop their phone down a ravine, become paralysed with grief when they experience their first heartbreak etc. I think because your setup is completely set in stone with your ex you have the ability to completely put parenting aside half the time, but I think very few separated parents have such rigid arrangements.

Why is he so worried about upsetting her?

His first duty is to his children - and I'm sorry, but you make them sound a bit like a football getting kicked back and forth. If she is using the kids against him, someone has to be the adult in the room and put the kids first and it looks like it's him. She sounds the kind of spiteful woman who would pick up her ball and got home cut off their contact with their dad at the drop of a hat, so unless he can afford a small fortune in lawyer's fees, he needs to be careful to stay on her good side. That's the situation. Take it or leave it.

Only if you prioritise the parents rather than the kids.

This would be relevant if his ex died or went to jail or something. She hasn’t, she’s perfectly fine, she’s just selfish. This man can’t manage a partner until he has some boundaries. Even parents who are married can have child free weekends, and this man can’t. It’s perfectly good parenting to tell your ex we have to stick with the arrangements one weekend a year.

I’d rather see my kids than know they were going to be shipped off to a friend or family, and my kids would always come before a relationship.

This led to my breaking up with a partner because he would NOT say no to his ex wife.

It was her weekend to have custody and she was due to go on a work "outward bound" weekend. Her sister was supposed to do childcare but was ill and her parents refused. So she came back to DP. She could have cancelled the work weekend but claimed it would affect her chances of promotion. We had booked a rare weekend in a lovely hotel. It was rare because I worked every other weekend on an inflexible schedule so getting the same one off together was tricky at best of times. I told DP this was a deal breaker. If she herself had been ill and unable to do childcare it would have been different. But she was putting a social weekend before her own children and he was subbing her out. However he cancelled the booking and i cancelled him.

He tried to make it up later but I knew I would always come second place to her and his inability to say NO.

You both are still parents, after all. His ex is jerking him around, but he sounds like a good dad. I don't think you can expect to have child-free time when kids are in you your life. If you were still married then you'd be taking the kids away with you. Sharing custody gives bonus child-free time that you'd normally not get. The ex is not playing by the rules so the dh has to enforce them. If he won't then OP has to suck it up or move on.

I’d always prefer to have my kids than not. No way would I want them in childcare when I could take them myself, especially if I only saw them 50% of the time.

I get your frustration OP but as someone doing 50/50 yourself I’m kind of surprised that you can’t see that.

To be honest I think you have a good one there. He’s prioritising the kids. How must they feel when their mum is choosing a holiday over seeing them, when she many other weekends she could go too. But the kids will be ok because they have a strong steady parent in their life, namely your DP. He is putting his kids needs first, I call that good parenting. You probably do come second to him, but to me that’s being a good parenting. I would steer clear of any bloke who wouldn’t do that.

When did people start forgetting that you can take your kids on holiday with you. Sun cream ✅, sun towel ✅, kids ✅

Every parent is a 100% parent, or they’re a twat. Whatever the official arrangement, there’s a million reasons one person will end up with more than expected (or sole) care. It could be illness, death, co-parent being a twat. Whatever the reason, every decent person is willing and able to have their own kids full time. So if you aren’t on board for being with a person who has kids all of the time then you should stay away and date those without kids.

He's more bothered about upsetting his than upsetting you.
Id go away without him. You need the break from Mr Lilly Livered

Umm sorry but in this scenario it's the ex wife who's putting a dick ahead of his children.

It's the ex's weekend though, so if she really wants to go for a holiday then she needs to sort out childcare. And no, the author's husband isn't on-call childcare, just like the ex wife isn't theirs. Each should stick to the agreed schedule!

Tell him to tell her to shove off.

Don't listen to anyone who tells you "well he's their dad he has to do it", that's BS. She's taking him for a ride! She has plenty of weekends to go and do her thing, why do you always need to be the one who accommodates.

Read 'say goodbye to crazy', and stop being a doormat!

The ex wife is though. Why isn't she including the kids in her holidays or are they just for shagging? She's behaving appallingly. If he stood up to her I doubt he'd loose any custody as it sounds like she wants as much child free time with her bf as possible. Also btw she owes maintenance if the balance isn't 50 50.

This is completely crazy. I thought you were going to say that his ex was booking childfree holidays during her time with DC and it was limiting your free time together and he won't confront her about shortchanging the children. But she's asking him to take the DCs during a time when the two of you have already made concrete plans to be away and he's still agreeing to take them? There is absolutely no way that that's OK. This request shouldn't impact you at all; he just says "no" up front and leaves it up to her to reschedule her holiday or find alternate childcare.

Either he wants to see the DC as much as possible and doesn't care about your feelings, or he's so passive (or maybe specifically afraid of his ex) that he's pretty much useless as a partner. I bet he's not even insisting on CMS for the extra days he does.

If he can't even discuss this constructively with you, I doubt there's any hope.

i think the issue seems to be communication between your DP and his EX regarding holidays.
Neither should book a holiday before confirming with the other that childcare will be covered that needs to be nailed down.
Unless your DP isnt being honest and his reasoning is that he wants to spend more time with his children (i can imagine only spending 50 % of time with my kids and if i have too id jump at any chance to see do more.)

She’s already said there’s zero swapping with her dh. End it op. He wouldn’t cancel a work conference he had to be at, would he?

Rather than him pushing back, why doesn’t he try a different approach. When she tells/asks him about a certain date, can he say ‘yes that’s fine, can you have the dc on x date instead then, and you arrange a weekend away at a different time (that’s on the assumption you can swap with your exdh.

That's a genuinely frustrating pattern to watch play out, especially right on the heels of the final order finally going through. The timing does feel pointed, whether or not it actually was.
A few things stand out from what you've described:
The core issue isn't really about holidays or custody weekends — it's that he doesn't feel able to say no to her. That's been the throughline for three years: deferring on the divorce terms, deferring on the custody swaps, agreeing "so he doesn't upset her." The holiday bookings are just the latest place it's showing up.
That's worth him sitting with, separate from how angry you are right now. Not "why does she keep doing this" but "why do I keep saying yes." Because even if she stopped tomorrow, the pattern will resurface somewhere else — a different ex, a demanding boss, anyone who pushes — if the underlying habit of avoiding conflict at any cost doesn't shift.
For you, it's a rough spot to be in. You're not his ex, you have no standing to raise it with her, and yet you're the one absorbing the fallout every time a rare five-day window gets swallowed. That's a legitimate thing to feel resentful about, and it's fair to say so to him directly — not as an ultimatum, but as "this keeps costing us, and I need you to actually push back sometimes, even just to ask for a different weekend."
Is this something that's just happened, or has today's news made you want to raise it with him tonight?

Why doesn’t he say no Im away that weekend. Mind boggling.

That's a genuinely frustrating pattern to watch play out, especially right on the heels of the final order finally going through. The timing does feel pointed, whether or not it actually was.
A few things stand out from what you've described:
The core issue isn't really about holidays or custody weekends — it's that he doesn't feel able to say no to her. That's been the throughline for three years: deferring on the divorce terms, deferring on the custody swaps, agreeing "so he doesn't upset her." The holiday bookings are just the latest place it's showing up.
That's worth him sitting with, separate from how angry you are right now. Not "why does she keep doing this" but "why do I keep saying yes." Because even if she stopped tomorrow, the pattern will resurface somewhere else — a different ex, a demanding boss, anyone who pushes — if the underlying habit of avoiding conflict at any cost doesn't shift.
For you, it's a rough spot to be in. You're not his ex, you have no standing to raise it with her, and yet you're the one absorbing the fallout every time a rare five-day window gets swallowed. That's a legitimate thing to feel resentful about, and it's fair to say so to him directly — not as an ultimatum, but as "this keeps costing us, and I need you to actually push back sometimes, even just to ask for a different weekend."
Is this something that's just happened, or has today's news made you want to raise it with him tonight?

It must be very frustrating. Does he expect you to be around? Can you go off anyway? I know it’s not the same.