Separated from my child's father last year, because he was a nightmare to live with. Sulky, messy, noisy, volatile, refused to work but wasted the family money, refused to cook or do chores, wouldn't look after DS properly when I went back to work, put me down and criticised my looks and personality constantly, always picked out flaws with other people and reasons that we shouldn't talk to them.
Ds (5) doesn't like him very much, and cries and gets really upset about going to his house so ex mostly comes to mine to visit DS and had started to behave a lot better, and started acting like a pretty decent Dad most of the time. A couple of months ago though he started getting really abusive again (seems to be a cycle that happens every few months, I've told him to go get assessed for Bipolar or similar but he won't). He's been making life a living hell. Shouts all the time, sulks over everything, has a tantrum if asked to do anything or if asked to stop behaving so horribly. This is mostly aimed at me but two weeks ago he started shouting aggressively at DS so I told him to leave and never come back. He then got in my face VERY aggressively, went to hit me then dropped his fist and stormed out.
After a week he asked to start having DS, grovelled and said that it's all my fault that he's abusive because he hates me so loses his temper at the sight of me. After a few days of him repeatedly telling me this and making me doubt myself, I agreed that he could have DS over the weekend. It took a LOT of convincing, DS didn't want anything to do with him.
DS seems to have had a lovely weekend, but mentioned that there was a man living at ex's house now. I questioned ex about it, and it turns out that ex has chosen this weekend to ask his brother to move in with him to save some money. This brother lived with us for a couple of weeks a few years back, and we had to ask him to leave because he exploded one day in front of DS and started shouting and swearing and being really aggressive out of nowhere. I'm aware that the brother does this to their Mum a lot, because when they were growing up she just laughed at this kind of behaviour and had a very 'boys will be boys' kind of attitude over it. Now she just runs off to her bedroom and cries whenever one of them blows up at her like this. We've never had any kind of apology from the brother about this episode, I haven't really spoken to him since.
I asked ex about this and he said that the brother was just staying for a couple of days, not moving in. I told him that I was angry that I hadn't been informed about this after everything that had gone on, when I was struggling to trust him with DS in the first place. He immediately blew up and went on a huge rant over text about how I can't control him, he can do what he wants and it's got nothing to do with me, his brother lives there now so he's just going to stop seeing DS altogether. I tried to explain that my issue was with him not mentioning it, and only because of the events of the last few weeks as I was obviously feeling very wary and cautious about DS going in the first place. Then he apologised and said he went about it the wrong way, that he completely understands why I'm not happy about him not mentioning it. I said that it's upsetting that his immediate reaction was to stop contact with DS rather than having a discussion about things, and he flipped again and began calling me names and telling me to 'go away' and that he's going to go to the solicitors because he's sick of me ruling his life.
These situations are so difficult because of course you want to keep DC safe, but realistically you can't do much about it because Dads have just as much say in their kids lives as Mums do.
AIBU to be angry that he didn't tell me about moving his brother in? I know that I technically have no right to know, but I feel it would have been the decent thing to do given the current fragile state of things.
Just to add, I've had years of him telling me that I'm controlling if ever I set any personal boundaries or ask him to help out around the house or not break anything, so now I doubt my own judgement and wonder if I should just keep my mouth shut every time he's horrid.