To consider taking job at other end of country and leaving DC with ExH?

[Inneedofmorecoffee]

here is the situation- have been offered a big promotion, but involves moving 5-6 hours drive away from home.

I have 2 DCs - one in year 5, other about to start year 7. Their dad is my ExH. We currently share 50/50. He won’t let me take the kids.

exH was abusive and controlling during marriage and continues to be so. He openly says his aim is to make my life as difficult as possible.

he professes to adore the kids ( and they love him) but he is constantly nasty to me and makes co-parenting impossible. Life is a constant battle with him. He also is jealous of my close relationship with my kids ( I’m their mother after all!).

he is lazy with the kids and when they are with him he does the minimum and they’re expected to fit in with him. ( trips to the pub with his friends with no kids during weekends). His sole aim with 50/50 was to avoid paying maintenance and to spite me. He never takes them to their clubs

im tempted to call his bluff and take the job. It would mean I’d see kids every other weekend for a year. Then I’m hopeful I could use the experience to get a job back in my home city.

but I worry about my kids. He actively undermines me and I worry he will destroy my relationship with them.

the new job would mean more money for me and the kids and the chance for me to rebuild my future after a devastating divorce.

i also don’t think I can take much more of the continued abuse and nastiness from him.

Am I crazy to think of doing this?

Men do it all the time and no one bats an eye. Go for it.

@Pinkbonbon Dress it up however you want. Denigrating your minor child's other parent to them is shitty parenting. Putting your child in the position of having to pick one parent over the other is even shittier.

Lessons about how to form and negotiate abusive relationships are not lessons that need to be taught to a child far too young to even be considering relationships of their own.

Doesn't make it right.

Also, I assume men that abandon their children don't love them or care about them.

I can't actually believe that anyone who loves their kids would leave them with someone they know to be abusive for money. Madness.

Thinking about ways in which you could do this (because I can see absolutely why you want to):

Could you work from home Friday and/or Monday, so that you can work from either place, and give yourself more wriggle room w travel time? You could get this in place as a pattern from the start.

Is there any chance at all of a week on site and a week working from home? If so, you could still do 50/50, week by week.

Could you afford to take chunks of unpaid parental leave? If you could use that for holidays, then you could use your annual leave to create lots of long weekends. If you have 25 days leave, then that's a day every other week, and if you're happy to work from home Fri and Mon, that would mean you could potentially come home on Weds eve and leave again on Mon eve, nearly every other week...

Could you do the job 80%?

I think the sticking point for me would be that I would NOT want to give up on the 50/50. I'd need to find a way to make that continue.

Do you think he would really take them though? What if you told him you’re taking a new job (without accepting it first, of course), and that because you’d like to keep the kids in their current school, etc, that you’d like to have a discussion about him having custody 85% of the time, and you do every other weekend. He may try to throw a spanner in your “plans” by telling you that he won’t, and that you’ll need to take the DCs with you. Then you’ve won, and can take the kids.

If that doesn’t work out, you can always turn down the job and tell XH that you’re staying after all because the job offer fell through.

It’s maybe worth a punt to see what he says? He might quite enjoy telling you he won’t have the kids as much.

They should bat an eyelid though!

My husbands mum moved away when he was 11. They don't have a good relationship now and he is going no contact.

I know every situation is different, you sound like a lovely person and his mother is not. Just really have a good think. No one can tell you what to do.

Good luck x

I think people do care when men do it. Just they don’t stay friends with those men since they have fucked off anyway.

Any decent person will deep down judge them and presume they didn’t care enough or at all about their children.

The only people who don’t judge are other shitty parents, possible non parents who just don’t get it and the shitty parents often parents.

could you lay out the option (better job for mum but moving to X area) and see what the kids think? Tell them you will only take the job if they want to come with you, if they say yes - seek legal advice and push the abusive element. Surely it would have to go through the court but maybe I am naive.

I'm not saying I don't get where you're coming from as I do agree that you don't want to put responsibility on a child. That ideally, they would simply come to their own conclusions over time. And hopefully by their teens, be done with their abusive parent.

But I disagree about lessons about abusive relationships not needing to be taught early.

How many times as kids were we told to look for the good in bullies, for example. The shitest advice ever!

I think we need to be very clear with kids thar bullies are what they are and the thing to do is to run fast and far from them. Even if they are people we thought cared about us initially.

Ideally we wpuld use abstract examples and they would make the links over time to their dad. But this man has actually said 'I will use my children to hurt you'. They deserve to know that.
They are at risk. They should have the right to the knowledge so they can act to protect themselves.

With the oldest moving up to secondary, now is probably your best chance to move them with you. Could you cost in court costs with the increased salary from the new job if you stay there and don't factor in moving back?

No way would I do this.

It's not "calling his bluff", it's "playing right into his hands"!

You'd have to pay him maintenance, he'd get to poison you and paint you as the bad guy, and he wouldn't even have to do any work because his mum and sister would help him out.

I bet the increase in cash wouldn't even look that good when you factor in maintenance, running two homes, 12 hours travel every weekend.

Don't go near this.

I suppose you could ask the kids if they fancy moving and seeing their dad less but I wouldn't go without them.

Should you leave your children with an abusive man for the sake of a promotion? Think about what you’re asking here.

Do not expect your children to forgive you if you go through with this. Why should they?

@lolit i have to say this is an unhelpful comment. Yes lots of men do it. But those men are ones who do not give much of a shit about damaging their long term relationship with their children. There is no comparison with the OP and those sorts of men. At all. What do you propose the “go for it” will look like to the OP’s children? How will they understand the OP’s actions? What will be the long term effects on her and the children? Comments such as yours are really reductive and not at all helpful.

I would if he was a decent, loving father and you could trust him to take good care of your DC but you know he isn’t. They will have to drop out of their clubs and their life will be spent in the pub. Don’t do it to them.

Yes agree with this, especially if as I'm assuming the move is something like from the north or far south-west to London, which might be quite a draw for kids?

Your children and their emotional health are your priority. I would also say this to a man who was considering leaving his children with a lazy person who was not likely to put them first and was inclined to undermine his relationship with them. No way would I take the job.

@KillerTomato7

No, not for a promotion. to give her kids a better future.

It not a good thing to applaud women for behaving like the worst sort of man. It would be a better thing to encourage men to be more responsible and caring.

Your kids will not thank you for this. Do you really not think you’ll miss them terribly if you do this? Even for a year??

How would it improve their future? I can see ways in which it would adversely affect their future.

This completely!

Bless you OP and ignore judgy fuckers on here. You’re putting your future first and your kids first. I had assumed from your initial posts that you wanted to return to your home area for the kids sake or yours.
But if the new area is better for schools and future opportunities for your kids and if your new job offers a relocation package then yes definitely explore taking the kids with you.
You’ll need to negotiate on access but you might find your ex is more amenable to not doing the day to day. Maybe present it as a choice if that’s not too risky: you are taking the job, therefore he could chose to either have them most of the time or you take them and he sees them whenever he can travel to yours (open invite which he won’t take you up on) and in school holidays they will see him back at his. Or something like that- the point being he would have less responsibility if he goes along with letting you all three move together. Good luck. You’re doing so amazingly to have got through what has happened already and you sound like a great and very thoughtful mum.

I can't see any way that what you consider the upsides will look like upsides to the kids.

The thing people are judging is considering leaving the kids with their father. If OP is able to take them with her that would be entirely different.