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?

I absolutely understand your dilemma, but I think you would be highly unreasonable to do this. And I think you know that.

If you do this you will be seem by everyone to have abandoned your kids, and as you describe him as an abusive man I cannot fathom why you would consider it.

Your dc need you. The change to high school is a huge adjustment, why would you make it harder by moving so far away.

I understand you are trying to extricate yourself from an abusive situation but this is not the way.

Look at the freedom project for how to handle his manipulation and coercive control etc, seek legal recompense for his behaviour but for the love of God do not punish your kids by leaving them with him.

Am I understanding this correctly…

you left him because he is nasty, abusive & controlling.

he is also lazy and fails to look after your children properly, doesn’t take them to clubs etc

now you’re considering letting him parent your children almost full time?

and they will be with you for only 3 days out of 14?

are you serious?

I think it's admirable to want to do this to better yours and your kids future.

I'm not sure I could do this. I could do it in my current situation, whereby me and the dad are together. I'd be happy with that. I don't know why leaving them with him when not together feels like I wouldn't be able to do it?

Tough decision. Is there any more negotiation or flex in the role?

So you dislike him because he's unpleasant and abusive, but you want to leave your kids with him? 😕

I don’t think it’s a good idea op. I actually did a similar thing for one year…my exH was very similar to yours in that he opposed all the things I did to try to help our ND children just because he couldn’t bear to agree with me. I left my eldest son with him because he’d already moved in at that point because I couldn’t cope with his behaviour. I think I was being driven insane by my ex and my awful mother and I was stressed all the time, making it impossible to cope. It was a terrible time and to be honest I wasn’t thinking rationally.

He didn’t try to turn DS against me as such, but at first they bonded because of their shared dislike of me. I think he cared enough about DS that he knew he needed a relationship with me. I returned after a year and the relationship between my ex and DS broke down very quickly. Ex put no energy into getting help for DS so he’s barely left his room for about three years. That year was incredibly exhausting because every weekend was spent driving.

I would bide your time. I know you want to get away so that you can start the healing process but I don’t think it will work. You’ve only got a few years until your DC are able to make their own decision. Until then, work on techniques to minimise his effect on you….difficult I know when he’s using the DC as weapons. Don’t let him ruin the relationship you have with your DC. They will soon see him for what he is and kids almost always have a closer bind with their mother.

How long away is it by train? Most jobs now you can negotiate some flexibility. I’d take the job tbh and move about an hour closer (you don’t need to tell exh or get his approval for this ) and use some of the extra money to hire a nanny. You can pay for the nanny to faciliate his visits so he’d have no legal ground to object as zero affect on him.

no way would I leave my dc that young with an abusive shithole

OP, I really sympathise with all you have been through with your abusive EH, but when it comes down to it, this is a choice between money and children. I know you have said you want to get away from him, but he will continue to exert control over you no matter how far away you are. He will use the children instead of directly controlling you, arranging for them to be away or doing something on your weekend with them and couch it in terms of being good for the children and if you object you are being selfish in not wanting them to do it. He will mess about with contact times and fill the children’s minds with tales about you not loving them and wanting money rather than them and you may end up barely seeing them at all.
Your children would rather have you, your love and protection and your care than more money.
And once they are older and more independent, you will be able to advance your career safe in the knowledge that you did all you could for your children and gave them your time and you.

It's a bastard dilemma OP, but my instinct would be that if you have managed to get this great opportunity, you are capable of securing more, perhaps nearer to home. If you can't move your children, and you don't trust your ex, and you don't want to reduce your time with them, then that's your answer isn't it? This move isn't for you, not yet. But keep looking for better roles and I'm sure someone of your talent will find one. Make that search the thing you invest your time in now, and it might seem like a more positive and less stressful option.

You Can't leave them with an abusive man
Do you not realise what it will do to them ????
You know how you feel
These are little children
Madness

Will your ex say that he is now the default parent and go for full custody and demand child maintenance from you?
He will have a full year to destroy your children’s connection with you. If he is as nasty as you say he will do it as he knows it will hurt you immensely. He is already neglecting the regular parenting jobs. If they are there full time he won’t improve and will get worse as they will be with him all the time.

I'm sad that this is even a question! And I hope to God that your children never find out that you even considered moving so far away from them.

Of course you can't leave young children with a neglectful father.

Why on earth would you consider leaving your children with such a terrible person?

I get it, my ex was abusive to me too, but unfortunately sometimes you have to make sacrifices until the kids are a bit older. Unfair yes but it is what it is.

I've advised many posters to call a man's bluff hut I wouldn't recommend it here for so many reasons. The primary one being that you'll never get custody again, nor will you be able to revert to 5050 without consent or considerable effort.

You have the following options:

• go and accept they may live with him permanently and as resident parent forever
• seek permanent primary custody and then go (probably no time to do that woth the current offer)
• Stay and accept status quo

In your shoes I'd probably resign myself to staying and hoping the kids grow up and see him in his true light themselves.

I think it will affect the children, even if their father is loving and kind to them whilst you are away.

My reason for saying don't take the offer.

All I can tell you as a teacher of secondary age DC is that every child I taught where Mum was not in the picture was very damaged by this. It will affect your DC badly. I suspect some of it is that society does not expect women to abandon their children, but the children whose mothers had chosen to leave them - for whatever reason - struggled a lot. They all had self esteem issues and I remember one child crying at 15 and telling me, 'If even my own mum didn't love me enough to stay with me what does that say about me?'

DC where dad had abandoned the family did much better. It wasn't rare, they didn't feel weird and people seemed to accept that there are a lot of deadbeat dads about. I think you have to accept that if you take a job the other side of the country and become someome who visits your children that this will affect them. And yes, I assume your abusive ex will encourage and add to this viewpoint.

She is improving her career and finances so she can improve her kids lives and it's only for a year. If she was a man she would be praised.

I wouldn’t do it OP. stay and focus on your kids and a brilliant career closer to home. They’ll see his true colours soon. Esp your oldest. She will not want to miss clubs/got to school in dirty clothes at secondary.

Don't do it. Your kids need a stable, loving and accessible parent and that is you. Forget about extra money, better prospects, challenging job. All that would look pretty meaningless if you lost your relationship with your kids or if they started to struggle because of their emotionally absent father.

You worry about it, but are seriously considering doing it??

your poor children 😢

If he's already abusive, can you imagine what he would be saying to the children.

This would be a challenging move, even if you were still married and he was a supportive husband.

I understand the desire to build a better future but under the circumstances,I think it could be detrimental to your children's welfare and their relationship with you.

I wouldn’t praise a man for leaving his child with someone who wasn’t likely to prioritise their needs and had the capacity to alienate them from him. I don’t think an improvement in their financial situation would compensate for the emotional damage

I can’t believe you are actually considering this move. In your words your husband is abusive and controlling and neglects your children. Sending them to school in dirty mismatched clothes and palming them off in his family. It doesn’t matter how good the job is, the children should come first.

To be helpless children left in the hands of an abusive man FOR A YEAR is unconscionable.

for the children’s own mother to consider doing this to them for any reason is hideous.

I feel for you but it's a no from me, a thousand times over!

I wouldn't really do this but if you can somehow use the threat of him being a fulltime parent to get him to agree with the kids going with you, that woudl be a possibility.
you can't actively choose to leave the kids with a bad parent. you can raise it as a possibility and hope his laziness kicks in and he would rather they go with you