Punished for 'affair'?

[HeyDrake]

My ex moved out a while ago after I told him that I had been seeing someone else. The relationship had been dead for ages, and I was upfront that he should move out and had been saying so since last May.
Since then he has been refusing to have our children on the night time/ evening so I can go out. He has one child in the day but not both. Do you think this is fair? The relationship is over, now all he is doing now is punishing our children. And me.
Can I make him realise that I have the right to a private life and time to myself? Can I go to court and could they enforce this?

@Followthetrend so how would you have reacted, after being told for months that the relationship is over, that I found someone else, like I said after months of no relationship. No sex, no cooking meals for each other, separate beds, separate lives. No dates. No physical contact. That is not cheating, cheating is about the deceit.

It's not just conservative it's overtly misogynist.

I'm so sorry, I don't know how you make someone not be a dick to his children. Hopefully things will settle down and he'll rethink.

I don't know how miserable you're supposed to be, and for how long, before MN will accept someone who cares for children that society doesn't GAF about has a right to move on from an unhappy marriage.

The father in this case was told repeatedly that the relationship was over, but chose to ignore it until OP met someone else - who wasn’t the catalyst for the marriage breakup, but for the change that would inevitably have been made. And instead of choosing to take responsibility for his children and forging a relationship with them, DH is punishing all of them and laying the foundations for alienating his children when they are old enough to understand the choice he made.

And despite all of this there are posters here insisting that OP should be the one to leave because she’s the one who had ‘an affair’. Despite the fact that DH has made it clear the children are her responsibility. I don’t see many women putting that on fathers who leave.

Great use of pork there! 😁

He's not shirking his responsibilities. He is taking the children on his terms (i.e., one at a time).

OP is complaining as he won't take them both so she can get her leg over. It is not unreasonable to decline this request.

It also doesn't mean their ex they wanted nothing to do with should provide their respite.

WOW the hard of thinking are out in force on this thread. The misogyny from other women really saddens me.

OP you didn't have an affair. But even if you'd had 10 affairs, this man still has responsibility for his children. And should WANT to maintain good relationships with them.
You deserve (and need) a break.
Unfortunately I think with men like him the only response is to completely disengage, don't argue with him, and make alternative arrangements.
He gets to look both children together or not at all. No wonder you met someone else, the bar was low with this idiot.

How dare he. Wish you all the best and hope things improve.

Their own FATHER shouldn't look after them?! What planet are you on.

So wounding that you abandoned your children ?

We’re just not going to agree, clearly. You think he should be able to parent “on his own terms” but she has to suck it up and work around him as penance for daring to end the relationship.

Dress it up how you want, ultimately it is pure misogyny to expect a woman to be punished for the massive sin of wanting to have sex.

Thank god women aren’t able to just parent on their own terms! Millions of children wandering the streets as mum had decided she can only deal with one at a time etc.

I don’t understand how you even start a relationship with someone else in the first place when you keep going on about always having the kids with you. Surely while you still lived together and the children weren’t in school you had them even more? Did you start dating with them?

Either way you arrange contact with the children between both parents because it suits the kids and the parents. The contact is for the relationship between the mother/father and the kids not for the purpose of going out or dating.

Stop being ridiculous. Taking one child at the time is ridiculous, he's their father! It's astounding to see so many women prioritise a man and his tantrum over innocent children, I doubt you would ever make excuses for a woman using her children as a weapon. Shame on you.

So if a man ends a relationship, the woman is free to abandon her kids and you would think that's fair enough?! My fucking arse you would. Pure misogyny.

She didn’t cast him aside, she fell out of love. No one should stay in a relationship they are not happy with. She doesn’t now want him to be nice she wants him to be a parent and have both his children

So he can have 1 child at a time for a few hours to spite OP because he doesn’t want her having a social life and you think that’s ok? He gets to have 7 nights a week to do as he pleases whilst making it difficult for OP, how’s that fair?

No, but on a separate note breaking up a relationship doesn't mean the fathers responsibility to his children are no longer there.

He's not doing his share of parenting, and it really isn't to the benefit of his children. A decent parent doesn't use their children to grind down their ex. If he showed up as a father, on the terms that work best for his children, respite wouldn't be an issue.

Yes, I've seen women ending up in residential psychiatric facilities because of it.

You think being sectioned is the same as abandoning? I bet I'd be hard pushed to even find a thread on here by a woman who's partner has left her, so she refuses to see the kids or have more than one at a time. Stop making excuses for shit fathers.

If he’s the type of dickhead who is being deliberately obstructive, then the situation needs to be presented to him differently.

I’d have no problem explaining to him that if he won’t do any overnights etc then my new bloke will stay over as he’s keen to help me with DC. If that’s likely to enrage him, then he might change his mind. With these blokes, asking or begging for what you need is never going to work. You need to do the opposite.

My response to any unpleasant bloke who is threatening 50/50 custody if I didn’t want that would be to say - great, time for me to have a social life!

Thankfully this is a tiny tiny minority of women who would likely have had longstanding significant mental health issues prior to the cheating, if they had a breakdown as a result. Cheating is very far from unusual, but that scenario (ending up in a psychiatric facility) is in comparison. I don't think using extreme examples is helpful.

Most women would not abandon their children and leave them with dad due to dad meeting someone else, as we all know.

All that aside, this lady didn't cheat. She ended the relationship, which is entirely her choosing and does not absolve the father of his responsibilities to his kids.

This in spades !

@Theresyoursalad "Thankfully this is a tiny tiny minority of women who would likely have had longstanding significant mental health issues prior to the cheating, if they had a breakdown as a result. Cheating is very far from unusual, but that scenario (ending up in a psychiatric facility) is in comparison. I don't think using extreme examples is helpful."

It's more common than most of us think, according to my friends who work as psychiatric nurses.
Just dismissing these people as being "fruitloops" prior to the breakdown isn't helpful either. Some even go on to commit suicide.

I would really disagree that a parent entering medical care, whether that's for mental health issues or for cancer, is comparable to or considered as abandoning your children.

I don't disagree that cheating can have a horrendous impact on many people, but since the OP didn't cheat its not really relevant to this guys behaviour.

@Pickledpeanuts I don't disagree that cheating can have a horrendous impact on many people, but since the OP didn't cheat its not really relevant to this guys behaviour.

Maybe to you. But we are on the outside looking in.

The guy refused to accept the relationship was over until she took up with another man. Then reality smacked him in the face, To him that was the betrayal.

The problem with your scenario is that you were both carrying on with your normal family roles you being a stay at home parent and him being the breadwinner.
Rightly or wrongly he feels that he was funding your lifestyle whilst you were off out dating then he loses his home and is being expected to find a new home suitable for him and the dc and furnish it from scratch (unless you split all the furniture and white goods) whilst paying you child support (which he should).
Tell me how do you expect your dc to handle the changes in living environment and not having you there overnight? I ask because I know how difficult it is for my asd dc to handle small changes let alone huge ones like you are trying to rush them into.
Quite frankly I can see why there dad could be refusing to have them together or overnight just now, your dc need time to adjust involving short 1to1 visits to dads new house building up over time (at a pace that suits them not you) to 1to1 overnights, then having them both together during the day at his and finally him having them both overnight at the same time when they are ready. Did it ever occur to you that he might be putting your children 1st in this rather than "punishing" you?
Whether you realise it or not your coming across as really rather selfish here