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?

I'm a social worker (AMPH) and have worked for over 20 years with Mh hospitals, sectioning individuals under the MHA, so my comment was from a place of knowledge and experience myself.
Please don't call people with mental health issues fruitloops.

And if we may get back to the point, because yours is irrelevant.
This guy hasn't been sectioned. He is choosing not to have his kids, or only on his own terms. Women don't get to do that, and don't want to do that.
The knots you're tying yourself into in order to make excuses for this guy are wild.

He's a lazy father and I'm not surprised OP had enough.

@Hoardasurass 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).

This nails it ^.
It's not surprising he is aggrieved - to put it mildly.

@Theresyoursalad Please don't call people with mental health issues fruitloops.

It was you who dismissed and minimised these individuals' situation not me,

He may well be aggrieved, that's fine. Relationships end for many reasons. Bottom line is, he doesn't get to drop his responsibilities.

It's a man putting his own feelings before those of his children. Twas ever thus.

Not necessarily these are two children who have significant needs due to asd he could be putting them 1st by slowly introducing the massive change we don't know all we know is the op is pissed off because she can't be out clubbing yet

Mum wants to go out 'clubbing' 😂

These kids have two parents. You're literally making things up to excuse this fella.

Who needs men when women like you hold up the patriarchy so well.
SMH.

She told him to move out, she told him it was over, but now it's her fault he didn't listen?! It's not like she was forcing him to stay for finances.

@Theresyoursalad "The people occupying mental health beds due solely to a partner cheating on them, are indeed very minimal in this country. I am well placed to state this."

Cheating is only a small part of the whole picture of relationship breakdowns.

Indeed.
Relationship breakdowns are extremely common, as we are all aware, and overwhelmingly do not result in one or both partners being sectioned and placed in mental health facilities.

@theresyoursalad If you read the OPs posts she does infact complain about not being able to go out clubbing,drinking and dating. We also know that the OPs dc can't handle respite care due to the amount of changes.
Everyone knows how stressful both moving home and a breakup can be and guess what it's even worse for kids with asd. The only way to handle such massive changes without inflicting unnecessary mental harm to the children is introducing the changes slowly and preferably on a one to one basis. I've asked the op if this could be what he's doing but the op hasn't answered, so we don't know.
Just because I'm not willing to automatically assume that a man who is doing something that is the best course of action for the autistic children in this situation is doing it to punish the op doesn't make me a misogynist.

I agree, but the trauma can skew someone's thinking.

You have an affair and you are the victim....zero sympathy for you. only sympathy for your ex and your children who have to suffer the drama and chaos caused by your infidelity. Sorry to be harsh but just saying it how it is.

You're saying it how you imagined the situation actually.

Op didn't have an affair, they were separated but living in the same house.

What makes you a misogynist is coming up with a made up narrative to excuse this man's poor parenting.

If the scenario was that this guy had said to OP - 'look, our differences aside, I am concerned about the impact on dc of all the changes, let's discuss a plan in stages to help them manage the transition, with a view to both dc spending time with me going forward' then the OP wouldn't have needed to start the thread in the first place.

Whatever OP wants to do in her spare time is none of anyone else's business. He should be prioritising his kids.

Read the OP properly. You’re not saying anything ‘how it is’. She was telling her DH the marriage was dead for a long time. He refused to believe it or act on it. They’ve had what sounds like a miserable existence and it took the OP meeting someone else to actually end what died some time ago. She also says she told her DH she’d met someone, before anything happened between them.

Any drama and chaos they have now is entirely of her DH’s making - instead of accepting that he put them through unnecessary misery by not acting until OP found someone else, he’s now using their children to punish OP for the ‘affair’. His children will resent him when they’re old enough to understand. What was OP supposed to do - waste her life in a miserable sham of a marriage for the sake of the children and have them grow up believing that mum and dad’s relationship is normal ?

Op clearly said in her opening post that ex moved out after she confessed she had been seeing someone else.

Have you read the rest of the ops posts?

She also said that she had been telling her ex that the marriage was over and he didn’t want to hear it. They were living separately in the same house by that time. Hardly surprising that she met someone else under the circumstances - which, by the way, she confessed before anything physical had happened. Now her ex is using his own children as weapons. And you feel sorry for him ?

Clearly not - or perhaps this poster is of the opinion that marriage should be for life, no matter how miserable you make each other.

We can't have it both ways. We all know this guy would be crucified on here if the same happened in reverse.

You might hope for some bizarre reasons kids end up hating their Dad but from experience of friends growing up in such a situation it's usually the party who quickly brings in a 3rd party in the parental relationship causing the damage between the parental relationship that gets any sort of resentment from children.

The relationship might have been dead but you end things first before striking up new relationships.

Look I'm not making up scenarios to excuse his behaviour I'm looking at this from the point of view of an autistic mother to an autistic child and I know how badly he would react to suddenly having to go stay elsewhere overnight once a week and the difficulties that would carry over to my home when he got back and how long it would take him to be content in himself again. The thought of having to deal with 2 asd dc going through that every week on repeat alone is quite daunting.
I would generally agree with you about what she does on her down time being noones business brought it up and I'm wondering is anyone thinking about what's best for the children here

She did end things first.

Just read the ops posts.

I am in a similar position to some degree although there was no affair on my side. It is awful and he is being an utter idiot. I am trying to set up other childcare but like you I have a disabled child and it is v difficult. I think trying to make other arrangements is all you can do.

To be clear I think the affair is irrelevant. He should be helping to care for his kids because.. well they are his kids too.