Macdoodle - I was talking about the impression the OP had given me about the XP in this situation. I never said anything about all women/men/XPs/singleparents/whatever other words you want to put in my mouth.
My point is that the situation appears to have been poorly managed by both the XP and the DH. The DH seems kinder than the XP but I'm sure that is because it is his wife who is writing about the situation. Neither the DH or the XP are the ones who matter in this situation, it is the DCs and, taking the OP at face value (which is all you can do) I can't see how the XP can be doing a great job at helping her children have contact with their fathers as the biological dads appear to have no contact or interest and she is poor in her relations with the DH (for whatever reason). I have not said she is a terrible person just that I think, from the information given, she doesn't really want the children to have a father.
I agree with dr and nikki. Just because someone has hurt you is absolutely no excuse for using (hurting) your children by speaking to the children in the way the OP has described and emotionally manipulating them in the way described. I think it is unnacceptable for the children to be abusing the OP and the responsibility for this can only lie mainly with the XP as she, really, is their only parent and maybe, secondarily with the DH for managing his side of things poorly.
It is completely pointless speculating how this would sound from the POV of the XP as this question is from the POV of the OP.
I have two children with a man who emotionally, psychologically, financially and sexually abused me for several years. My second child is the result of him raping me when I was refusing to sleep with him after I had caught him with the girl he's just broken up with. He was sleeping with her from when our son was 4 months old, he told her we were not together and I was a mental stalker who couldn't get over him and told me when I caught him that she was the same. He eventually left me for her (hoorah!) but in the process the police had to be called because he had started to be physical with me. I suspected he was cheating on me throughout our 'relationship' but found out later he had slept with over 20 people during 3 years including all my female friends bar 1 he had also stolen from my family and blamed it on me without my knowledge so that I had no relationship with them.
He used his family to abuse me too, during our relationship and after. After he left he used the police, his family, his friends and the court system to attack and intimidate me. I was frightened to leave the house for a whole year. He denied paternity of the second child, spent a long time and a lot of effort convincing everyone that I was preventing him from seeing his child and that I was a liar to the extent people would follow me shouting and swearing if I ever went into town to get shopping. I had to get shopping delivered and was too afraid to walk half a mile (in the opposite direction to town) to my mum's (started building the relationship after he left and we discovered the truth) so she had to come pick me up every day as I was also scared of being in the home he had left but couldn't move because of the old HB system and me being on benefits.
In the end I went to Sefton Womens and Children's aid who are most fantastic. Everything improved from there. They encouraged me to go to the police about some, what looked like but wasn't in the end, dodgy underage porn I found on his PC and about him harrassing me. They helped support me through court and counselling. In the end the judgement of the court was that the second child was proven to be his after a DNA test and that I had never been obstructive to him having contact and that the whole case was a waste of the court's time as it should have been dealt with in mediation which initially (while he was harrassing me) was innapropriate but after that he refused to attend.
I have only once told him he was couldn't come to see the children. That was after her had taken us through court for 2 years and still been unreliable in coming to his choice of arranged contact and had decided a couple of hours before pick up that he didn't want to have them overnight. I had not wanted him to have them overnight, he had pushed for it and I had been pushed into a corner by the court over agreeing to it. He had done it once and decided he didn't want to do it again. So I told him he had to stick to the order the court had made for contact and if he was choosing to break it I was not willing to make another one without mediation because I felt we were unable to sort out a satisfactory arrangement from the children's POV without help. This was basically the same as saying he couldn't see them because he flatly refused to comply with the court arranged contact and we had to wait for him to contact mediation as the last 2/3 times I had contacted them I had gotten childcare to go for the interview and then they had been unable to contact him to go for his interview - basically he didn't answer any of his phones to them or respond to their letters.
I have always tried to facilitate contact with his children and to make it a good experience for the children too. I have done my best to help him to provide something stable for them. I had to put my feelings about him and his new g/f (who he has just split up with) to bed for several years as the children loved her and she very kindly cared for them while she was with him - which I appreciated. After we had split up he had egged her on to pretend to drive her car at me when I was crossing the road with DS in the pram 5 months pregnant with DD, so I had a lot of feelinggs about her caring for them initially and she had to prove herself. The things he did to me/said about me and the children were truly awful but now 4 years on we are able to get on well, I have found myself feeling sorry for him and the help and leeway I give him over the children comes more naturally now.
You don't have to be bitter, paranoid and hurtful just because someone has shat on you from a great height - pardon my french! Lol. It is much harder to be forgiving and kind but it is what you should do for your children's sake because they are likely to love their other parent just as much as they love you. To me I see it as a success that they love their dad they way they do, I don't want them to hate him, I don't want to hate him even though we all have reason enough to. Things are relatively harmonious now, I have married someone new and we have 9 week old twins. XP has been diagnosed with BPD and is struggling but I don't mind helping him to keep his head above water. The children are happy and secure in all their relationships and even though they only see XP for 2 hours every month or so atm they still call him dad and not my husband who has been around since they were 1 and 2 (3 and 4 now). We have spoken about DH adopting them, he is keen, and XP is not against the idea as he doesn't want legal responsibility for the children but wants to be sure DH is sticking around before he signs them over. I will never deny XP contact, even if DH adopts them eventually, they'll always see XP.