so sad children have to live like this

[Pasithea]

For a specific reason I spend 45 minutes in a McDonald's / garage. Car park on Friday evening.
during this time 4 cars pulled up and one or two children got out or where carried to another car with obviously the other parent in. Cases swapped , children swapped and off they went.

It must be so horrible to be passed over like this on a weekend , some where crying most just resigned. How can kids continue with clubs and friends etc when they spend weekends away with another parent.

She refers to "mum's house" and "dad's house"- never "my house".

Of course people will justify doing what they want to do because they cam thy have the power, kids powerless. Kids are learning that parents' feelings prevail - their childrens' - not so much.
How about one house, one flat, the kids remain in the house, and the adults alternate between the house and the flat, so that the kids have their home, and the adults are displaced every week.
No...thought not...

Singsong is suggesting that women should continue to live in abusive marriages

No one should stay in abusive relationships, or would you rather I told by DB to go back to his abusive exW and just turn a blind eye to the bruises and broken bones

My husband was abusive, and it made me suicidal. He was fine until the night I came home from hospital with our first child. If i hadn't left him there is a high chance I would have killed myself. Luckily I had an amazing psychologist who helped me find the strength to leave.

Much abuse only begins with pregnancy / birth.

Do not leap to judgement so fast.

mrsultra I tried that. My ex would use every moment he was in the house to be nasty/ move stuff/ destroy stuff. It seems like the solution but it only takes one of the parents to be difficult to make it an impossible one.

Well let me see Mrs....

Dad lives with the ow. Would ow want to come and live in my house half the week so dad can spend time with child? Er, no.

Dad works an hour away from my house. Would dad want to commute for half the week instead of living around the corner from his job? No

Family home was owned by dad, who leased as part of his job, so we weren't able to stay after the split and didn't want to as ow was pretty much camping there at that time.

We don't have shared care anyway because dad isn't much interested in shared care and at the point we split couldn't be trusted to adequately look after his kids anyway.

So it's a nice idea in principle, but doesn't work in practice most of the time. Is that because I can't be arsed to move myself each week and would rather make my child shunt about because I hold the power?

As a lone parent who works all hours to raise my child alone, to put food on the table and a roof over our heads, who has changed career because as a lone parent my old career wasn't compatible with raising my child, who sat alone in an ambulance with my child having an epileptic seizure because there is no one else there to support us.... I find the idea that I put my own needs above my child's offensive.

Yes exactly swallowed as a lone parent who works late into the night to see more of my children in the day, who sat up all night with my son for a week when he was poorly in hospital, who cooks every meal from scratch to accommodate his multiple life-threatening food allergies, who can remember the last time I watched a film that wasn't a kids film or had a day off to myself (I work on the day their dad has them) I resent the implications of some of the comments on this thread. My life revolves around the children and their needs, to the point my GP lectures me on taking some time for myself!

singsong are you my mum? That's the sort of rubbish she comes out with!

Fwiw I am with my children's dad but that's because he's a great husband and father. If our relationship deteriorated, I wouldn't stay just for the children because I remember that from my childhood and it's a bloody miserable house to grow up in.

We swap children with my parents in ikea car park, odd to think someone could be judging us. Seen others doing likewise and its never occurred to me to wonder about their stories.

Of course 'OW doesn't want to', 'ExH doesn't want to' - it is very inconvenient - no-one wants to.
But the adults split, because they can and they make the arrangements for their own convenience.
Its inconvenient for the kids too! But they are overruled because it is what the adults 'want' that matters.

mrs are you just wilfully ignoring all the comments about abusive relationships?

Oh FFS do you seriously think it's possible, even in the most amicable of splits, for ex-spouses to share a house (or presumably a house and a flat, otherwise they'd three residences to be maintained)?

Anyone who has not been in a loveless/violent marriage or has not been left by a cheating spouse has little to offer on this subject. Your opinions about what should be are about as valid as my opinion that it should be sunny every day in July.

There'd. Damned autocorrect.

The usual MN spiel about every divorce being due to an abusive H.
Only on MN...

Maybe - and you have turned out such a delightful, polite human being

Mrs those points about abusive marriages are valid, but also you do realise that not loving each other is also a perfectly valid reason to split?

If you stay in a loveless marriage for the sake of the children, you are doing them serious damage. Kids pick up on these things. They know.

The usual MN spiel about every divorce being due to an abusive H

Well no as in my pp my brother left due to abusive wife, or do you not think women would behave like that

People are making reference to abusive relationships to illustrate why your opinion about what couples should do is manifestly stupid. No one is saying all divorces are because of abuse.

Mrsultra just to clarify and avoid missunderstandings:

A) are you saying that parents in abusive relationships should stay together?

B) are you saying that parents not in abusive relationships but deeply unhappy about their union should stay together?

What does Mrs suggest you do if one party ups and leaves?

Go and move in with them so the kids have two parents under the same roof? Exh and ow in main bedroom, wife and kids in another?

Actually, who cares? The whole thing is ludicrous.

I was with my dh for 6 years before we married and a further 7 before we had children. Slow down. Get to know each other. See having children as the commitment it is. Maybe if more people did that, less would be in McDonald's car parks getting handed over each week.

Singsong I was with my children's father for 10 years before we had children. I remember sitting in an Italian restaurant and there was a well known footballer with his son obviously on an access visit. (ex was a footballer and the break up was well known). He said that must be a terrible way to live and only see your kids EOW.

A year later that is exactly what he was doing because life was more exciting with his gorgeous secretary than it was with his wife and two kids under three.

Don't be so smug.

I don't understand some of the cruel what can only be referred to as jibes on this thread. Most of us are in this situation because another adult chose to leave us and our children. It breaks my heart that my kids have to go suitcases loaded to their dads. But they still do all their clubs and go to parties whoever has them. They have love in both homes and now no sadness or arguing or tears or tension because mummy and daddy don't get along. It's not what I ever thought would happen to me or what I want for my kids but I'm doing my best. I won't let some cruel people on here put me down

But they still do all their clubs and go to parties whoever has them.

Speak for yourself. Mine do not despite best attempts.

I think there is a deliberate misunderstanding. nobody on this thread has said where there is abuse you should stay together. However I do think divorce should be a more last resort than it often is

Toffee, actually singsong said exactly that and MrsUltra simply ignored it.

It isn't great no but it's perhaps a better compromise than not seeing a parent at all (my father got a job in the US when I was 12 to escape the awfulness of the divorce and unfaithfulness on both sides). It's better than seeing a parent emotionally abused. It's better than seeing a parent physically abused and it's a darn sight better than living in a sterile home with two people who should never have got married in the first place even though on the surface there were no problems with money, abuse, etc., just two people who couldn't stand the sight of each other in a loveless, fun less environment.

You mentioned OP your guilt at family occasions when your parents weren't civil or blanked each other. Why? Why your guilt. Mine blanked each other at my wedding. I wanted them both there. It was their problem, not mine. My mother was livid that I insisted my father give me away. They refused to be in the same photograph. My father refused to sit at the top table because my mother was there. It didn't ruin my day at all and none of my guests took any notice of them.

Their behaviour is their problem; please don't let it project onto you because it really isn't your fault. I am also sorry that what you saw the other day upset you enough to get you to post and sorry that you have been jumped on. I don't you were intentionally judgy at all. I think that what you saw brought back your own disappointments and pain and you projected these onto the circumstances of others.

It's hard when parents split for what seems no good reason - I remember it only too well and thinking for many many years that they could have just got on with it for my sake. My own children are very much older teenagers now (cripes one is nearly 21!) and I can look back and see it all from a distance and understand more the unhappiness of my parents. I can look at the lives my children have had and think "yep, they've had so much more love and security than I did", whether that makes me and them and my parents people I can look back on now and wonder if it made any of us better people. Probably not, we are all different and each and every one of us has to do our best with what we have.

I am quite quite sure though that the hurts we take with us from unhappy times do us no good allowed to fester and to grow into chips on our shoulders or within our inner psyches. I really hope OP that you find a way to come to terms with your own hurts and to confront your demons because they will do you no good allowed to grow and harm you.

I hope you are OK and that this is the start of a journey to inner healing.

If anyone read that lot well done. If it makes any sense at all I am glad, if I read back to check I'll delete it and not send. If it's utter claptrap please accept my apologies.