When our daughter was 7, we were all living in Bedfordshire, and had done for 5 years. It's in a rural area, terrible for software jobs (my profession) and caught in the middle of a transition from a 3-tier education system to the 2-tier (primary and secondary) that the rest of the country uses.
That year, her father left, moving to Manchester. Now she's 11, and up until now, contact arrangements have been working very smoothly, with him staying at his parents, who still live 5 minutes away, and running his contact from there every other weekend, working from home at their house on the Friday.
He seems recently to have become dissatisfied with this arrangement (has recently set up home with his girlfriend in Manchester). He wanted share of the house equity, so the family home is being sold, and I'm moving 40 minutes away from his parents house so our daughter can go to a stable secondary school (and there are several excellent options), and I'll have a ten minute commute so she gets more from me in the week. She's delighted with this plan.
He is now saying this is unreasonable, because it makes it harder to see his daughter. I understand that and have offered to collect her from him somewhere more convenient for his journey back to Manchester on the Sunday, but Friday arrangements are harder because he's not happy about waiting for me to finish work and drop her off, so he'll have to collect her.
His answer to this (and by the way, I think there is more to this than my move - I think he's fed up with coming down from Manchester) is to expect our 11 year old daughter to take a train from Cambridge to Manchester on her own, arriving in Manchester at 10pm on a Friday evening. I've put my foot down and said that is not happening, but I can work on a plan to get her prepared for that when she's older - at least 14.
He's now saying that this means he might not be able to carry on seeing her so regularly. Am I being unreasonable? I have suggested, so many times, that I look at moving to the Manchester area, but that I would only do that if he perhaps saw more of her and went to parents evenings. He said he didn't want that and his girlfriend wouldn't like it, so I'm not going to do that.