Recently seperated

[wirral]

Please can anyone help me? My husband left me about 6 weeks ago - totally unexpected. We have a 6 year old daughter. We've started divorce proceedings. I am really having trouble establishing access arrangements for my husband. I would like him to pick my daughter up from school 2 evenings a week and return her home at 18.30pm. In addition to this I would like him to have one overnight stay at the weekend . I don't want mid week as I feel this is disruptive to her. I think that this would be acceptable apart from the fact that he works shifts and unless he could change his rota ( swop shifts or take leave) he wouldn't get the overnight stay.

Please does anyone have any advice?
Also any advice on how to cope. I am still working. feeling rubbish, incredibly upset and can't believe it's come to this.

Hi Wirral
I'm sorry to hear about your split, it's so hard isn't it? You are bound to feel raw and angry for a while, but believe me it does get easier and a year from now things will look and feel totally different....

Your access arrangements sound very reasonable, which bit are you finding difficult? what does your ex think? Is it tough to arrange because of his shifts?

Thanks so much for replying. I also think that the access arranagements are ok but am concerned that he won't be able to do the overnight weekend stays as he works a 6 week shift rota which involves some weekend working.
My ex wants mid week stays which in principal I am not adverse to but due to his shifts he can't stipulate regular days. This is also difficult with work as I need to arrange child care or agree to leave work early but as it's different days each week this is difficult to arrange.
I don't want to be awkward and can appreciate that he doesn't love me ( which so hurts) and wants to see our daughter but I am loathe to run my life around his work.

God that is tough... my dd sees her dad most saturday nights but we have a fairly flexible arrangement ( eg both of us can change it if something comes up).
It hasn't always worked ( see previous thread on ' how can I persuade ex to stick to contact arrangements' ) but it's working at the moment... the thing is that we get on fairly well most of the time and split up quite a long time ago, which makes things easier.
I can see why you don't want her to stay with him mid week, I agree it could mess up her routine etc
Can't he agree to an 'every saturday except when he's working' type of arrangement?

Whilst I can't imagine for one moment that he'll agree to just seeing her at the weekend when he's not working - am I being cruel to my daughter to prevent more access? Oh this is all so difficult. Thanks for replying to me and telling me that this will eventually get better at the moment the future looks so bleak

I think if you have your daughter's best interests at heart then you're not being cruel.
If you are trying to prevent access to get back at him, then although it could be understandable, it is rather cruel.
But it really doesn't sound like you are doing that, rather you are trying to make an arrangement that works for all of you...

Sounds like both of you will have to compromise to some extent, but I totally appreciate that this is hard when you are hurting so much.

Have you thought about some kind of mediation service, Relate or something? Never used them myself but maybe another mumsnetter has and could advise??

I absolutely promise that things will get better. They have for me, and I've seen (both in real life and on mumsnet) people go through the most horrendous splits and come out the other side, stronger and happier for it.