Was I in the wrong? (sorry long)

[grumpydwarf]

Backstory - I split with my ex 18 months ago. We have a DS 2.5. Over the last 18 months his contact with his son has dropped from seeing him every day to now seeing him every fourth weekend. This happened partly because he was unreliable and kept letting my DS down at the last min because something else came up work/new gf etc.

I try to keep things civil but we do argue mostly about the fact that he doesn't see his son enough. In July we spoke and I explained I felt he wasn't making enough time to see his DS and he agreed to have him every fourth weekend two nights instead of one and more over nights druing the week as he couldn't comit to every other weekend as he did overtime.

Since then he has lost his job and found a new one. Still cannot commit to seeing DS more as he has overtime to do etc. He now cant see him during the week as he has to start work at 8 am the following morning (commutes).

Now the problem is he is going on holiday this week for three weeks with new gf and family. thats fine with me althought I think three weeks is quite a long time but is normal for him to not see his son for this time period. He promised he he would make time to see his son in between the last time (two weekends ago) and going away. He didn't do this. It was his birthday on wednesday last week and we had a row over the weekend as he felt upset I didn't call him on his birthday to speak to our son.

I dont feel I should have to chase him around to speak to his son and to be honest all in he wont see him for 8 weeks and never rings me to see how he is normally!

Was I wrong not to ring him? How long do I continue to chase him to see his son and at what point do I give up? thanks

I had a similar experience with my XP. To be honest if he's still buggering you about after 18 months I'd stop chasing him. I gave my XP 10 months and a session at mediation, he never bucked his ideas up so all contact stopped 4yrs ago.

Although, make sure you have copies of texts, e-mails etc to show you actually did the chasing up. I've still got a huge file of stuff so if XP ever turns up and claims I stopped contact he'd be given short shrift. I've also seen a family solicitor who said he'd have to go down the contact centre route after this amount of time.

thanks meglet. I have copies of everything so far but it hurts to think that someone who is supposed to love your child as much as you do can just bugger off and not worry about if they ever see there child again!

It will be an minmum of 8 weeks but possibly more as he hasn't actually told me when he will see his DS again just that he will let me know.

What do I do when he comes back? Will my son even remember him? I just want some commitment from him or I would prefer he would walk away.

From what you've said it doesn't sound like he's likely to commit to anything regular. He's a grown up so it's his choice and deep down he'll know he screwing up, but whether he has the balls to change it is another story.

I did everything I could to accomodate XP seeing the children, he was allowed to take baby DD out for a couple of hours even while she was bf, he was allowed to come here and help with bath night, we arranged contact dates and times between us... but after a few months his social life came first and he let us down again and again. Luckily it all stopped when the dc's were very young so they weren't let down or aware he hadn't turned up again.

My solicitor told me that after our 4yr gap a court wouldn't allow XP to have unsupervised contact with the children as they're all strangers to each other. He's never paid for a solicitor or bothered to see them so we're fairly 'safe' these days.

TBH I found it quite easy to stop chasing him, he knew where we were and what he should do but he chose not to bother with his kids.

Thanks meg. I am so upset tonight not him or anyone of his family have rang or text to ask after my ds today and they leave tomo for their holiday. I don't know how to detach and just not be hurt that they don't care about a little boy who is so amazing, I guess I will have to learn to deal with that.