I am going to apologize in advance as this will be long winded, and it is mainly just me going on a long rant. I don’t really know what I want from this post, but I just feel like I need a rant before keeping calm and carrying on.
I hate co-parenting, it massively sucks right now. It’s not even like a lot of the things I am going to rant about are even that big of a deal when I really think about it. But once you put them all together it’s just so infuriating. More so because all of these things my ex will never have to worry or think about. He hasn’t got a care in the world. I feel like I do the majority of the parenting, and he just coasts on by like a glorified babysitter.
Me and my soon to be ex-husband and I have a 3-year-old son together. He had an affair which is why we are separating. He sees his son around 8 days every month based around his shifts. So, he has him 2 days/ 1 overnight roughly every 8-9 days. I work 4 days a week, so our son has a nursery place on those days.
He only ever has our son on days when he is not at work. He will never know the struggle of having to organise a baby/toddler/child on a work morning. Similarly, he will never understand having to work all day and then pick our son up and parent for the rest of the day. Or do both of those things in one day. Yes, I know that’s parenting, but he’s a parent and he’s never going to experience that (unless he changes jobs or request a more family friendly schedule which he’s said he will never do).
Similar to that, he will never know the struggle and stress of having to cover sickness. If our son can’t go to nursery because he’s Ill or for whatever reason, it doesn’t matter to him as he only has him on non-workdays. Whereas I have to scramble to try and find cover so that I can still go to work. My work only offers 2 days max of paid dependence leave a year and money is too tight for me to take unpaid leave. I only have my mum as cover, but she doesn’t drive. It takes her 3 buses to get to us. Which by the time she does arrive I’m already missing out on pay and end up late to work. If I reach out to my ex for cover the answer is always no for varying reasons. I think its more than fair for him to help with covering sickness, but I can’t force him as technically it’s my scheduled day to have our child.
All of our sons’ bits for nursery I pay for. He doesn’t contribute at all (yes he pays child maintenance) but then he expects to use all of my things for nursery for free. When I asked for a contribution, he refused and said I was being petty. Having separate things won’t work as one of us is usually doing drop off and the other pick up. So, it would get too confusing if we had separate things, which is why I thought we should both contribute financially. But no, he doesn’t want to and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Today was a non-workday so he was supposed to pick our son up at 9 this morning. He finally rocked up at 10:15 saying he got his days mixed up. He did apologise but then proceeded to sit on my sofa texting for 10 minutes ignoring my son who was trying to get his attention. He finally looked up and said he was re-arranging his plans. Then proceeded to brag about how great his sleep was last night and his lie in this morning. This isn’t the first time he has been late picking him up and he always drops him back at least 15-20 minutes earlier than our scheduled drop off time.
Our son has now moved up to another room at nursery and tomorrow is a nursery day, so ex needs to drop him off. We both have the parenting app for the nursery, and it has been mentioned on their several times about this move and what to do. I of course casually remined him about the new room before he left and he had no idea what I was talking about. I then had to explain to him for 10 minutes about the new room and what to do.
He is also going on holiday at some point next week. I only know this because his mum casually mentioned the holiday to me a while back as it’s a big family holiday. He is due to have his son next week. There has been zero communication to me about me covering his days. He just expects me to be free and able to have our child when he can’t/ isn’t (He won’t be taking our son; he’s never taken him on holiday and says he has no plans to in the future either). He’s done this before as well where he has asked me last minute to have our son because he is going on holiday.
All paperwork relating to our child I sort. I sort haircuts, dentist, doctors. I single handedly sorted his 3rd birthday party out including financing it all and inviting all his and my family. He didn’t even show for it and worked instead. If I even mention him taking on more responsibility, he shuts it down or he doesn’t do it and I end up taking over as I don’t want it impacting our son.
No, we haven’t been to court but honestly what would the courts actually do for any of these things except send him a warning letter and slap on the wrist. We have an un-official parenting plan that we both signed but that gets ignored so he would more than likely ignore the courts order. I feel like it would be more hassle than its worth as none of these things are particularly bad just incredibly annoying for me. I want my son to have a relationship with his dad so it feels like I just have to put up and shut up about it all which sucks otherwise I then get branded the bad guy because the only thing I can do is not allow him to see his son which is something I don’t want to do.
I’ve called him out on all of these things several times but he either just ignores me, deflects, or apologises but then still carries on doing it in future.