I left my EA xh last year after years of critical, controlling and downright nasty behaviour, all of which was intended to crush my self-esteem and put him firmly in charge of every aspect of his life and mine. It was not an easy split as he simply couldn't believe that I actually had the nerve to leave him and kept waiting for me to 'come to my senses' and realise that he only treated me that way because I was so annoying, boring, unintelligent etc. He repeatedly said that bullying and name-calling were the only way to get through to 'some one like me'. Thanks to mumsnet and the support of my family I got away from him with my 2 dc and we are now thriving on our own in our lovely peaceful, tension-free home.
I've always encouraged his relationship with the dc who are 3 and 5 and I always will. The priority for me was that they did not grow up seeing their dad treat the mum in such a nasty way and be utterly damaged by it or start to think that it how you treat someone you are in a relationship with. Anyway, he's been moved out a year now. I have not had a relationship since as I feel that I am still healing from the years of emotional and verbal abuse that were directed towards me. Despite my feelings towards my xh, I have never spoken badly of him to the dc. I encourage them to go and see him and encourage them to have fun when they do. I am very flexible with arragngements around his working pattern to ensure he sees them and am polite at handovers (even though he tries to drag the handover out for 15 minutes).
For the last few weeks the dc have come back from his telling me that there has been a woman and her two children there when they are at their dads. They seem to be there all the time and they said that their dad said that they should tell me this. Now, I have no problem with him moving on. I expected that he would. I certainly didn't want to be in a relationship with him and fair play to her if she does. If anything, he probably gives more attention to our dc when this woman is there as he does a very good act of being an attentive dad in front of others. I am just a bit annoyed that he hasn't said anything about the fact that she and her children will be around a lot when my dc are there. I have no problem with this happening, but it just feels quite disrespectful not to at least have sent an email just letting me know that the dc would be meeting another woman and her children and they'd all be spending time together. My two are now asking all sorts of questions about this woman and her dc and their relationship to their dad and I just don't know how to answer. I am reluctant to bring it up with him as I know that's what he wants and he will try to make it look like I am bothered that he is in a relationship when actually all I want is a bit of respect and just letting me know about things like this so I can answer the dc's questions for them and help them to deal with new development in a posotive way.
Don't know what to do now. My strongest instinct is to do nothing and not bring it up with him but its bothering me that the dc are now asking lots of questions that I can't answer. Any suggestions as to how to proceed with this would be appreciated as I don't really have anyone I can discuss this with in rl.