I think that i am going along the road ok, and in the circumstances I have done the right things, but I have been thinking about posting for a while, just to check...so to speak.
I am sure there's a link to a bit of detail about my ex and I, I'll look it up in a bit.
Short story is we have two children, aged 7 and 4, and I kicked him out in October last year (nearly the anniversary, yay!). No regrets, we had gone from sort of ok, to him going back to old ways insofar as he wanted to be the family man (I cattily call it 'Facebook Dad') when it suited, but mostly he wanted to act as if he was single (lots of going out, not coming back when he said he would, ruining family weekends, that sort of thing. No cheating, well, not for the last 8 years, -he had done so before and we (ho ho) had 'worked through it'.
Anyway, it took me about 2 years to clear my head of the remaining fuckwittery and ask him to leave.
This last year has been difficult. Understatement of the century. For the first two months or so, there was a bit of pining and mooning around by him, hoping or thinking I would change my mind (I have, sorry, HAD!, form for this).
When he realised that I wasn't going to take him back, he became generally like a difficult teen. On and off he would be even tempered, but too often he would come for contact with the children and shout at them, and me, and strop about and so on. I eventually realised that he was never going to behave like an adult and I banned him for a time from coming into the house, for example, because he was so abusive. I also had to cut down any sort of contact that involved me seeming to rely on him, eg for covering child care while I was working, as he loved to let me down and then say I was unreasonable for being pissed off etc. It was (and still is) about power and control.
So, after the time he let me down by baling on agreed child care while I was working, with the words 'your kids, your problem' (may I point out they are his kids and he knows this!!), I told him to stick contact and that I was pulling it and he would have to go to a solicitor to set something solid up.
That was before the summer, and he didn't see the children for three weeks as a result, and accused me of hiding them from him in that time. 'Hiding'=going about our normal business.
Ok, so gradually building through the year, he has become more and more difficult. After that three weeks, he was very contrite, and the thing I (did) find hard was the children asking about him in those sort of circumstances. Anyway, rightly or wrongly (wrongly as it turned out), I reinstated contact and he was then seeing them one night a week at mine (I know, not at all ideal, but he lives with his father and maintains his dad's partner doesn't want them there. This is untrue, I think she doesn't want HIM there). He also took them out for the day every sunday. He has paid zero contribution for their care, telling me to quit my job and go on benefits 'like everyone else' if I didn't have enough money.
Summer came. He had begun hanging out with a woman with two children, whom he used to go to school with. Absolutely no problem with that, well, not until three or four weeks ago. He offered no help during summer, I arranged for them to go away to my family (they love it there), for 2 weeks while I worked my notice at my old job. New job would then start after summer, so great, I engineered it so I could spend loads of time with ds and dd.
I'm very conscious of the length of this already. Sorry. He then basically phoned them once in the whole of the summer and when we returned (August Bank hol, as I had told him), he denied I'd told him and waited until just before out 4yo was due to start school. He rang and aggressively asked to speak to them and I said no, I also said this time was it, he had made no effort etc etc, and I wasn't going to allow it any more.
Cue more bad behaviour ie that morning he turned up at our house while the dc still sleeping demanding to see them and sat on the steps in the rain for an hour and a half(we live in a very remote location) and basically laughed at me when I said he was intimidating me.
The real point of this story is that at last I have closed the door on contact and unless he goes to see a solicitor and we can mediate through a third party, he won't be getting to the children. I feel bad about this, but it is because when he came round, at my suggestion, to talk about resuming contact after the debacle of the summer (yes, I probably shouldn't have offered yet another chance), he blithely announced that this woman he's been seeing has recently had her two children removed 'because of neglect'.....
Well. It all went a bit Jeremy Kyle. I had already agreed that he could resume weekend contact where he takes them out for a day. After this news sunk in, I phoned him and asked him where he intended to take the dc on his first day seeing them in 6 weeks. He announced that he would be going to this woman's town, approx 40 miles away, obviously to go to hers. I said that until I had more details I didn't want them going there.
Cue a morning of bizarre texts from him sending me links to the NSPCC website defining neglect, in a weird attempt to 'reassure' me :-/
Neglect appears to be horrendous, in any of its forms. And the threshold for intervention appears very high to me. Needless to say, I insisted, and when he came round that weekend as agreed he muttered about taking them somewhere nearby.
They got back early evening. Not only had they been to her town, they had been with her and in her house all day! I won't go in to everything that followed (I was v calm), but the result is I have pulled contact.
I also got some advice the next day from my old boss (a family solicitor of many years experience). Not only did he say I was entirely reasonable to stop contact, but that if I hadn't done so, and continued to let them go over there, if something happened them Social Services would get ME involved, and criticise me for not caring where my dc went!
I relayed all this to ex in a very calm text (he knows my boss and they got on well once), and I again said to him to go and see a solicitor. His parting text to me in answer to that was 'go and see a shrink'.
Ok, so reading this all written down, I know he sounds like a wanker, and he is. But this exercise has I think shown me that I should have stopped trying much earlier. I am now totally past the point of wanting the children to have good contact with their dad, as he is unstable and no good for them at present. I just pray that he sees sense one day.
Luckily, the children are utterly fabulous and I think they are very happy. They genuinely don't seem troubled by him not being around, but this is the part I struggle with. If you've made it this far, and you have experience of this type of situation, is there anything I can do over and above keeping things steady and secure and full of love and laughter for them, that would help them?
Sorry for the length.