This is what happened yesterday.
I left my youngest with a friend in the morning so that when he turned up, it would just be the two of us.
He turned up, took his stuff upstairs, no comment about the bedroom obviously cleared of all my stuff.
He came down and he wanted to talk about his recent bereavement so I let him talk and then when he went to change subject, about something completely irrelevant, I had to stop him and say we had more important things to discuss. At this point I recorded the conversation on my phone.
In summary:
- he's not going to attend mediation 'at this point' and even when I said well I'm going ahead with mine, he just said you do what you like but anything like that will have to wait till he's back in the UK in the summer because he's 'too busy'. So he's too busy to prioritise stopping losing his family? I told him that.
- he said to my face again "we're not separated" and he just finds this whole thing a bit odd and doesn't know where I'm going with things and doesn't know where it's all come from
- he is still insisting I go out and work one night a week at the restaurant he mentioned months ago, with a combination of free childcare he says is available including my parents when they come to stay - for the record, my parents would rather give me the money than force me to do that
- he refused to tell me what he earns and said it's his business
- he is still insisting I show him the receipts for the uniform I bought with borrowed money (I won't)
- he thinks because he's out of the country nothing can be enforced anyway (wrong! - didn't tell him that obviously)
- he still insists his paltry budget is enough even though I've pointed out if it were, I wouldn't need to keep asking him for extras. He denied refusing me money forgetting I have emails to the contrary.
Basically we didn't talk about anything we hadn't already talked about in emails, there was no aggression or physical intimidation, I had to walk out and leave the house because the conversation was clearly leading nowhere. I am definitely sending off those forms today.
But one thing made me laugh: after I left, he asked me if I was going shopping, because the fridge and cupboards were looking very bare. I just said no, what do you mean? I went the day before. And he said he didn't expect to come home to an empty fridge. I said well that's the budget, that's the food...and since when did I have money to stock up on food for him? And since when did ex partners do that for each other.
There is only one way to go with this, sadly. Now to start funding my legal battle.