I was with a brilliant friend last night who is with a man who has children from a previous relationship. My friend and her partner got together when the children were 2 and 4. They used to look after the children every weekend and have one stay over in the week.
As the children grew the relationship ship broke down, between my friend's DP and the children.
My friend, who I know very well is amazing with children - she's a godparent to my DD. She is someone whose respect for amd relationship to children is one I keep in mind and also tap into when I am considering my own relationship to my children. She is brilliant.
My friend loves her DP and has seen the impact of the deterioration of his relationship with his children. But she is acutely aware of the ways that his own actions and behaviour have really contributed to the situation that he currently has zero contact. There are SWs, Cahms, the school and various family workers involved and he is working with them and the mum - not one of those professionals is pushing for contact to be reestablished until the DP really accepts and gets what is going on. It's complex and his behaviour is by no means the only factor here - there are multiple pressures on the family that means with the best will in the world, the situation would be tricky- for example one of the children is agoraphobic, with incredibly high levels of social anxiety and some days won't come out of her bedroom to see her mum.
But his approach has been so inflexible, making demands and pooh poohing the children and their mums requests about how contact is initiated. And my friend is just at a loss to understand it. And it also puts her off him so, so much.
She and I have talked about this situation as it developed amd it was ongoing while my own relationship with my children's father broke down. Hand on heart - I would never say this to my ex or to my children but I have definitely talked about it with my friend - I would still be with my ex if it wasn't for the children. I just loathed how petty and controlling he was about them. How he needed to dominate my son, make him say yes dad when he was shouting at him. Demanding eye contact from children who he is telling off, requiring that they show him signs of what he thinks is respect even when they were tiny and in distress - because he was shouting at them! (They are both autistic so this was a real, well in my view at least - show of power and aggression from him, which he could not put aside because of his beliefs about respect).
This made him just utterly revolting to me. His inability to reflect on his own behaviour and how it might impact the children, or recognise that he was demanding to dominate them. He was constantly huffed that I was unfaltering trying to be available to the children but not to him (he wast trying to be that for wither them or me). He wanted to be treated almost like a child in that he wanted to be prioritised by me but also like the head of the household, expecting me to defer to his judgements about the children.
I actually get on with him now again now we are split but as a partner he is completely reclusive. The thing where he wanted to have the place of a child to me gave me the absolute ick. I still don't agree with his approach especially when he is in disagreement with our children but his household, his rules, my household my rules.
These conflicts in my relationship and my friend's - who is now considering leaving her DP because she just can't help really disliking him around his relationship with his kids - has so many resonances with my friends' and families dynamics too. I just can not love a man as a partner who has to do his ridiculous domination games with children. It makes them pathetic and horrible to me. The men I know are not your typical bloke ly blokes. They are all about feminism amd equality until it comes to their wives and children. It's just conplewtely off-putting to me and at the heart of the majority of why hetro relationships break down that I have seen.
Sorry that this is such a long ramble. But am I wrong - if more men were better at being dad's there would be a lot more stability on family relationships