There We Are Then - part 4, but episode 278946, probably.

[mummy917]

For anyone who is still offering messages of hope, wisdom and general loveliness 🥰

Re the rugby kit. I would message him and give him the option of paying half for the kit and sharing it or for him to buy his own.

Do not share the kit if he doesn’t respond or until he has given you half the amount.

What if …
You can explain this to your son. “Daddy is having difficulty reimbursing me for his share of kit. I can’t afford to sub him.
He will have to buy his own set of kit which may mean he won’t take you.
I’m really sorry darling but we can’t survive if he won’t pay me his share.

That would be horrible. Don't triangulate your son like this.

Not triangulation . Explaining before it happens

I am afraid that it is.

By saying that to her DS @mummy917 would be bringing her son into the argument. "Mummy says you wont take me to rugby because you wont buy my kit" "Mummy is selfish and wants Daddy to pay for everything so tell Mummy that if she cared about you then she would make sure she had your kit" and so on.

A man this selfish and vile will use every single weapon he has in his arsenal, especially those that will hurt the most.....the kids.

It is manipulation and emotional abuse. Sometimes explaining things to kids, even if hard, is appropriate but this isn't that.

You say you can never win .
Youve already won .
Now it a case of managing your kids expectations.
Youve done so well and you will keep doing it with a few bumps along the way. x

I am so sorry to read that you are feeling this way at the moment, @mummy917. I am hoping for your sake that it will just be a blip and that you will manage to return to your mantra of "There We Are Then" every time you have to communicate with him. As previous posters have sagely advised, hard though you are finding it these days, for your own and your kids' sakes, you need to keep communication with him to a minimum, and to the basics, and you need to employ the "grey rock" approach, which I know you have managed successfully in the past. I think @AcrossthePond55's latest post in this thread sums it all up for you and I hope in time, you will manage to deal with him as she suggests: "At some point you're going to have to blunt his weapon of 'going after you'. He'll keep doing it as long as he gets the reaction he wants, which is to either upset you or to deflect from something he doesn't want to commit to. And the only way you can blunt that weapon is not to react to it. I know, it'll be 'fake it til you make it' for a while, but you'll get to the point where it really does roll off your back."

It may not seem like it today, or tomorrow, or next week or next month, but I am sure that for you, eventually, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

There We Are Then.

Yeah I will definitely be going back to the grey rock approach. He tried to call me last night when I was doing baths and bedtime but I chose not to answer. Instead I asked him what was wrong for him to ring and his response was “I just needed to speak to you about something”, so I told him to put it in a text which he still hasn’t.

I am feeling slightly better today and a little bit stronger. I am just about to go on the school run before I head to work for more training. The year soon rolls around 🤣

You did the right thing last night. It’s funny isn’t it, how you’re such an awful controlling person and yet you’re the one dreading his contact and feeling upset after a conversation, while he’s the one coming back for more a day afterwards. Doesn’t track really, does it? You are his emotional punchbag.

He may well blame you if you don’t share the kit but im afraid I think that is something you will have to accept because you cannot shield your children from their father’s behaviour. You understandably want to minimise impact on your children but it just isn’t possible with someone like him. Someone who will actively put them at a disadvantage to ‘win’. As long as it works he will keep doing it. I think the only way to break this pattern is to stop playing along and incentivising this behaviour. If he does use this excuse re rugby and your son raises it, just say you unfortunately have no influence on daddy’s time and can’t make him provide the kit or take him but you assure him Mummy will make sure he goes every week you are with her.

I think you are experiencing grief for the loss of your relationship and loss of what you hoped the future would be.
The emotions you are feeling are all part of the grief cycle ( guilt being one of the emotions). The cycle is described by some as like a washing machine, as in the process of working through the emotions is not linear. Some days there will be denial, some days sadness, sometimes anger. They will come and go until at some point you will mostly feel acceptance. It’s all perfectly natural.

The "emotional punchbag" comment is spot on. Bring the shutters down and lock them tight. He can aim his arsehole stress farts elsewhere.

Exactly, also by not answering random phone calls and telling him to pop it in a text means that

1. you have evidence of what he wants which will be typically to switch arrangements/later times or not paying for something…
2. will give you chance to have a think before you have to reply.

Someone asked me why I still use an old fashioned wall calendar instead of putting it in my phone… I replied that when anyone asks me to do something/go somewhere/asks for a favour by saying
“let me have the date and I’ll check the calendar when I get in”
means that I have the time to think if I want to do it etc
I used to be a chronic people pleaser and would feel awful when I would commit to something I didn’t want to do but didn’t want to cause problem..
By getting him to communicate in writing you’ll protect yourself from his shittiness and hopefully feel stronger.
If he tries to discuss things at drops offs etc “I don’t have time to discuss this with you now, if you pop whatever it is in a message, when I get a spare minute I’ll take a look”

Honestly what does he want to talk to you about when the last time you spoke he put you down?
If he was happy skipping through his new life it wouldn’t be so.
And why on earth would he expect you to
pick up?

I’m afraid ( as I’ve said previously) he has no alternative but to assassinate your character. He has to justify his departure, and the alternative would be to admit his own failings and selfishness. It’s the only choice to criticise you. You have to work on fully rejecting his warped opinion.

Regarding you wishing for a middle man to drop the kids off, I know you asked your parents and they couldn’t do that. It’s also too much to ask his Mum? There must be some way around it but there’d be a cost. Not quite the same but as a single parent I used to pay a widowed lonely neighbour to sit with my youngest neurodiverse DD for an hour each morning while I drove the eldest to school, partly because the youngest was often asleep and always car sick.
I know it seems crazy, but in the short term how much would it cost to come to an arrangement with a regular known safe taxi just to take the DC to his house? You could ask your parents to fund that (until say January) as your Christmas present. That would provide a short cushion in the contact you have?

I would also recommend you look on Instagram at jessrunsforsurvivors. She's had the most awful time with post separation abuse/parenting with a high conflict ex and she often sits in her car going through what's happened that day. She talks a lot of sense.

You will feel so liberated once you truly break the long established marital pattern of caring what he thinks. I just remembered I used to chant to myself in my head “ detach, detach, detach”

How you handled last nights call is exactly the way to go , and do requests for money by message as well . I’m glad you are feeling a bit better today .

Just texts and emails ongoing. If anything starts in a call, hang up and text him asking what he wanted.
Cunt

You are doing well OP.

never answer the phone to him unless you genuinely believe there is an energencY. I email my ex once a week with plan for the week, e.g sports activities and parties that would deviate from norm. I include other information in there, but keep it as brief as possible, things like dates of new parties, or that they need something from his house for school maybe. Texts are used for anything with less than 24 hours notice, like rugby training has run over we”ll be back at half past. And that is it. I would not answer the phone from him and sometimes mute him if he sends angry messages when the kids are with me.

you are on a rollercoaster here. You seem lovely, but you are not perfect, and you know you aren”t and part of his manipulation is to pick on whatever’s faults you may have and use them to grind you down and make you believe that everything is your fault. You might be replaying old arguments thinking you could have said things differently and may be you could have, but here’s the thing, you would still have ended up in the same place. You could have had the patience of mother Theresa and behaved like an absolute saint but he would still have been the manipulative man he is. And one day this will sink in and it is emancipating when it does.

keep going OP, I”m just sitting in bed eating Jaffa cakes today because I needed a break from everything . Highly recommend it when you are feeling low but you got this, you really do.

Funny, isnt it? He was so desperate to ask you something that he had to phone you, but when asked to put it in a message, he hasn't done it. You've had good advice on this already. My tuppence worth is the same. Don't answer calls when you have the children. If he calls you when he has them, only talk to him if it's to do with the children.

Thank you everyone, I know when he calls me controlling etc, it’s because he can never face up to the fact that I had to organise all of our lives because he just couldn’t be arsed to have any input into it.

I already follow Jess on Instagram and have found her page helpful! It’s crazy how these men get what they’ve asked for but it still isn’t enough for them.

When I spoke to him on the phone on Friday and he was pulling me apart, I did say to him that the biggest problem I had in our marriage is that I wanted him around, involved in family things and that he has somehow turned that into me being controlling. Funnily enough, he shut up at that point too.

Honestly if he says that about the kit then thats on him. He knows he has to provide a kit the same as you do, he had the option to share cost and if he chooses not to he doesnt share the use of the kit.

You can only affect what you do, let him do what he will do but at the same time stop trying to make his life easier for fear of what he will say, let him say it. He is the one failing if he doesnt get things your children need whilst at his home.

It will definitely be worth looking at the freedom programme and learning about grey rock technique. But the easiest way will be no phone calls, dont let him have the ability to offload onto you like this.