What is it with this addiction and manipulation? I know I have made the right decision and yet I still ALWAYS feel bad for him, after all that he has done to my son and I, how is it that I fell bad? I continue to refuse any phone contact with him, or see him in person, these are the boundaries I have had to put in place and still he tries to manipulate me through email. I have never cut contact with him since our separation of over 2 and a half years ago but I am finding that with me not having to speak to him, it has done wonders for me and over the past month the only thing I dread is the ding of my email going off on my phone which has tapered considerably. I am hoping that he is having the realization that I will no longer tolerate his actions or him disrupting our lives, but in all honesty I doubt it. It is terrible and I never thought it would come to this but in the same breath, I wish I had taken these steps sooner. He is not a bad father – he was however a bad partner who was selfish and continues to be.
He has our son every other weekend and when he does have our son he schedules poker nights with his friends and thinks that if one of his friends brings his child over to entertain our son, he is fullfilling his fatherly duty. No idea why he couldn’t book his poker nights on the weekends that he doesn’t have our son and then turns around and texts me that he misses his son and would love to spend more time with him. Really??? He also consistently drops our son off at his parents house when he has time with our son and I am pretty sure I could count on both my hands how many times in the past 2 and a half years he has actually spent one on one time with our son.
I am obviously the bad person though who wakes up every morning at 6 to get our child ready for school, fed and then dropped off to school to go to my fulltime job, to leave work, pick our child up and take him to his activities after school, homework, bathtime, bedtime (repeat) and I wouldn’t change a thing.
I have to have some contact with him due to our child but I find myself in a place where I can’t even look at him, little alone speak to him. How does someone do this? How do they not realize what they have done and what they continue to do (and feel justified in doing it).
It amazes me that you can spend half your life with someone and not really know them at all. We are complete strangers now and I am a lot different then I was even 2 years ago. I am no longer as scared of the future holds because I now know that no matter what happens I can and I will be ok (and so will my son).