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Advice on how to handle ex and lack of involvement (a bit long)

Erin192's picture

I am new to this board, and I am not a SP but my husband is to our oldest and we have issues with my ex. A little background on the situation. I became pg in college with my boyfriend, unintentionally. We were living together and at the time having some issues so before I found out I was pg I moved out and broke things off, then the news hit. Since then he has fought being a part of her life. He drug out a child support/custody battle (his parents thought they would get custody, why? not sure I was in no way unfit) for 18 months, he refused to take a paternity test he requested, which was stupid because he knew it was his (I wasn't the one who cheated, he was). During this time he was ordered to pay arrearages because of this and court/lawyer costs because of his uneccesary stalling. It took him two years after this to finally begin to pay and accept his daughter. She was almost four by this time. He visited her only a couple times. He lived two hours away. Since then I have done everything in my power to support any involvement from him. I put my daughter first before anything when he wants to see her because I do not like to play games. His parents have always been invovled and unless there is a valid reason I never tell them they cannot see her. I have had to talk to him about his consistency on more than one occasion. He will pick her up occasionally (about once every two to three months) for a weekend. He does not call and I have gone out of my way to encourage the relationship. My daughter is now ten and his excuse for not seeing her and calling is that we do not return phone calls and we are never home. The problem is he doesn't call to begin with and the one time he will he does not leave a message or if he does he says we don't call him back (which we always have). I am tired of him making excuses and I have always tried to be open and inviting to him and his now wife to talk with us. We have had them up for dinner and out to eat so that we can keep open communication. We normally can get a long fine, but things collapsed the other night. My daughter is almost ten and she hadn't seen him since the beginning of summer break four months ago. He has not called since then and My DD has been asking about when daddy will come get her again. I encourage her to call, but DD wants dad to call her. She wants to feel like she is needed by him. I called him out on everything and asked him when he was going step up and be a father to her. He tried to make a million excuses and said it was becuase of me and we never let her come or will not return his calls. This is ridiculous because half the time I am the one initiating the phone calls like the other night. He is making pathetic excuses and now trying to blame it all on me. I have made a very whole hearted effort to keep him informed and invovled. I work with kids and so does my DH that have problems due to these kinds of issues and so we make sure not to make issues. What do I do? Do I give up? do I keep pushing him to be invovled? I am not sure what more I can do...Had I never fought for the Child support he would have happily walked off. He wanted an abortion and I couldn't do it. How should I handle this so My daughter understands that dad is the reason he doesn't come, not us. I love her too much. This also makes my dh sick because he loves her too and knows how important it is to have a realtionship with her dad. Help.

Persephone's picture

wanted to ensure that they would share in her life because they knew their son was not going to.

"I encourage her to call, but DD wants dad to call her."

In front of your dhgtr make the call, say Hiiii we are calling to see if we can schedule a visit with BD. Pass the phone over to BD and let her say what she would like... then leave it alone.

I had to explain to my oldest when her dad was inconsistent.. that he loves her very much but shows it to the best of his ability. It has nothing to do with her... He is trying to work on his own life and sometimes that is a lot for him to handle. I am sure someone on this board has a better way to handle it.. that's only way I could deal with her disappointment with out it effecting her self esteem.

Erin192's picture

Thank you. We try to tell her that and never talk bad about dad infront of her or when she is around. We try to be positive about it and I had her call the other night and ask him wen she can come visit. When the phone get passed off to me to make the arrangements, he wanted this weekend, which would normally be fine, but he wants to pick her up early. His reason was he never gets to see her, that is when I finally lost it and confronted him. The excuses started flying. I just do not want her to feel that we didn't do enough to help have a relationship with her dad, especially since now I know he is playing victim and blaming us, when we really are the only ones keeping them together. Thank you for your insight and it simply reassures me that I am doing things right.

Toodles, and thanks for taking the time to read my post!