Long story short my soon to be ex announced 18 months ago that she didn’t love me anymore. What she did was try to manipulate me and get me into couples counseling to give me false hope even though she had already made up her mind. Rather than leave the house, she decided to move into the basement and then contributed literally zero to the household, be at monetary, labor, or childcare. It has been the biggest source of stress in my life for a long time.

Yesterday we had what was supposed to be our first custody hearing which got complicated because she was still living in the house. When I first met with my lawyer when I got to the courthouse, he presented me with an offer. Her lawyer had come up with for her to move out and she wanted 2/3 of my take-home pay as well as child support. Of course I said no way and told him if he wanted, he could tell them no fucking way

While sitting in the lobby, I watched our two lawyers go back-and-forth between meeting rooms with a guardian ad litem and back-and-forth in the courtroom with the judge. After several hours of this, I was pulled into a conference room by my lawyer and he informed me that she agreed to move out that day provided I make a few concessions. I’m still covering all of her main expenses and I’ve got to give her $275 of every one of my paychecks but she’s finally gone.

What hurts is that the court decided I would have custody from Monday afternoons until Friday afternoons and then she’ll pick up the kids on Friday afternoon and drop them off at school Monday morning. I wanted every other weekend, but she wouldn’t budge. So now here I am sitting at home with really mixed emotions because on one hand she’s gone. I’m free. We’re finally actually separated. She doesn’t live here anymore. But I also know that at least for the next few months until she can afford a place closer to me that I’m not gonna get to see my kids on the weekends and it’s tearing me up.

My whole situation started with her making unilateral decisions; there’s been literally no discussion of our situation for a year at least before yesterday. It just really pains me that in order for me to get the peace and the space that I needed I had to just accept the new role of the Un fun parent who’s gonna take care of school stuff while mommy gets to take the kids out to play. Her whole life revolves around social media and so now she gets to do nothing but play with the kids and put it on Facebook for all the world to see what a “great mom” she is while I do all the heavy lifting.

I’m still fighting for sole custody of my kids but it’s gonna be a harder fight than I thought. At this point, I’m just hoping that the guardian will continue to talk to my kids and hear that things are going great with me and then when he does the new home visits, my house will be immaculate while her place will be a disaster. Her crap was everywhere in the house so bad that when the guardian came to do the home visit, he was tempted to call child protective services on us.

So like I said, I scored a major win with getting her out of the house and finally getting space, but I also feel like I lost too.

Sorry for the rant I just had to vent. I will not give up this fight easily. She declared war against me and war requires brutal response.