Hello all, I want to ask for some advice.

My ex left me about 5 years ago. We have two boys, 5 and 10 at the time. We decided for me to go back to school in my mid-late-thirties and get my CPA. I did. It was very difficult but I'm pretty good at it even though it isn't really too fulfilling for me other than in a means-to-live-life kind of way. While I was getting started, she became gym buddies with a stay-at-home dad neighbor, they got really fit, decided their marriages weren't giving them what they needed, and blew up two families. My ex never told me she was unhappy in our marriage and my marriage was the cornerstone of what I believed to be the most important things in my life - my kids, their upbringing, my family, etc. It wasn't as exciting after seventeen years and two kids but I loved her despite her limitations and sometimes bad qualities. Now I have these student loans, have to live on one income, and only see my kids half the time. They live with another man equally as much as me and he is not a good person and I do not want him to be an influence on my children. None of that is matters or is in my control.

It's crazy because to this day, they don't think that they are cheaters and they don't think that what they did was wrong.

It was wrong.

She had a group of five or six girlfriends and four of them left their husbands, all with children. Those women still do the same annual beach trip that was always so much fun for everyone - all the same women, all different men. I think that commitments, especially one so solemn as marriage, are of paramount importance, but my kids are around people who don't have similar values at least half the time. Plus because of their brazen shamelessness with regard to the whole thing, they almost certainly are actively conveying to the kids that this is just the way stuff happens sometimes (I know that's true on some levels but the manner in which things happen does make a difference).

She knows that they are the most important thing to me and that I would do anything for them and uses that against me so much. She is so self-absorbed that she very likely doesn't do that consciously, it has just become so engrained in her (and her little boyfriend and other friends) to take and to use and to walk all over other people. She can't even give an inch without taking so I don't ask anything from her, ever, even though she in no way has similar hesitations.

She'll reach out to older son to ask him to do things on my time. It's not frequent, but just yesterday she texted him and asked if he wanted to ride with her to the airport to drop off some MMA dude for her work. I'm sure he'd love that, so he asked me and I was put in the position of having to say yes or no to that. I texted her and told her that it wasn't right to put him in the middle and she said some nonsense about it being good for him to "own it." WTF does that even mean? It's fucked up that he's even in this position in the first place. She reaches out to her friends for him to go do work when he's with me - he loves getting the money so of course I'd want him to do that. She has family coming into town and they want to take them on separate days to do awesome fun stuff - things that they would love. I also want them to spend time with their family but all of it just so conveniently ends up on my time. I make sacrifices for them (which I will always do and do not lament) and she uses me and takes whatever she wants to. She plans big trips for her and her little boyfriend that has me with them for longer that our summer schedule and then changes the schedule so she can have them longer when she gets back to "keep it even." Whenever I've balked she accuses me of hurting my kids and says stuff like that she won't keep from them what I'm doing.

I think it's important for my children to honor their mother. I don't ever badmouth her or her little boyfriend. I try to refrain from even making moral judgements to them about things that happen in life in general because of how often it would be in direct contrast to the life that their mom lives. I also don't want to have a contentious relationship with her. She'd love to be able to smile and chit-chat and be friendly with me and act like we're just two great people with these great kids who just happen to have been married once upon a time. I can't do that, not just because of the callous disregard and unthinking cruelty she has perpetrated on me, but because my being like that I feel would be like a tacit acceptance of what happened. So we're not really amicable but it's probably mostly okay in our kids' eyes. I'm quite sure that if I really put my foot down about the schedule or all the other stuff she does, she would make it contentious and believe wholeheartedly, and convey to our children, that it is all my fault. She is charming and convincing. I don't know if they'd believe it but I don't want to put them in the position of having to.

I guess I don't really know if I can formalize a question per se, I just really want to raise my kids right and I don't want them to think that the lifestyle they live for half the time is an easily-viable alternative. I just don't know what the right thing to do is given that I most fundamentally believe that they are all wrong choices. I hate it so much for them.

It's also hard because I know that they know I've suffered because of all of it. Their mom probably portrays a much happier outlook on life than I have now - if given the choice later in life to cut and run from responsibilities rather than doing the right thing even when it's hard, I fear they will opt towards the former because of the veneer of happiness that they portray. I just want them to grow up to be good men.