It's been three years. The divorce went through last October, and within a week she was remarried to a guy 20 years older and had known for less than a year. A literal former crackhead, aged fifty. (She's 33.) This, with three kids under the age of five (the baby arrived nine months after the separation - here's your kingdom, little man - all this and more...). I have the same story as most of you here - false PFA, complete borderline personality breakdown, a turbulent marriage that was over years before it was finally over, a long and bitter divorce, made worse by a global pandemic. She outlearns me two-to-one, and so I'm actually getting child support (after two years of nonpayment). I followed the important and regular advice newbies get and need and need to get: therapy, gym, find a nice girl, get your head back. Get sexy. And I'm better now - better enough to see that it wasn't until I'd left the chaos that I saw how bad it was the entire time. After I was removed from the house, the oldest cat - the one I'd gotten when we started dating - started pissing and shitting all over the basement of the marital home. He'd never done that, and it's the perfect metaphor for her vibe/aura/psychic energy. Unlike lots of the guys here, though, I'm not established in my career. I've been planning on, at the age of 35, taking the MCAT. There's a medical school here. I realized I was talking about leaving the kids behind for ten years, all in an effort to be able to take care of them as young adults, and be free from the binds of student loan. A big Christmas tree - Williams Sonoma - a happy family. From the first false PFA three years ago, I insisted on fifty-fifty custody. Getting ready to go into the PFA hearing, that was all I cared about. The neighbor - god bless him - came down to testify the other guy was in my bed that very night, and every night that week - and that made her balk, and she signed the agreement. Three years of being a single dad half the time, changing diapers and going on play dates. I finished a Master's degree this past April - doing it after work, after bathtime and bedtime and the house was put away. She has railed against it the entire way. Last year, with a new lawyer - her third - she filed for primary custody. She moved the next county over, against my wishes, trying to get the case transferred. It didn't work. We reached another agreement. I ceded the issue of school district to get her to drop the case. It'd been $65k already to that point, just on my side - college tuition money, quite literally set on fire. Her family is absolutely loaded - they've been wiring her money to cover attorney's fees the entire time. She literally purjured herself on the stand about it. "Oh, that $15k transfer? I don't know anything about that..." The agreement says quite transparently that custody shall remain 50/50, legal and physical. It lays out the week-on, week-off schedule. It says she'll take care of transporting the kids each way, at all times. It says the kids will have one childcare provider - the au pair she hired last year who literally only works half the time. And she, in interpreting it, takes it to mean that she gets to tell the babysitter what to do, all the time, because she's paying for it. The agreement is a bit ambiguous. The lawyers said it was what I'd told them I wanted - she wanted to move, she could pay for the headache. This morning we had a mediation session regarding the motion for special relief I filed last month, seeking clarification on the matter I just described. For the fourth time, she threatened to "be on my doorstep with the police" come Monday morning - the first day the new agreement is to take effect. She has no reservations about burning anything down. Murderous rage. Anger. I was reminded today what it was like for that decade. That awful BPD saccharine, threatening rasp, right in front of the mediator: "...and that won't this the first time the cops have been called on you, will it?" His face going from confusion to bewilderment was all the verification I needed. What I mean to ask is: she won't stop. She won't stop, and she has a toehold on primary custody, and the lawyers are telling me I'd better honor the agreement until the litigation is complete. That'll be January, at the earliest. She won't stop. At what point do you just give up? At what point is it not worth fighting the pathology anymore? The stories here where guys are just hoping their kids come back to them...they won't see her nature for years. If I don't get a real career now, I never will - I'm like a middle-aged woman with no kids that way...my clock is ticking. I feel like no matter what I do, the three of them are doomed. Today, she told me she'd called CPS on me after the 5-year-old told her (honestly) that I'd told her to kick the 2-year-old off of her whenever he go on top of her. False PFAs have turned to false child safety reports. All I wanted was fifty-fifty. After the first false PFA - the one that got me out of the house - she started taking the kids - the boy and the girl were three and one at the time - all over the city to random hotel rooms to stay with the man she cheated on me with. A coworker, the hotel rooms paid for by his company. She wouldn't stop when I told her to stop. She wouldn't stop when I asked her to. And the court didn't care. When is it so bad that walking away is the thing that's better for the kids? You walk away, and you pray they come back, and you make a nice, safe nest for them to return, when needed. Or what? When does it end?