Hello

[jap]

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have been lurking on this board for a long time, but have never posted, or registered until today.

I have read an awful lot of posts, and have found your advice to each other to be adult and non inflammatory. This is why I have decided to ask for your help.

I am 45 years old this year, and I am the mother of the two most wonderful Son's in the world. They are 12 and 5, and are my world.

My divorce from my husband was finalised on the 26th of January this year, and it was not pleasant.

My husband left us in April 2005 to persue his 'relationships' with other Women, and I only found out abou these when he inadvertantly left a recorded message on my answerphone at work, between himself and another Woman. I was greeted by this at 8am one morning, the context was one of 'I love you, just call if you need me, you cant get pregnant, I have had a vasectomy', and lots of kissing and promises. When I confronted him about this, he told me someone was playing a sick joke on me, but he finally buckled and told me the truth.

Since this time, he has had two ther relationships which I know of, but he is now seeing someone who is the 'love of his life', and it is for real, (his words). We were together for 18 years, 15 married.

The only prblem with this is, she is the Mother to a little girl who is in my younger Son's class at School. She approached me last week, for a 'chat' after school, and told me of their relationship which has been going on since December 2005, (I already knew this, as they were seen together). She wanted to speak to me as 'one mother to another', and she explained that she had no wish to be involved in my Son's lives as she and my husband had not been together long enough, and she was not going to introduce her own three children to him as it was too soon, and she did not know where the relationship was going. To be honest, I was very releived, as I feel 3 months is far too soon for Children to be involved.

I told her of the signed agreement which myself and my X husband drew up in May last year, concerning the introduction of a third party into our children's lives. It consists of full notification given to the other parent, of any involvement regarding the Children in his/her future relationships. We both set a time limit of a least 9 months before introductions were to be made, and not before the other Parent was consulted.

My X husband is meeting her Children next week, after 3 months. I am devasted for my Son's, not only that, my X has informed my older child of his involvement with this 'Lady' without consulting me first, which explains a lot concerning his behaviour over the last couple of weeks. I have spoken to my oldest son, and he refuses to speak about her, or see her, or hear about her, but I know he is only doing this to save my feelings, as this is what he told his Auntie.

When my X husband meets her family, the little girl is bound to come to school and mention this to my youngest Son. What can I do???

I hate my X for what he is doing to our Children, please help me act like an adult in all of this. My feelings are I would like to kill him or do him great harm, but my feelings are not the ones I am concerned about, It is my Son's.

I cannot beleive he has so little thought for our Children. I know they would have to meet eventually, I am not that stupid, but why couldn't he just stick to our signed agreement??

I am also dissapointed in myself, I am afraid that I told my X that if he hurts our children, or makes things awkward for them, I will not let him see them.

Any advice from anyone would be so greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Julie
I

[tan]

Jap

It's an unfortunate thing. I have a child from a previous marriage and I honestly dreaded the day that my ex may form a new relationship and having to introduce my (our) daughter (7) into that. Funny thing was, I formed a relationship before he did, I honestly didn't give it a thought on how my ex would feel about me introducing her into my relationship.

I told my ex-husband that I didn't want him introducing any casual flings to her as I didn't want her to see another woman every weekend. He agreed.

My now husband also has a daughter (15) and we played it very carefully with her. As both of us had our kids every second weekend, we saw each other around this, so that each of us still had our alone time with our kids. We eventually starting spending time together (all 4 of us) and progressed from there. If we stayed over for the night, we stayed in different rooms, we wanted to make sure that all of us were comfortable with the arrangements. This continued for eight months, that's when we shared the same bed.

My-ex husband entered a relationship and eventually introduced her to our daughter. He had told me he was seeing someone but I felt sick to my stomach when my daughter told me that the girlfriend had spent the night, I asked my ex where it was going and he was honest and said it was progressing nicely and he would see. That was satisfying to me to know that it wasn't a casual fling. (She has now just moved in with him).

I know that you and your husband had a written agreement, it's difficult, some relationships blossom faster than others.

Unfortunately we can not control the relationships of our ex partners but you can control how your children are affected by them. Your kids are 5 & 12 and I feel that they are old enough to know that their father is seeing someone else.

You need to tell your 12 year old that you are ok with your ex having a relationship. Whether you are or not, put on a brave face. You need to also tell your 12 year old that he doesn't have to see or talk about her if he doesn't want too, but that shouldn't stop him from seeing his father, but also tell him that she may be nice once he gets to know her. The most important thing is that your kids still have the contact with both you and their father. It doesn't matter if he meets her children. Your kids need to hear about the relationship from you not someone else.

My now husband's ex has caused nothing but problems for us with his daughter and unfortunately she no longer visits us.

That is one thing I have always promised myself, no matter how horrible things become between my ex and I, I will not let it reflect on his relationship with his daughter. I never speak ill of him in front of her and nor do I allow anyone else too. He is her father!!!

Sit down and talk to him and find out where this relationship may be going. If he doesn't want to talk about it explain to him that it is important to you to know that its not a fling as you don't want the kids to become attached to her to find that next week she's gone! I'd probably even say to him, if it's called for, if he gave a damn about how the kids might feel about all of this, he'd be man enough to talk to you about it.

I don't know if this is going to help you at all, the only other thing I can suggest is, reverse the circumstances and think about it logically, don't kid yourself, how would you handle it if it were you forming the relationship and you felt it was strong after 3 months?

My daughter was 5 when my ex-husband and I found new relationships and my step daughter was 12 going on 13.

Tan