BPDFamily.com

My session timed out so perhaps that was a sign to start a message that was more inclusive.

Anyone else here have full custody?

What my d15 custody looks like is I have full custody and I allow her father reasonable visitation. He had her over New Year's because he was housesitting a 3 story house and he let her throw a party there. However it gets messy when he pulls stunts like he did yesterday, where he forgot he had to work, neglected to tell me, and I only found out because I called him 30 minutes before she was supposed to be home.


     

What does the custody order say with regard to your Ex's visitation rights?

I gave him reasonable visitation. I am in control of the situation. I have put no stipulation around his visitation, except what I've given him verbally, I don't want him around her when he's under the influence.

So there's no court order that was filed?

I have full custody, he is allowed reasonable visitation. That is what it says. I determine what is reasonable.

Nebulous... .this must put a lot of pressure upon you, given who your Ex is, and your teenage daughter's testing of boundaries.

Yes it does. I have also chosen to not file a restraining order on him in the past because I didn't want to restrict his access to her at church.

Even today I had a problem with him where he texted her before calling me.

I had to take her phone away today because she lied to me yesterday and he and I got in a huge argument on Saturday because I took her phone away on New Year's Eve. He wasn't supposed to leave her at the house alone on Saturday, but that was covered on another thread.

He has no right to tell me what to do or not do with her phone.

I recently thought about putting a stipulation in the visitation but I decided to try to handle it myself and I weathered that storm.

PwBPD don't do well with flexible boundaries, they tend to push them and keep pushing them.  You see yourself as being reasonable and thoughtful, the other can perceive it as weakness and an invitation to push for more.

When the child is a teenager with adulthood just 2-3 years away that's an added complication.


Don't dismiss the option of seeking a restraining order.  While the forms do have boxes to check off and lots of strict terms, there are surely sections to add exceptions and exclusions.  Most disordered people manage to behave themselves at least somewhat in public.  If he will mind his manners in the congregation, an order could allow his access there as an exception and even include the responsible men there as having authority to ask him to leave if they see an incident developing.

I understand that now. I didn't understand my husband was disordered when I filed for divorce or else I would have structured the visitation with that knowledge in mind.


My ex has managed to charm the whole parish, that's part of the problem. He managed to convince the priest to allow him to do his community service hours for contempt of family court and driving under the influence  at church and then when he fulfilled those hours he stopped going. My ex has sociopathic traits. There have already been two incidents where my daughter fainted in church and when I tried to step in my ex made me cry. He was so mean to me I literally had to leave the temple during the sermon and I sing in the choir. He uses the church to make himself look like the good father and I have learned to step way back from that side show. The girl who is a nurse that was handling my daughter told me she knew my ex was crazy but everybody is nice to him because he has a serious victim thing going on. It is very complicated. I stay as far away from those issues as I possibly can. Less contact is better.

Thanks for the reply.

If he's using church as an excuse to posture as a victim and is manipulating people there, then don't make exceptions.  You don't want to be nice or fair and thereby enable him.  Don't feel bad for him, he can always attend somewhere else.

Thank you forever dad, unfortunately there is no other parish  in our jurisdiction in our county. However since my ex said he is now doing other things and not going to church, I feel more safe about going to church. I actually couldn't attend while he was doing his community service hours at church because I felt so unsafe. He still uses church as a means to see our daughter but since I'm in choir and she assists with  preschool it no longer matters if he's there or not. She now has a reason to go to church other then to see be seen by her father so I feel much better about the situation!

Earlier you said:


Doesn't that put you in a position where you can structure the visitation with that knowledge in mind?

If you make a regular schedule and follow it without exception, the longer it's in place the more of a precedent it sets.  But if your daughter is 15, there may not be time for that to even be an issue.   At some point if you took back something that you yourself had offered, and he tried to take you to court over it, by the time it got heard it would be a moot point.

If the court order literally says you are in charge of determining what is reasonable, that's a pretty empowering statement.   Anything you do is by definition reasonable and you have a court order to back it up.   You could do crazy stuff regarding visitation and it would have to be regarded as reasonable till the order is changed.   There might be some enforcement difficulty with getting him to show up at every exchange dressed as whatever cartoon character you think matches his personality, but if you say that's reasonable then it is.    The point being, I don't see why you wouldn't feel free to do anything that actually is reasonable given your current understanding of the situation.

My ex is a very difficult person and since he sees so little of our daughter it doesn't matter so much.

There was a conflict on January 2 where I had asked him to have her home at 12pm after having her since New Year's Eve and when I called him at 11:30am to see where things were at he was on his way to work and she was back at the house he was sitting. That was very upsetting to me as I had her phone as she had come home from the gym at 3pm on New Year's Eve when she was supposed to be home by 12pm  and I took it as a consequence. The gym is in a city she is not allowed to go to under any other circumstance, it is the city where she got caught smoking marijuana  by the sheriff. (My ex is a marijuana dealer)

The original  plan was not for her to come home on January 1, but when I called him that evening he didn't seem motivated to bring her home so I let her have one more day with him. When I called him at 11:30am on January 2 to see where things were at  he was very defensive and nasty, telling me had already made a commitment to work, which he had conveniently forgotten to tell me the day before. However since he sees her so infrequently there was not a whole lot I can do. I don't drive yet so I couldn't just go get her, or else I would have, the previous night.