Here's my question. How long in advance should the STBX give notice that he wants to spend time with the children? I just found out (Thursday night) my STBX wants to come visit the children over the Labor Day weekend. When he comes, he wants to take them overnight to his sister's house. He will most likely be bringing the OW. Since we aren't yet divorced(or even legally separated), I don't want the children around her. Certainly not for an overnight visit. It doesn't help to ask him not to bring her around. In fact that is one of the reasons we moved out of state..he kept bringing her along when he was suppose to be with his kids.

You need clarification from an attorney. How young are your children? They should not be exposed to OW while you are still married.

File papers for legal separation to protect your rights.

SS,
From a quick glance at your first few posts, I think you should ask this question in the context of your existing thread. For me, it changes everything (and complicates the issue substantially).

Your kids are at an age where they definitely are aware of what's going on. You seem to be trying to ride this whole nightmare out until June 2011 (to get to the 20/20 point)? Do you expect to fight this battle for 9 more months? Haven't they already been exposed to WH's OW?

I'm afraid your kids are getting a very mixed signal about what marriage is. First your WH is living with (right?) another woman. But then, you're remaining married for financial/legal reasons (right?). How far off base am I here?

Listen, I'm as against children being exposed to OP's as the next guy. I think it's important for kids to understand that having OP's is dead wrong and that it destroys families, and destroys marriages, and is extremely hurtful to a person who they promised to cherish and protect through better and worse.

I've run into this on a small scale and told my kids that it's not that I don't want them to stop loving their mom or anything, but I'm honest that what she did with OM is absolutely wrong/ a big mistake.

~optimism

What's with these waywards trying to wrap their kids lives around their dirty little affair? My WH immediately moved the kids in to OW house (during visitation) before I even knew that there was an OW responsible for the end of my marriage. At that time, precident was set and he had weekends with the kids. I couldn't keep the kids from their father and OW, but immediately yanked visitation to every other weekend to limit exposure.

I don't know what your current arrangement is as far as visitation goes, but it seems it's more of an exposure to OW issue more than notice issue. If the notice is short and you have other plans, it probably should be a no. If the notice is short but you can swing it, maybe it's a yes. But if the notice is short and you can use that fact to avoid exposure to OW, I say do it. Tell him your booked and let him know that his exposing kids to OW has many consequences that he is not even considering. It had HUGE consequences for my WH.

Fellspoint..I guess they are both issues for me. As far as the notice is concerned, I've only heard from the kids that he will try to come for a visit next week. He needs to talk to me, not through them. This summer, I asked him when he wanted to see the kids(OW was overseas)..not going to do that agian.

The issue with the OW makes me angry. As I said, we aren't even divorced yet and he's trying to get the kids to get to know her. Once we're divorced, they will probably marry. Until then, the OW has no reason to be around my children. I don't need the OW or WH flaunting their lack of morals around the children, at least while I have some say about it.

Thanks for the responses so far, it gives me something to think about.

It's their way of legitimizing and normalizing behavior that they know is essentially wrong. It also assuages their guilt. And how about the idea that the kids have taken a second priority in their lives (next to OP) so, in order to spend time with them they have to.....multitask.


My fear with this behavior is that the kids really do learn that adultery is normal and so when they grow up they have the concept planted in their heads that if they don't feel satisfied with their marriage, no problem, just go find another mate to hang around with "so they can be happy." It's incumbent upon us as BS's to show the extreme opposite example of what marriage is by honoring the marriage agreement; and to let them know that what mommy or daddy is doing is a colossal mistake.

O

I feel the same way O! My STBX and I are both Christians, even though he's not acting like one right now. I've told him and the OW that I plan to teach the children that their relationship is wrong. Married or not, they will still be living in adultery and God won't recognize or bless their marriage. What makes it worse, is that STBX has started going back to church. How can he justify worshipping God when he is blantenly sinning? He says he won't do anything to harm the kids (too late!), but what is he teaching them about Christianity..do as I say not as I do? This has been a major concern for me all along. I'm just hoping something will be said to knock sense into him, but I feel if it hasn't happened by now, it may never happen.

Don't count on it.

Just keep taking opportunities (as they arise) to explain about how adultery is wrong, and why it's wrong. How it hurts others and brings sadness and tremendously negative energy. You don't even have to be accusing or derogatory in anyway. You don't want them to hate their other parent; but in my view it's perfectly okay to point out that they're making a big mistake.

If you don't want to use him as an example, just watch t.v. for about 5 minutes. There should be some examples in just about every show to use as a springboard for a little discussion about adultery/cheating/lack of faithfulness.

The hope then is just that the kids will pick up on the right lessons, and furthermore be perceptive enough to see the joys that come to people who keep their promises (to others and to themselves), and conversely the sorrow that comes to those who don't.

That's the plan I'm working as we speak.

Opt

When we separated, STBX promised that OW would not be anywhere near our 4yo child. But a few months later, he was telling me that he wanted to take her to a work event, that had nothing to do with families, where she would certainly be exposed to her. I fought him on this, but there was nothing I could do. Then my daughter was talking about a sporting event where a strange person came, and then when she met two new friends (OW's daughters, I found out definitively years later) who just happened to be there at the same time.

It was a fun cat-and-mouse game to OW and STBX.

We went to a coparenting therapist at one point. I hoped she would tell him not to have our daughter around the OP, as she had told me in private. However, in person, she succumbed to his charms, and told him that it was OK. I fought him. I threatened legal action. I even took off one day in an attempt to prevent him from bringing our daughter to an event where I knew she would be around OW. Small "victories."

Finally, six months after we separated, after promising me that he would let me know first before he would do such a thing, my daughter called me from OW's house. Thank God I was at church at a divorce support group, or I would have completely lost it. They encouraged me to be angry, but not sin, to realize that this was reality now, and there wasn't too much I could do.

Now STBX and OW have been playing house for nearly three years. They have a baby together. They have bunched my daughter with her two daughters into a makeshift family. It's sickening and gross. But it's my daughter's reality. This is her back-and-forth life. Her unfortunate normal.

Thank goodness our custody schedule is such that she goes to my church with me. He required that OW start going to church with him in order for them to stay together. I reconcile this with the fact that the church is a place where the sick find healing, and not everyone who goes is walking with God. Some people go just to spectate, be seen, or feel as though if they go on Sunday, they can do whatever they want the rest of the week. Some people don't go, really, to learn about more about God, the true lover of their souls, or allow Him to really speak to them about the path He has for their life. That doesn't mean the church is full of hypocrites. Just that God doesn't turn anyone away, and there's hope for everyone. Maybe some day they will allow God to pierce through to their souls.

My now 6 yo daughter, who loves Jesus, said at least two years ago, that what Daddy is doing is wrong, and he should be with us but, "We love people even if they are doing the wrong thing." That's how she makes her peace. I have told her all about marriage, and what it should be. Ultimately, I can't control what she's learning from Daddy, who leads devotionals with the girls every night. I can only hope they are from the Bible and not from his own personal theological viewpoints which, as you can tell from this, are a bit twisted. One day he shared with me that he was telling the girls that people aren't mistakes during a devotional. This is true, but I shudder to think that he may have been sharing with our daughter that God brought them all together so that he can have his child with OW.

I showed him the book I am using with her one day when he came to fix something in my house. Hopefully he will get a clue.

By all this I am saying that you can fight this as much you want, and maybe you will be able to have a victory here and there. But it sounds to me that your kids have already been exposed to the OP, and from this point forward your goal should be to help them process that reality. Maybe you can help them to realize that this is not the kind of pain they would want to inflict on their spouse or kids � and do so without demonizing dad. I tell you, there have been times when I have said things under my breath about STBX, and my daughter gets angry with ME if she hears it. It only causes alienation and pain for kids, because that other parent is half of who they are.

Welcome to the D Board, Hippiemom. Another example of a post directed at one person but with plenty to go around for the rest of us. Thanks for that.

Personally, I'm still fighting this nasty little thing where my stbxww can't stop finding herself in the same climate (e.g. same house, same car, same beach) as a fellow who used to be my best friend and is separated but still married to his ww. The best I can do is let the kids know exactly how you said it - adults make mistakes, and Mom is dead wrong on this one. Her actions are causing pain for others and it's not right for married people to spend so much time together (unless they're married to each other! wow what a concept!). I also took the opportunity to let stbxWW know, in private, that I think what she's doing is disgusting, gross, and it's teaching the kids the wrong lessons ~ couldn't help it, she asked me why I wouldn't come in the house when I went to pick up DD9. I wasn't going to lie.


Opt

I wish I had the fortitude to be as strong on the topic as some you. My WH is 2000 miles away and I still fear his wrath if I say anything even remotely uncomplimentary about him. I do let the kids know that daddy being with ms. X is wrong in ways I think they will understand. If he was even remotely God fearing much would be different.

Those of u with God fearing cheaters, and cheaters exposing kids to their affairs, lots of hypocracy going on there.

I think the hypocrisy is what bothers me. We are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God, but as it says in Romans 6:1 "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" NO! Once we repent, then God's grace will cover that sin and it will be remembered no more. It's beyond sad that the children of unrepentive waywards have to even be exposed to a life of such grotesqueness and BS have to too. Could we possibly create an island where all WS and OP been sent into exile? Just kidding!...only a little.

Agreed. Much hypocrisy going around. OW told her husband that she wouldn't go to church with him because the church is "full of hypocrites." Then she, a feminist, did the worst, most hypocritical thing that a woman who is supposed to be all about the well being and rights of women could do to another: slept with my husband.

After we split up, her husband found on her creepy computer history that she had googled our names as a couple and then "married Christian men." I think she was trying to figure out a way to get into STBX's mind, or figure out how to transform herself into a woman he'd want to stay with. Maybe, trying to learn something about us, and about our faith, in order to figure out how to fake her way into keeping him with her.

The next thing you know, she is going to church, not with her husband, but with one of those "married Christian men." So much for "the church is full of hypocrites" when you are proudly sitting next to the worst one.

Hypocrite environmentalists in the grocery store buying PVC laden products. Hypocrite politicians fighting fair immigration laws while paying their Guatemalan maids under the table. All of them show up in church, next to me, who does my own share of blowing it. I'm glad Christ died for all of us.

It just makes me sad that the person I looked up to spiritually, and who had so much wisdom when I had questions about the Bible, decided to twist God's word into his own cheater's bible and march like an ox into the slaughterhouse. I stood beside this man as we vowed to raise our daughter together into a Christian home -- but now he's off with an adulteress and her kids, having broken up a home that could have been Christian, had he not constantly interfered and tried to show up OW's husband. Always tried to show that he was a "good man," since before she married her husband. We were at the wedding, in fact, and shortly thereafter I was asking to him to stop "counseling" her about her marriage. But he was such a good man. He would never do anything inappropriate.

I bet that's what she tells herself every time he pulls out of the driveway and leaves her behind with the kids to "go to the store" with his cell phone in his pocket, and takes a little bit too long to come back.

Ooops! So sorry. Veered a bit off topic. Carry on.

Well, he did it. Came to spend 24 hours with the kids and brought her along. He also had the gall to ask DD13 if she wanted OW to stay! She said no..GOOD GIRL! He had told me she wasn't coming, which I let the kids know. His children not only know him as an adulterer, now they know he's a liar too.

And how are you about that? I know the thread is about the kids, but it must have hurt that he brought her.

It makes me angry. I can't believe I thought he was telling the truth. I asked DD13 if it upset her that her dad asked her if she wanted the OW to stay and she said yes. I wrote him an email, which he won't respond to, letting him know how I feel about the way he treats the children. He obviously has no regard for their emotional well being. Apparently his happiness is all that matters.