I'm in need of advice. I am currently in plan b. Only officially one week though. I wrote b letter and ended contact w/ WS. Nothing has changed for me regarding moving in a positive direction w/ marriage for 6 months. Counseling w/ WS turned out to be a disaster. His anger and bitterness toward me has only escalated. Long story short..I finally talked w/ Steve Harley via telephone and he helped me to put it all in perspective. So for me, I feel more at peace w/ what I need to be doing now.

Today my kids asked me if their dad could go out w/ us on Mother's Day. They said that he wanted to be included on that day. My WS does ask via the kids mostly if I want to do things w/ them. I tell them that I don't want to go usually because there is too much tension. The kids kind of got upset because they think that I'm not doing anything to restore our family when he asks me to go places w/ them. But, since I'm in plan b I am avoiding ALL contact. I am feeling really bad because they don't understand. I tried to explain the best I could that I'm doing this as a "time out" or a "break" so we can each think about things and not have to fight.

Is there something I should be saying to help them understand that I'm not trying to punish their dad. I don't know how to handle their concerns. I do tell them that I love their dad and that I'm just waiting on him to decide to come back home. But I also said that I cannot let him come home if we would continue to fight like before. There's been so much hurt and damage to our family and I don't ever want to go back to that. I want a future w/ happiness, trust, hope, and lots of love.

Please help me w/ handling the kids. They are 13,
11 and 8. I feel so sad and alone. And I don't want to mess things up by doing the wrong thing.

ljkm3,

Tell them the truth. Tell them that MomDay is your day <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" /> , similiar like B-day, you invite people that you want to hang around with. For now, mom & dad are not in a good term so this mom-day is w/o dad. It is between mom & dad ... pick an example where you have fight recently and blew the day and your kids aware about it. Hope they know about A already, if not you have to tell them.

For 13 and maybe 11 you tell them honestly what happen and what you are trying to do ... not getting everybody hurt. You want H back not WH will all of his garbage and you are following a doctor advice to do this <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" /> .

For the 8 years old it depends. Make sure all of them out of your business ... it is an adult mess and regardless the end, both of you will always love them. There is nothing they could do would change thing, only you and WH could.

Just my 2¢ -rh-

<small>[ May 05, 2003, 06:09 PM: Message edited by: redhat ]</small>