having been on the other side of cs (not with oc situation) i can tell you that i had no animosity (sp?) towards my oldest son's stepdad. and i can also tell you that if you keep a positive attitude with the oc and don't try to belittle the ow in front of him/her. you will end up with a very fullfilling relationship in the end. one thing that did help my son and me bond was that i had kept a journal of all that happened between the 4 people involved (fh was around for his entire life). i wrote in the 3rd party with as little bias as possible just trying to tell the facts as they occured. when he was 21 i let him have it and it cleared up all the questions he had held onto for so long. this is something i highly reccommend to anyone in this situation. fh has started

Pops....Please could you elborate on this? What your w is doing as well. It sounds like an excelent idea. How do you do something like that and keep your personal emotions out of it not to put anyone down?
Thanks
Mary

ntmo,,,,,, i'll try. the main thing is to leave out discriptive words about op's behavior and attitudes that would turn your words into a one sided judgemental opinion. this will be an example from my own journal. the names have been changed to protect the quilty. sorry couldn't resist that example of opinionation.

" i went to pick up timmy tonight at his mothers house. arrived at 6 pm and no one was home. waited in the car until 8 pm. as i was leaving parking lot sally drove in with timmy in the car. i turned around and followed her to her parking space and asked if she had forgotten that it was my visitation weekend. her reply was "no and i thought you would have been gone by now". her sister was with them and got out of the car and started swearing at me and threatening to have her husband kick my a$$. i told her that i am not here to cause trouble i just want to see timmy and that's it."

as you can see i tried very hard not to write that sally was a b---- and in this case just trying to aviod my having my visitation. just discribe the facts as they happened. this way when and if your child needs to read it they will hopefully be able to see why you made the choices you did.

one other thing is that you have to be honest in this. if i had stood nose to nose with sally's sister swearing back and forth that would have had to be writen down also. in my case that never happened. in fact i ended up requesting and taking the sherrif with me many times to make sure there was no physical and verbal confrontations again.

i have seen here where some ow have made it very difficult for some bs's to see oc with ws. i don't understand why they let this happen but i'm not in their shoes. then the ws worries a life time of whether oc will knock on their door in 20 years. if they had kept a journal writen in this fashion they simply hand it to the oc and they can see for themselves why decisions were made.

<small>[ September 16, 2003, 07:46 AM: Message edited by: pops ]</small>

Pops that is a very good Idea. I keep a journal for myself. Started doing that as a child. I'm not always consistant with it as I have a busy life, but do keep one. Sometimes it's very long and detailed other times it very short and breif. I agree with you though about ow allowing the bs seeing the child. It's not about us, any of us, it's about the kids in any situation. Bottom line. I admire you for how you've (and your w) have handled your situation and how you've been able to overcome things that would be very hard for a lot to do. Life is not perfect and I'm trying to learn to make the best out of bad situations and go on. It's not always easy though. Thank you for sharing.
Mary