Pissed Off!!!
A little background. My ex and I were together almost 15 years befor splitting up. One of the major factors in our divorce was my pot, and to a lesser extent alcohol use. Mind you I never lost a job or had any legal troubles due to it, but that was mostly luck and it definately was an issue.
We've been apart for over 5 years now. She has had sole custody of my son, mostly because I only recently started to get my $hit together. In the time we were appart I ALWAYS paid my child support, base on the 50K salary I was making when we split, even though I was making half of that most of the time. I'm not saying this makes me a hero, by any means, but I did take care of my responsibility there.
I had to move back in with my parrents after the divorce, partly due to finance and partly due to my emotional state (suicidal). Unfortunatly my parents lived almost a thousand miles away from my son, so I have only been able to see him a week or two a year for the last five years.
A little over six months ago, I finally got my $hit together, gave up the pot entirely, moved half way across the country where now I'm only about 100 miles away. I have a new job making good money, I'm seeing a theripist regularly to work on my "issues" and have been clean close to six months now.
Now I know that six months does not make up for 20 years, but here is my issue. When I moved back in May, we agreed that we would alternate every two weeks, she coming here, I going there, to visit. In that time, she has come up here twice and I have made 7 trips there. I work retail, so I have to work some weekends. However my job has been nice enough to schedule me off two weekends a month. I get my schedule 6 months at a time. When I got this schedule the third week of September, I told her I had the 2nd weekend of Oct. off as well as Halloween weekend. About a week later she told me that she was going out of town of her 40th birthday the 2nd weekend and her close friend (who is dying of cancer and is the mother of one of my son's close friends) was having a Halloween party on the 31st.
I am really trying to establish a relationship with my son. He's 8 now and basically she and him have a relationship and I am the guy who comes to visit every now and then and calls on the phone on the weekends. I'd call more often, but the conversations are awkward as, to be honest, we really don't know each other. I take responsibility for this situation, but I want to try to fix it, or at least improve it.
So I just let the birthday thing go. What can I do. I guess I could have insisted that he stay with me while she goes away, but I'm really trying not to be confrontational. So I'm ready to come down for Halloween. I figure I'll leave from work Friday night so we can have some extra time together. I let her know about this a week and a half in advance. She tells me that they have a sleep over at a friends house Friday night, so I should just come down Saturday morning. Fine, not happy, but I'll deal, right? She says my son and I can do some early trick or treating and then they'll go to the party. It'll be an early night as her friend has cancer and goes to bed about 7. I can deal with that.
Turns out they leave at 4PM, still daylight, no trick or treating going on, and don't come back until almost 9:30, certainly too late for a 8 year old to be out. Is completly oblivious as to why I might be upset. The next day I take my son out, just him and me, and we have a good time. In the course of the day we talk about him visiting me and staying overnight. He has never stayed overnight with me without his mother there. He says it sounds like fun and we talk about it a little bit. When I go to leave I say that I'm looking forward to him coming up to have a "sleepover" with me.
10 min after a leave I get an email from her saying that she would really appreciate me talking to her instead of him about visiting plans. In the past the issue has been that he had not stayed away from home on his own, but in the last few months he has had a few "sleep over's" with friends, including an overnight trip to a hotel (ironicaly only about 20 miles from me!!) with some friends. He does have some "issues" about staying away from home, but the only way to get past them is to confront them and see that everything will be ok. Besides, I'm his father for crissakes, and if she doesn't trust me, I'm still living with my folks, so WTF??!!
I was going to have a discussion with her about this last night, but by the time they made it home I was too tired and pissed off to be reasonable. I am still working on dealing with my emotions after just numbing them away for the last 20 years, and she brings them out more than anyone. Not her fault, just the way it is.
Now I know I've done alot of damage to our relationship in the past. I still love her and wish I could somehow make everything right and we could be a family again, but I am increasingly doubtful of that happening. But I have never put my son in harms way. I never smoked in front of him, never harmed him in any way, other than not being there for the last 5 years.
What am I to do here. I don't want to be a total dick, but I am sick of being walked over all the time. I'm finally starting to have some tiny bit of self esteem and want that to be respected. To be honest, she is a big part of why my son has feelings at all for me. She doesn't run me down in front of him, though I have given her many reasons to do just that. I'm just not sure what to do. This has been building up for awhile now and I don't know how to deal with it. So I throw it out to your guys, and especially gals. Any and all thought, advice and suggestions are welcome. If nothing else, it helps somewhat to get this off my chest. Hope everyone else is doing well. Take care all.