Originally Posted by
Sasha1972 
Thanks. I hadn't thought of it as trying to control my actions (I was thinking of it more as him trying to get hold of Kid more, and/or set things up so I would look bad in arbitration if I said no), but the control-your-ex thing is a whole new perspective. Since we've been apart for years, the only way he can get at me now is through Kid (especially since I quit responding to drunken emails). He can now "make" me drive over to his place and hang around awkwardly. And that is pretty close to the way I believe he would think of it.
I may indeed have been too lenient with boundaries. I am entitled to not have my evenings taken up with Kid visiting her father, especially as the reason why I have to take Kid to see her father is not of my doing. And in general the less time Kid spends around an alcoholic who bad-mouths her mother and his meth girlfriend, the better. If he wants to see Kid more, it should be on him to come up with ways to make that possible.
Lundy Bancroft (author of Why Does He DO That?) has written a book called, The Batterer as Parent. It's really for professionals in the field (and priced accordingly--about 50 bucks or so), but much of that book is about how abusive men use the children as pawns or weapons in their campaign against the mothers of those children. The kids are manipulated and the abusive fathers do exactly the kind of crap yours is doing.
I don't know enough about your ex to know whether he's a batterer (which doesn't necessarily involve physical violence), but he sure sounds like a classic batterer-type when it comes to his interactions with you in this context.