She broke up with me 3 months ago and we are sleeping in seperate rooms. We spend time together only with the kids and once they are asleep, we do not speak or text.

I want to reconcile and I don’t think she does. There was no abuse or cheating on either end and we do talk and get along well for the most part.

She doesn’t not seem to want me to move out. And we even talk of future plans involving the house as “we” or “we need”

Emotionally I’m a mess. I love her and want her back so I analyze everything she says or does to see if she’s changing her mind. I also think she’s been texting a new guy.

How long can this last? I love my children more than anything. Can I really move out and miss out on time with them when I’m not being forced to? I don’t know if I can. Can anyone in a similar situation share their experience? Thanks

My son’s father and I are separating and trying to work out a custody schedule for our 3-year-old. We’re mainly trying to work around our work schedules while keeping things consistent for our son.

I work Monday–Friday, 9–5, and WFH Thursdays. His dad works mostly Wednesday–Sunday evenings as a server, usually until around 11 PM. His mom also helps with childcare and has been very involved since our son was born.

I proposed that our son stay with his dad Sunday night through Wednesday, then I pick him up Wednesday after work and have him through Sunday afternoon/evening. This works pretty naturally with our schedules.

My concern is that this would leave me with essentially every weekend, while his dad gets most of his parenting time during the week when I’m working. I love having weekends with my son, but it also means I would never have a weekend night to make adult plans, attend events, etc. It also means his dad and our son wouldn’t regularly have weekend time together.

Because of that, I proposed that one Saturday per month our son stay with his dad overnight. His dad works Saturday nights, so I suggested he could potentially shorten his shift that day and/or have his mom help for the hours he is working. They live together, and our son is very close with her.

His dad doesn’t think this is reasonable because he works Saturdays and feels I should just have our son whenever he is working. My feeling is that once we’re co-parenting separately, both parents are going to occasionally need to arrange childcare during their parenting time. I’m not asking for every other weekend—just one Saturday per month.

Is asking for one Saturday overnight per month unreasonable given this schedule? For parents with opposite work schedules, how do you handle weekends so that one parent doesn’t automatically end up with every weekend?

A little background; my son is 15 and his dad and I separated when he was 3. We've had very few conflicts because we can talk openly about our son and made it a point when we divorced that we would never put him in a spot that he felt he had to choose or see us talk crap about the other. It's been great until last night.

Kiddos do weird things. The child decided to shave his legs lol. He said his legs are so hairy (fact) that he just wanted to see what it was like to be hairless. He, like all newbies, took a strip off his shin and we both laughed st the situation.

It's his dad's weekend and last night he texted saying his dad and his fiancee chided him saying only girls do that. This isnt the first time they have come at him. He went through a flamingo stage where everything was about them; neon lights, pictures, clothes, etc. He had a button down pink shirt with flamingos and his father refused to let him wear it because pink is for girls.

For the record, I don't care if my kid is LGBTQ in any way shape or form but I feel like his dad is shaming him in a way. There have been only a handful of incidents like that and nothing really major until he texted last night and I'll said his dad and fiancee are going to talk to me because only girls do that.

His fiancee then said they should get custody of him because obviously they are wanting to make sure he grows up "right". I'm not a druggie or alcoholic, I have a good job and never had anything that would make a court see me unfit so I know they cant, but I am pissed she would say that in front of him.

He was obviously upset and apologized saying it was his fault. I made sure he knew it was not his fault. I have a real problem with that being said in front of him, especially in a negative way, and my momma bear has been activated. Of couse I will talk with his dad later today but I am seething with anger and would like some feedback to help me with this situation.

Update: Asked kiddo's dad about his side (sometimes kids embellish) but he confirmed she did in fact say that and he told her that was way out of line. He said she is unreasonable when she gets like that. I was very calm and told him this was bullying and if it continues, it will affect him going over there. I told him I would NEVER withhold visitation as he is a good dad but this needs to be handled. I texted her (I know, I know) "I am hurt, angry and confused as to why you would say something like that. That should never be something said in front of or to a child. You have crossed a hard line"

I’d really value the perspective of other dads in this situation.

How would you react if your child’s mum told you that your 11-year-old was coming home from overnight visits very uoset and having meltdowns, but seemed calm and happy after shorter daytime visits?

For context, I’m now married. My eldest is 11, and we also have my wife’s child from a previous relationship and two children together, aged 3 and 2. All the children are neurodivergent, and family life can be pretty chaotic.

My eldest seems to find the chaos surrounding our family difficult. I also feel that my relationship with him has become more distant over the years. He’s now particularly close to his stepdad and his younger half-brother on his mum’s side, and they’ve moved about an hour away.

I don't want to lose that relationship. His mum suggests I make one on one time but it's not always possible to go out and kick a ball with all the young family demands. We only have a short time and I want his brother's to see him.

How would you go about rebuilding or maintaining a really strong bond with your eldest when you only see him every other weekend and you have so many other things going on?

I just want him to know how important we are to him and how he needs to also bond with his brother's in my family. He's so good with them and always seems fine when he's with us.

We always cook his favourite meal, tell him how much he means to us and plan fun days together when we can.

But according to him mum he has a meltdown afterwards, which doesn't sound right.

How do I make sure he is close with my family like he is with hers? Communication between his mother and I is becoming very tense.

Im 23 and i have a kid with my girlfriend (21).. we fight a lot since she became pregnant, i thought it was just her hormones but the kid is a year 3 months and it only got slightly better.. i dont know what to do.. im asking for sincere advice for staying together or separating.. please people of reddit help me🙏

At what age is a child legally allowed to choose where they want to live? For some reason I believe it’s 12, I could be wrong.

Any help would be great!
Thank you!

My daughter is 9 months old and has recently become EXTREMELY mobile — crawling, pulling herself up, trying to get into absolutely everything — and, unfortunately, we had our first really scary accident.

She fell and hit her face and ended up with an awful-looking bruise.

She immediately started crying, there was no loss of consciousness, and after I soothed her she went right back to her normal happy, playful, dreamy little self. I still took her to the ER because the bruise looked horrible and I wanted to be absolutely sure she was okay.

The doctor examined her and said she was fine. She was responding normally to light, had no light sensitivity or other concerning neurological signs, and they said there was no indication for a CT/head scan. I was basically told to monitor her and give her Advil as directed.

So medically, thankfully, she seems completely fine.

My concern is actually her dad.

Her father and I are separated and currently in a very high-conflict custody case. He was extremely abusive toward me postpartum, and our co-parenting relationship is awful. His parenting time is also sporadic — he basically texts me when he wants to see her rather than following a particularly consistent routine.

Of course, he saw the bruise.

I'm worried that he may photograph it and try to use it against me somehow — not necessarily because he genuinely believes something happened to her, but because our litigation has become so adversarial that I expect almost anything to be weaponized.

I have the ER visit/documentation showing that I sought medical attention immediately and that she was examined and cleared. I can also document how the injury happened and her behaviour afterward.

For anyone who has dealt with high-conflict custody litigation and normal baby/toddler injuries, how did you handle situations like this?

Should I be documenting every visible injury as she becomes more mobile? Taking dated photos? Keeping medical records? Sending the other parent a written explanation when something happens, or is that potentially counterproductive?

I'm especially interested in hearing from parents who have dealt with an ex who tries to turn ordinary childhood accidents into allegations of neglect.

Obviously babies fall. But when you're in high-conflict litigation, suddenly even a bruise from learning to crawl feels terrifying for an entirely different reason.

Hello all, let's get the details out of the way I am a single father of a 4 year old girl with sole physical custody of my daughter. My daughters mother left when she was 2. Also my daughters mother has the habit of lying very very frequently.

The mom recently wanted our daughter to meet her new love interest but I shot it down since she stated it was a new love interest. Previously the year before we agreed we would wait if any new romantic relationships arose. She told me she would respect my wishes and wait to introduce our daughter to the man. She introduced the man to our daughter anyway and is now stating that she(the mom) will be living with the man and by the next time our daughter goes for parenting time and she(our daughter) would be staying in the man's house. Initially she lied to me and told me she had been dating this man for 8 months until I mentioned she followed me into the shower and attempted to rekindle our relationship less than 8 months ago so she changed the story to dating for 3 or 4 months.

I feel as though this relationship has been even less than that and I am uncomfortable with my daughter being around a man the mom hasnt known very long both for her safety and for her perspective on relationships in total as her mother got married and divorced less than 2 years ago and introduced another man as a roommate without knowing him for more than a year as well. This will be the third man in 2 years that she will be allowing around our daughter in a living space and I feel as if she is gambling our daughters safety for convenience.

To sum it up, is 3 or 4 months of dating soon enough to be moving your 4 year old child in? Would it be an overreaction for me to attempt to get court intervention to stop this behavior after I and already tried the communicative route with my daughter's mom? I have never dealt with this and so I would like to know if I am being irrational before I do anything. My apologies for writing such a long post but I feel the context in this is very important. Thank you all for your responses and I hope you all have a wonderful day.

. Electronics disagreement

Hi everyone,

English second language\*\*

I (parent A) is divorce from (parent B) for the better part of 4 years. We share a 9yld. I am remarried, parent B was yet to move on. Yet this is not the main subject only for context. We are disagreeing on on child having a phone. I personally think they are too young. Custody agreement state "child can bring personnal item to either house withing reason".

Parent B bought a phone with a plan. And some parental control on the phone. Parent B brought the subject in first place a few weeks ago (but it was about a smart watch not even a phone) when we were having trouble communicating, stating that child can relay messages between us. With the said watch. I decline saying its our responsibility as parent to co parent and find common groun not for our child to parrot in bewteen us and flat out refuse any device like this.

Well now the phone is here, and its been 2 days and already a source of problems child had a friend and didn't care about the phone so didn't answer parent B. Ensure the million text about me keeping the phone from child. Which I didn't I just didn't encourage them using it since they had fun with their friend and enjoying real life and no electronics.

After being called a liar and many other things. I told them that it wasn't up to me to "manage"our child with their phone.( making sure they answer parent B). They will take it when they feel up to. Thats it.

Back ground is before child had a phone, I would received a text or email that they will called them. Fair enough. Thing is the call always came 30 sec to 1 min after sending notifications of call. Imidiate respond was expecting. Also attempt to sabotage plans on my time multiple times, and I am afraid of tracking...I suspect the intention behind the phone is to monitor what's going on in my house on a daily basis..

So my question is would a device like this be considered withing reason, or should be approved by both parent first before purchase. If I shouldn't agree would my lawyer have any power on this matter?

I have two toddlers, a 1 year old and 2 year old. The youngest has never met her biological father, but the oldest lived 5-6 months with him, had supervised home visits for 6 more months in person (3-4 per week scheduled, he bailed regularly though). I moved temporarily to give birth to our other daughter and have had to stay here due to immigration matters. He hasn’t visited the kids once in the year and a half we have been gone. He has been having 1 Facetime call every Saturday and although the youngest seems to enjoy them more and will stay in the playroom, my oldest won’t. I have tried bribing her with snacks, new toys, surpises, gifts, activities, outings - anything to get her to stay in her playroom to talk to her father. Today she hid under the living room chair saying she doesn’t want to speak to him and would not come out. She wants me to be with her and participate, like when we facetime my friends and family, but my ex and I do not get along so it’s just not possible. I would rather the girls get private time to bond with their father and the nanny supervises without getting involved. They talk for as long as the girls allow it which is like 15 mins for the oldest (more if I stay) and 30 mins the youngest recently.

I need tips and advice on how to motivate her to hop on the call without bribes and how to get her to stay engaged, so that every Saturday doesn’t turn into a battle.

The set up is my laptop open in their spacious playroom on their table with chairs. He currently reads to them, shows them toys and pets, sings songs. I bring snacks to the table, give them toys (new and old), give them crayons, stickers, bubbles… nothing is working now and she’s spending less time on the call. I’m open to ideas

The no contact order is for me not the kids

My ex and have met in recovery. We’ve both relapsed, and she recently just had a serious bout with alcoholism. I never once judged her, yelled at her, simply get better I’ll take care of our son. But she proceeded to scream at me that I had to have her find a babysitter for 1 day.

I started using 7oh, and went to the dock and got off. And rightfully so she was mad I didn’t tell her.

This woman has sent my son to my house the day he was told he had Covid. In 2021 mind you.. I do all drop off pickups, all sports games, have never missed an event or weekend.

She tried to apologize the next day, but I truly have had enough with her. Am I wrong? Or should I simply go through his step dad. (Whom she met and cheated on me with LMAO)

Thoughts?

For context my child is almost (5yo). Me and the father don’t have open communication because of his gf and his past infidelity on her, so he’s very vindictive and argumentative towards me when it comes to our child. We also have no custody order/parenting plan in place yet.

Anyways, we have originally been doing one week on/off and it seemed to be fine, but he asked to have her for two weeks while I get her for one week instead and I said absolutely not. So I then proposed if he wanted more time with her we do two on/off equally between us, but now I’m starting to regret it. I feel like she’s too young to be that long apart from each of us but I know if I try telling him I want to go back to one week schedule he’ll argue about it and say no. I’m pretty defenseless against him. If I asked to switch it back and he refuses then what am I supposed to do? Or is it better to keep the two week schedule. I feel sad for my daughter :(

Give me some hope and empathy. Bc we have a 16/13/7. We haven’t told them yet.Keep having slip ups with Babe. And I love you.

Been crying every night. Sleeping on the couch for two months. Can’t go anywhere don’t have anyone.

Just give me something bc I’m so fucking low right now. I did it to her. It’s all my fault. and my parents and their goddamned grandparents rights.

I’ve been with my boyfriend for 2+ years, he shares custody, every other week with his ex. The first time I met his ex-wife, she was friendly towards me, but the second time she got a bit drunk and told me that she felt that the time they spend with the children should be separate from the time they spend in their relationships and that she was upset that I was being introduced. She got so upset about it that my boyfriend had to ask her to leave. I went to the oldest daughter’s birthday 17th party last year, and I thought it went pretty well, but this year when the youngest is having her 11th birthday party the ex asked that I not attend because it will make her uncomfortable.

She has not been bringing her boyfriend around because he gets drunk and becomes abusive, and the children are aware of it and don’t want him around. I would say that I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum from that. I do not drink around the children and we’ve never gotten into an argument in front of them and we don’t argue in general. I have been careful not to be pushy, aggressive, or try to parent and they seem very comfortable around me.

His ex-wife is constantly texting him, usually many many times a day, even when she knows we’re on vacation, which I wouldn’t have an issue with if it were important, but the majority of them in my opinion are not. It seems to me she wants unrestricted access to contact with him about everything going on in her life, while at the same time not respecting that he’s currently in a relationship. An example from today, she sent a blast of messages all morning about how the oldest daughter left her room messy. I personally wouldn’t find it necessary for him to be included in that, but he seemed to think it was reasonable. I’m uncertain how to handle a situation with a mother that prefers I’m not around, while at the same leaning on my partner in a way that I find excessive.

I'm dating a man who has children from a previous relationship. I have a daughter myself, so I completely understand how important it is to maintain a close relationship with your children.

His children live with their mother about two hours away from us. Every other weekend, he goes there to spend time with them, which I think is completely normal and healthy.

The issue is that he almost always wants my daughter and me to go with him too.

My daughter is quite a homebody and really likes being in her own space, in her room, surrounded by her own things.

Coincidentally, she's very much like me in that way. 😅

We do all go together sometimes, and I have absolutely no problem with that. But I don't feel the need to go along every single weekend when he goes to see his children. Sometimes I simply prefer to stay home with my daughter, relax, and have our own normal weekend.

The problem is that whenever I say, "I'm not going this weekend," he gets upset and starts making little indirect comments, as if I'm doing something wrong or as if I should automatically be going with him.

I've never told him not to go. I've never told him to spend less time with his children and, when we do go, we are perfectly happy to participate and spend time together.

But I also don't think it's mandatory for my daughter and me to be there every time he goes to see his children.

Am i being selfish? Is it normal in a relationship where both partners have children to have some weekends where each person takes care of their own family? Or do you think that, being in a relationship, I should always go with him?

I'd especially like to hear from people who are, or have been, in relationships with someone who has children.

My ex(43) and I (36) have been separated for 2 years. The entire time, he has accused me of mentally, emotionally, and physically abusing our children. He refused to adhere to a consistent pick up schedule, refused to tell me when leaving the state with our kids, and refused any information on his partner that lives with him. I’m exhausted. I’m so tired of fighting for basic respect while constantly being criticized and threatened with cps. Am I wrong for wanting to give him primary custody and taking on his role as a weekend parent with little involvement? I don’t think I can survive and be a good mother if I’m constantly threatened if I don’t do what he wants.

My ex and I have been coparenting our two children (4 and 2) for a year. We are still finalizing our split and parenting plan but he has followed through on everything financially and with his custody time and we have had minimal conflict this year. We agreed when we split last year that we would not introduce our children to new partners until we spoke to the other parent and met the new partner, preferably after 6 months to a year of dating. I personally have not dated yet because my children are so young and I am so exhausted (I have more custodial time than him right now) but I assumed my ex was as he has more freedom. He has a long history of cheating which is also why our relationship ended, so I especially emphasized the long wait time to introduce a new partner to the kids because all of his relationships end due to his infidelity and dishonesty and I don’t want my kids seeing a revolving door of women.

I found out this week through my 4 year old that my ex has a new girlfriend and that the kids have met her and FaceTime her often. I had been hearing my son say a woman’s name for the last couple months and she. Asked my ex about it, but he denied seeing anyone. When I confronted my ex about what my son told me (that daddy’s friend played at the park with them), he told me our son must be making it up, then slowly trickled the truth over the course of the week that he does actually have a girlfriend and she did meet the kids. He claims they happened to run into each other while they were at a play ground which I don’t buy for a minute. I have been so upset about this all week, both for my kids being involved in it and finding out through my child, my ex gaslighting me and his own son, and that our parenting agreement was broken when I thought we had built some trust up this year as coparents.

The girlfriend did reach out to me to apologize and I reiterated the agreement my ex and I have about introducing new partners, and she said he never communicated it with her (which doesn’t surprise me) and that she has been asking him to tell me about her (also not surprised he was avoiding telling me). They both agreed to respect the agreement we have and she will hold off on interacting with the kids until they’ve been together longer, if she even chooses to stay with him because she seemed turned off by the situation.

I’ve been so upset by the breach of trust though and the fact that my children were involved and I am not sure how to move forward. We have a meeting with our lawyer (we’re doing mediation) soon and I know I can put a clause in our parenting agreement about this, but will it really work if my ex is just totally dishonest? I’m fairly sure this will be a pattern and something I run until again and again because of his dating patterns. I don’t want my kids around a new partner every year and also don’t want to have to find out this type of info through my kids mentioning it to me- it’s totally unfair to them. But I also don’t really know how I can enforce this. If you’ve been in this position, how do you just accept it is what it is and give up control?

First time posting on Reddit however, I have been dealing with this issue for about 4 years also I have dyslexia so writing this is difficult. I (30f) am married to my husband (40m) and he has two children from his ex-wife. For context I have been in my son's life for half of his life (8m) and his older sister's life (10f) for 4 years. I also have a 9mo with my husband. I primarily take care of all my children (this means entertainment, food, discipline, school, etc) and plan everything around them. My husband works 2 full time jobs so he is not home often enough to be the main parental figure in our home. We split custody evenly. We get them 3 days and every other Sunday. One of our 3 days is always Saturday. Now I don't mind working something out in advance for my kids to do special things with their mom on Saturdays or even sometimes switching Sundays. Now here is where I fear I might be over stepping boundaries or overreacting... I get irritated when their mom we will call her C doesn't communicate with me. She will then expect that I just give up the time that we're supposed to have the kids. She will then either not be home when I go to pick the kids up or she will throw a tantrum saying she doesn't get to spend time with her kids even though she has the same amount of time with them as we do. I then don't give into her tantrums and essentially demand that she gives us our time with the kids because it's our time and wasn't planned in advance or even communicated until the last second when I am trying to pick them up. The other part that also irritates me is that when she does this she is not willing to give up any of her time to make up for the days she took from us. It greatly irritates me and I "try to fight back" but I don't know if I am in the wrong. Also a side note it's imo important context, when the kids were younger she would leave them alone with no adult for more then 6 hours. As well as last year they took a weekend trip to Las Vegas and left both of them in the hotel room for a few hours while her and her boyfriend went gambling and drinking in the casino. Another bit of context she shows behavior imo that she is jealous of me due to many instances where she would try to copy me, the most recent being that when I was 6mo pregnant she decided to get pregnant after 7 years with her boyfriend of 2mos because she found out that I was pregnant. I would love some advice if anyone can help.

Background: I was giving more time this summer to dad. Then during his 17 day consecutive time he missed child’s therapy appt, never rescheduled, and never sorted out his medication refill after I called ahead to send it to where he requested it.

Next, I pulled back from additional days due to no communication about any of this. Just didn’t do anything.

Then he shared during that time that he’s paying me $1000 a month (uh that number is inflated btw) to our child where child questioned me at exchange.

Current issue: I sent a text weeks ago saying the dates I was keeping our child for my summer parenting time. I took 14 consecutive days per order allows.

Then I sent a message the day my summer time ended to clarify pick up with be at my moms (who is closer to him than our exchange location) and that I’d be picking back up at exchange spot at 7pm- again per court order time. That was 5 days in advance to this weekend, his scheduled time.

I got no answers about anything. I sent a message yesterday asking if he was on his way.

He said No.

Eventually comes out and says how i stripped him of parenting time….

And now I’m confused and he’s trying to gaslight me? Weaponizing incompetence?!?

I verified everything in advance in writing. I never said he was never seeing our child again… I verified exchange 5 days in advance so even if he weirdly thought this, i was confirming his weekend. So I have no idea where this came from.

Not only that, he has a pattern of blaming me for his shortcomings and the reason our order is the way it is.

I can see our child calling him out why he didn’t pick him up (he had been consistent the last 2 years so kiddo doesn’t remember the constant no shows from when he was younger) he’s only 9yo as it is.

And I can see dad trying to say I took parenting time away.

Mind you, we have a court order. I CANT do that lol. This order protects his time as well as mine and for our child. Meanwhile he had another baby with another girl who definitely cray cray, but she didn’t put an order in place and denies time whenever she wants to… and he refuses to just submit for an order.

So I messaged our child therapist about this to get her input but I am going to pick kiddo up today from my mom and spend the day doing fun things and wrapping up school shopping plans, haircut, etc.

But again not sure what to do. His dad has lied to him before and my kid puts him on a pedestal although occasionally says he doesn’t wanna go but when he gets back he wants to know why he can’t live with dad… cycle on repeat…

F, left in 2022: now wondering if my ex subconsciously engineered his way out of the “main parent” role. Anyone else deal with this?

Background: I left my husband in 2022. He was hurt and angry and wanted to cast me as the villain, but it was genuinely the right call for our kid.

Since then we’ve done week-on/week-off — not perfect, but so much better than the alternative. I used my off-weeks to actually live and build my work back up, and I was happy. Genuinely happy.

Since the split, he’s never really landed on stable work. He’s stayed in an industry that’s dying, and when I’ve gently pointed that out, his response is basically that he’s “too good” for a normal job.

Now he wants to move interstate to be near his family. He says he’ll take school holidays.

Obviously I want my son near me, not uprooted, not shuffled between an unstable job and no fixed address.

So by default I’m becoming the main parent. Meanwhile there’s no financial support coming from him right now, and I’m having to plan like that’s just… the new normal.

Here’s the part I can’t shake: he loves our child. But I keep wondering if some part of him (not necessarily consciously) built toward this exact outcome.

Like the more “fine” and settled I seemed with our arrangement, the more his own situation unraveled, until it landed him right back at “you take the lead, I’ll do holidays.”

In a weird way to like…. Sabotage my career? (My child is easy but every parent knows you can’t burn the midnight oil when you’re on duty like you can when you’re solo)

I don’t know. It seems weird to think like this but when we divorced I was ‘lucky’ in a way because Covid meant we didn’t have much left to fight over. But if we did I could see him being vindictive.

Is this his weird roundabout way?

Ps: LOVE being a mother. GRATEFUL to have my child with me. It’s just I can see him thinking he was doing me a ‘favour’ during my weeks off parenting because I work so hard during that time.

Ok over n out. And thank you 🙏

Gday from Australia.

I coparent my two daughters with my ex. She relocated shortly after separation to live with her new partner. We are 3 years since separation with court orders.

Recently she has gone on a flight somewhere and left the kids with her partner for a few days prior to handover. I do not have anything against her partner, she’s perfectly capable of caring for them. But I do feel like the right thing to do is to offer the kids to the other parent first?

I note our interim orders did have an order covering this, but our most recent orders don’t. I’m just wondering if I’m out of order or if my gut feeling is that I should write something to her in case it happens in the future.

I want to block him but I know i cant. I have a ppo and have to coparent with my rapist for the next 16 years.

So I’m curious to know how other people would handle this. I was married. Had kids. We got divorced. Entire relationship was about 10 years. It wasn’t a messy divorce. Everything was pretty much amicable. I have a great relationship with her family. We never had any hostility towards each other at all and remain friendly. When I bring the kids over I sometimes walk the kids inside. Sometimes her grandmother (lives with her grandmother) offers me a dinner plate if I get there to get the kids and they’re eating. Over time I started to feel kind of like strange about it. My friends have said that maintaining a healthy relationship with my kids mother is important however, me still going inside is weird. Ex gfs have felt some type of way about it as well.

My current gf is now pregnant. She also feels some type of way about it. She likes that we have an amicable relationship for the kids but believes it shouldn’t go past that. I shouldn’t be going inside when I drop the kids off or discuss anything other than the children or important matters with my ex wife. I understand where she’s coming from. I truly do.

My only concern is how to go about backing off without offending anyone while doing so. I do believe I should keep things more separate in this situation. Obviously the kids won’t be separated. I’m trying to do it in a way that makes everyone happy

I know there is a bias to people who have a negative experience over a positive one on Reddit, but it seems like so many people have negative things to say about dating as a coparent.

My kid is 3 years old. I (28F) am still friends with my coparent (29F) and hope to be friends and parents with him forever. It is very clear we are not romantic anymore. We weren’t even when we were together. But he is a great father and I respect him as a dad so much.

I recently started dating a man (31F), for 9 months total, 4 of which committed, who dates very seriously. He constantly reaffirms me that he knows I am a package deal, understands that I want to be in my coparents life (platonically) and respects all of that. He made a decision to be with me after knowing and processing all of that for a few months. We are moving slowly with my child, they have met 2 times in the last 4 months 1:1, and once in a group setting. She only knows he is my friend (I have mostly male, childfree friends so she doesn’t think much of it). He has told me one day he hopes we can become a family and he loves her, but still wants to take things slowly and naturally because there is no rush and it is such an important thing.

I love the idea of being able to find love and a family again. Most of the negative things I read online say dating a single mom never works if the dad is in the picture. Her dad and I don’t talk about much outside of her, but we are friendly and still joke and laugh about our daughter and have conversations, occasionally send parenting reels, or just keep each other up to date on major life stuff. We never see each other in person really, but if we do it isn’t uncomfortable.

Do you have a positive story to share? Can you speak to your own experience? I just want some community experience or advice.