My boyfriend has a 5 year old daughter that was born in Tennessee. He is listed on the birth certificate as the father. He pays child support and health insurance. Originally he was ordered to have the child every Sunday. He and the mother were never together. He and I have been together for 6 years (since the mom was 2 months pregnant), so the child has known me all her life. However the mother has always been bitter toward both of us. 2 years ago she moved with her parents and his daughter to Pennsylvania. For the last 2 years things have been relatively civil and the mom cooperated to let us get the child for some holidays and some of the summer. Recently, however, there was a fight between me, the mother, my boyfriend, and mom’s new boyfriend. Since then she has threatened that he will never see his child again and that she’s getting a lawyer (although she doesn’t have a case, since the child is not mistreated by us in any way). Immediately following the fight, she stopped censoring what she says about the 2 of us to his child and needless to say, the child is going along with what mommy tells her. She wont call him anymore and when he calls, the daughter yells into the phone that she doesn’t want to talk to him. What should he do at this point? Can he get a new visitation schedule ordered by the court since technically the old one was violated? Will he or the mother be in trouble for not notifying child support or court that she was moving 2 years ago? Any advice regarding what his next move should be is greatly appreciated.
just to specify, he and I have a wonderful relationship with his daughter. She has never reacted this way toward him until after the mother got mad infront of her.

I went to court and managed to get the father of my childs visitation changed to supervised only, and his father stepped in and we agreed to % hours 2 saturdays out of the month, but now he is going to try to fight for full weeknds and holidays. Is it possible to get his visitation taken away completely?

Easy you don’t have to spend 0′s of dollars stressing to buy her a Christmas gift, valentines gift or birthday gift.. Holidays are coming up so break up, who thinks this is a good idea??

I wrote down certain things like how the bills and credit cards should be paid after the house sale and how much visiting rights to see my child I want as well as holidays and personal items in the house. But I’m concerned that I don’t quite know if there is something I ought to ask for and not even aware of how important it would be down the road.I don’t want to leave anything to chance.concerning children or anything is there anything you learned the hard way as a Dad that you wish you knew before you got a divorce officially? I am also asking to see my child on their Christmas break and such, can you think of Anything else?

I work 5 days a week 8-4:30 every day and have weekends off. What would be the best arrangement to see my child with joint custody that is realistic and doable. She is willing to let me have my son 3 weekends a month (Fri evening, Sat, Sun day, every Thursday evening, and the fourth week I will see him only on Thurs. I also get him on holidays too. Is this a good arrangement? Should I keep him during the weekdays and let her have him on the weekends?

I have to give a little background to let you know what’s going on first. I’ll try and be frank. Was heartbroken at 16. Found a girl after a year. She made me feel better. Fell in love. Spent all my time with her. Neglected friends. Friends abandoned me. Tried to compensate by neglecting girlfriend (whom I still loved). We were perfect together, a really good match. She went on holidays (after being together 2 years). Cheated on me with a guy (she was basically attatched to him). Returned home, broke up explaining she was unhappy for months and no longer loved me, but assured me there was no one else. A week later she is witrh someone new. My confidence is shot, I’m an attractive guy and used to be very outgoing but after this my world has turned upside down. I find it all very hard, feel very lonely, insecure and unloved. I thought it was true love, apparently not. Take from this what you can and please offer me any advice on the subject, I appreciate all commments.

*also: I have accepted she has moved on and that there is no chance of us getting back together.

I’m having issues in my relationship. We’ve been together five years, and I’ve just realized that the relationship is not giving me what’s really important to me, which is a partner who is emotionally available. I brought up counseling in December; he was really against it but reluctantly agreed to it. I didn’t make an appointment b/c the holidays were a hectic time. Now that it’s February, I thought about it and wondered, would counseling really help when my problem has to do with who my bf really is inside? For lack of better wording, "changing" someone is very difficult as is convincing them of it. In my personal experience it requires that the person in question pursue self-initiated, one-on-one help, IF they can acknowledge they have issues.

Having said that, I feel that I don’t want to "change" anyone. He needs to be who he is, and he needs to seek personal help if he feels his issues hinder his quality of life. So my questions are, have any of you gone through counseling to "re-shape" your core and your partner’s, did it WORK, or do any of you think counseling is best for financial, domestic, etc. issues?

For the record, I don’t think I’m perfect in any way. I know there are things that my bf would like to see in me (e.g. being more outdoorsy), but it’s up to him to bring those up if they’re that important. And that’s the topic of another question, I’m sure. Thanks for your input.

Guy troubles. All advice is appreciated!?
Hi,
This summer I fell totally in love with this boy and we got on REALLY well. We met up every night and talked for hours. The only problem is that he lives in the UK and I live in Spain. I go to the UK for all the holidays and am planning on moving there in 2 years to go to university. Even though I am back in Spain we have kept close contact and when he wrote to me he called me "his lovely" and stuff like that. Do you think that meant anything or was he just being nice? He has recently got a girlfriend as well. I don’t think he would cheat on her and I definitely wouldn’t go out with him while he is still with her. Anyway I don’t want a long distance relationship because they hardly ever work and we are rather young for this. How can I find out if he liked me? What should I do? Just be friends? Tell him how I feel? Ask him how he feels? By the way I am 16 and he is 18. All advice is appreciated!

BF and I are both in our 40s. I’m divorced with two kids, he’s never been married. We’ve been dating almost a year and a half, talked of a future together and were very serious. We have been fighting in a cycle of about every 2-3 weeks. Basically, things would be very good and he would pull back or be non-committal about plans. That would stem some kind of abandonment issues in me, and I’d react by further pulling back. We’d go a couple days not talking and then we’d talk about it and be closer than before. This pattern has gone on too many times and was wearing us both down. He suggested about 6 weeks ago we go to counseling. In the context he said it, I wasn’t ready to go with him because I felt like he wasn’t taking any responsibility for his contributing to this cycle and he just wanted someone to tell me it was all my fault. Anyway, 3 weeks ago we had a fight (same basic dance), and I was so upset about it, I called my employee assistance program and started seeing a therapist and read a couple of books on high conflict relationships and the linkage between thoughts and feelings. The therapist asked if he would come in, which I let him know after one of my sessions. I let him know I was finding it really helpful in identifying what was behind my abandonment reactions and I felt like I was understanding things so much better.

He went home to spend the holidays with his family, that was 8 days ago. The night before he left, we talked (heated) about resentment we were both feeling. I said I wasn’t sure once there is resentment if there’s anything that can be done. I asked him if he thought we should keep talking, take a break to let the resentment subside, or walk away. It felt like he was blaming me for everything and not taking any responsibility for triggering though his actions, what was causing my responses. He would basically try to get up and leave any time I would say anything that inferred it was both of us who needed to work on our issues and it wasn’t one sided. He eventually left in a huff.

Two days ago, I had heard nothing from him in the 6 days he’d been gone and sent him a happy thanksgiving text, said I hoped he was enjoying his visit with his family, that the therapist asked if he would go with me and I looked forward to seeing him when he got back. I received NO response and either later that day or the next day he unfriended me on facebook (yes, i find that immature).

So, any thoughts? I don’t get why now that I’m seeing a therapist and extended it that she wanted to know if he would come in, he seems to want nothing to do with it. It was HIS idea 6 weeks ago.
This is literally the single thing we have issue with. Outside of this, we have a strong relationship, supportive, have fun together, enjoy the same things, make each other laugh. That’s why we have something worth saving, but if this issue can’t be resolved, we’ll both walk away. Maybe that’s his decision. Why he wouldn’t at least say so and just unfriend me in such a high school way is perplexing.

I am engaged, but I also have some worries, primarily in these two categories and wonder if a prenuptial agreement makes sense.
1. Financial Situation
My fiance has quite a bit of debt, and even though he has a higher paying job than I do, he is not able to save money while I am able to save quite a bit. Plus, he has a child from a previous marriage that he has to pay child support for. I am hesitate to go into marriage, and certainly don’t want to pay for his debt and child support.
2. Child
His child lives in another country. He used to visit twice a year, but last year and this year (so far) he has visited once. I know he values the time he has with her a lot, but it costs a lot to go there and to take time off work (no income). I think things need to be compromised somewhat once we are married for our new family, but is wondering how I should I approach this issue.
He knew that we have a lot of things to talk about, but he said by being engaged we can really discuss about the details because I hesitated to take the engagement ring. I do want to see how seriously he is in clearing up his debt – he knew financial stability meant a lot to me.

His child has not visited because she is young, but my fiance has reached an agreement with his ex that the child will visit next year. I know I am not wife #2 because I have been around his whole family long enough, including all the holidays, birthdays etc.