Pardon this Rage

UGH.

It's 11pm, I have just been awoken from sleeping curled up next to my youngest in her tiny bed, happily uncomfortable just to have the extra cuddle time with her.

My phone woke me up, I can hear a text message come in. I jump up to see what's going on and see my ex husband's name "Call me, we need to talk".

Great.

His lovely sister, who for some reason is (WAS) one of my friends on Facebook (stupid me for wanting to maintain a relationship with my children's aunt), has called him and has him all up in a tizzy about a picture I posted of my youngest daughter, hanging onto Mr. Wonderful's leg with the caption, "Don't go, T-Daddy" (the nickname that she has come up with for him).

He tells me that I must set our four year old straight, that there is only one Daddy. I agree with him, yes there IS only one Daddy and no one will ever replace you, he is her T-Daddy and she loves him in a different but meaningful way that she expresses by endearing him with this term. He is without a doubt, threatened and insecure that one of the children would actually place their future stepfather in a "father" category.

I know my ex husband very well. His own father is absent, only calling on birthdays and maybe sometimes holidays, and even then usually drunk. His mother moved him around from place to place, husband to husband, without a care in the world for her children or their best interests. He has no concept of unselfish love, which is a very big reason for our breakup. He cannot see that it is a GOOD thing for his children to actually LOVE the man that will be living in their house with them. That we have no plans to replace him as their father, but to supplement him. That the more people loving these children the better off they are. How LUCKY his children are to have a man that wants to love them as if they were his own.

Insecurity, jealousy make him blind to what is best for them in this situation.

And the truth that he never wants to accept: had he kept it in his pants throughout our marriage, instead of the constant lies and cheating and betrayal even with second and third chances...we wouldn't even be having this discussion. He created a new path and now he doesn't like where it has led and wants to control it. It doesn't work that way.

In the meantime, I'm still driving the kids everywhere because he still doesn't have a car. I've paid for every birthday party, every school need, everything myself. He is *this* close to being evicted from his apartment and will then have nowhere to live and even have the kids over. But yet he has money every weekend to go out with friends and drink, even on his weekends with the kids. I'm the grown-up. He's the child. As always.

It's so hard on nights like this not to be furious at myself for having married such a loser in the first place. I do know that without him I would never have my perfect children, and I would never ever change who they are. But to have this negative energy surrounding me constantly....I try so hard to let his childish behavior slide off of me but it does take ALL of my energy. I'm so sick of it all.

We left the conversation with him saying he would be correcting our youngest if he heard her call him T-Daddy again. That he's already done it once, "I'M your daddy". It enrages me to think of how that must have made my daughter feel...having been put in the middle of my own parent's divorce as an adult, it absolutely makes me want to scream...

It infuriates me that I can't stop him from doing this to her. That someone has that much control over my child and is essentially changing who she is and how she views the world with his selfish actions and insecurity. That he would put his own needs before hers. But what can I do. I can only do my best. Mr. Wonderful and I can only make sure that when they are with us, they are free and safe to say anything about their Dad. That their love for him isn't threatening to us. Someday they will resent him for putting them in this position. But try telling him that...