After nearly 3 years of counseling, mediation, collaboration and finally a judgment I am divorced. The why's don't matter too much now, we both did things to each other we're not proud of...however, we also both love our 7 year old daughter very very much. Here's my challenge...prior to getting 50% custody of my daughter I agreed in mediation to "call" my ex with my daughter every night my daughter is with me and vice versa. In addition,I agreed to a morning phone call on the Saturday's and Sunday's she's with me. At the time, I didn't think too much about it but in practice this "mandatory" phone call has become the one thing we still fight about. My daughter doesn't want to call the Ex when she's with me and I'm sure she doesn't want to be forced into calling me when she's with her mother also. I don't for a second believe my daughter doesn't love me or care for me just because she doesn't want to talk...it's just that she's busy and "in the momen t" with the parent she's with. She's doing homework, or reading, or playing, or watching tv, or taking a shower, or eating, talking, laughing...a million different things and then I have to stop what we're doing and make her call her mother. I've been very nice about it too, it's not like I'm subconsciously making it a pain for my daughter if that makes sense. I tell her that her mother loves her and wants to see how her day went and to say good night...but the truth is, I hate these phone calls and god forbid I don't call or leave a voicemail...I get texts and e-mails all night from the ex...so my long winded question is, "am I crazy that these mandatory phone calls are a nuisance and it's ok for me to try and get them taken from "mandatory" to "voluntary"? I have no problem AT ALL with calling the Ex whenever my daugther says, "daddy, I want to call mommy and tell her "x"...it's actually happened twice in the 4 months we've been divorced... but I don't feel I'm a bad g uy for wanting time with my daughter when she's with me and not having the tether of her mother constantly tugging at us with phone calls, texts and e-mails...
Put the internet to work for you.
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