[Solved] There Is Always Hope

Hi All,

I have been a member on this since 2011-12 ish, and I found the forum like most because I was going through a difficult separation, which escalated and my ex stopped me seeing my son.

With help and advice from the forum, I managed to go through court and gain a good solid contact order, this worked for a while, and things were settled, I would have my son every other weekend, Friday evening, through until Sunday evening, extra time in the school holidays and every other Christmas and Birthdays.

After going through Court self representing and learning a lot in the process I stayed on the forum and became a moderator (this is pretty much how all of us moderators came to the forum)

However it didn't take long before things started going wrong, my ex would just tell me my son wasn't available on my weekends, and I wouldn't be given those days/nights back.

I continued as they were and just made the best of things, then my son started to get withdrawn when he was with me, I'd pick up and he would be quiet, then he would perk up on the Saturday but decline again on the Sunday, this continued for some time and he wouldn't tell me why, and would just say he was fine.

I used to speak with him every Wednesday evening, and we would talk about what we may do on the weekend, and he would always look forward to it, then things started to get worse, I would turn up and he wouldn't want to come with me, or I would have a call from him saying he didn't want to come, so I'd say ok stay with your mum, and then I would get him in tears saying he wanted to come but couldn't.

His mum was clearly behind this and although not telling him not to come but making him feel guilty about seeing me, when he was with me, he wouldn't want to tell her what we were doing and once told her we weren't doing anything much just in the garden, while we were actually at Lego Land.

He had been put in a position where he felt guilty about enjoying himself while he was with me, he declined very quickly he put on weight and became even more withdrawn. The battle of whether he saw me or not was making his childhood a living [censored].

5 Years ago I made the horrible decision to stop seeing him to allow him to be a child and not have to decide whether he upset me or his mum, it's been a VERY tough 5 years with birthday's and Christmas's being the worst, but for me not seeing him and making that decision for him, meant that although I knew he would suffer for it and be upset that he could be a child and not have to be worried that seeing me would upset his mum. It meant he could be a child and worry about child like things, rather than adult things.

last year my ex decided to try and twist the knife again, and she tried to have my PR removed, with help from friends on this forum I went to court with a solid position statement and she didn't get anywhere in fact she was made to look very silly for even trying to have PR removed.

Move forward to January this year and I found out my now wife was pregnant, although pleased I had a mental battle with myself as knowing another child would call me daddy when my son wasn't able to took away the joy of knowing we were having a baby.

Over the last few months I have though a lot about what to do, and although I wasn't expecting anything from it, I decided that I wanted my son to hear from me that he was going to have a baby brother or sister. I messaged him last week after finding his Instagram account and got a reply from him saying he wanted to meet the baby when born and would like to meet up with me and talk about what had happened.

There was an element of knowing from what he had written that his mum had twisted everything around to make me look a bad person, but he wanted to meet so a good start. we have exchanged messages on and off and we are meeting next weekend for breakfast and to catch up and talk.

You can't imagine how happy I am, as I thought I stood next to no chance of spending time with him or seeing him, he will be in his mid teens this year and becoming old enough to start making his own decisions and to decide himself whether he sees me or not.

So after 5 years I will get to see my son, I had given up hope a bit that we would get there especially after my ex trying to remove PR but it looks positive at the moment.

So as the title says even when things seem like they won't ever work out, always hold out for some hope, you never know what is around the corner.

Thank you for reading and I hope that this gives members some hope for the future when things are getting tough.