Leah

And dictate every parenting arrangement, every schedule, every holiday.

And he would just go along with it to appease her to avoid any conflict.

Well, I think that that place, how I feel about a lot of it is mine was also very abusive and manipulative.

And so I come in with this preconceived notion and that when that happens, you need strict boundaries and you need, you know, proper structure with parenting.

And so I think from the beginning, I could sense that from what he would tell me about his ex and their relationship, it was very toxic and unhealthy.

And they were still living together at the time.

And it was kind of like, I tried many times to... And maybe I was a little bit more pushy than I should have been, but like very...

you need to do this, go to mediation, go get a lawyer, like get a separation agreement, um, do these things because it's helped me dramatically in mind, but I'm also nine years out of my co-parenting.

So like we're in where it's easy breezy now.

We don't have a lot of communication.

We only communicate for the child.

And so I would always be trying to help him see the light at the end of the tunnel, I guess you could say, but yeah,

that also impacted our relationship too.

Cause it was kind of like, I know from him, he was always like, well, my relationship's very different than yours and, and I'm cognizant of that.

But at the same time, it's, you know, I can identify the abuse and the manipulation and yeah.

I think in the beginning, uh,

I wanted, I mean, I think I know who he is to his core as a person.

And I always struggled with like, is he just fearful of her but can't acknowledge that?

Or is he just making it very clear?

And to give some more context to my triggers around it too, in my past relationship literally ended because my last partner died.