my story

At 20 I married my childhood sweetheart after 5 yrs of dating. the marriage was good (a few bumps but nothing major)until 3 months ago when my ex decided he could not deal with the stress of his job (police officer)and the stress? of family life, so he left. I truly didn't see it coming i thought we were great and my ex mentioned nothing about any problems. We have a 2yr old daughter so i tried to keep things ammicable despite all the emotions going on. I left the FMH 7 weeks after he left as i gave up work to look after our daughter and could not afford to keep up with the mortgage payments. He sees our daughter everyday for at least 3 hrs and has her overnight once or twice a week. He now says that this is not enough for him and says he is going for custody. When i asked him who would have her while he is at work he said his mum would look after her. I have sort advice both on and off wiki and the response has been encouraging. But i still worry that i am going to loose her. I have read other postings on here and i know that my situation is lame by comparrison. The pain of the breakup is still overwhelming add to that the fear of a custody battle and it just gets too much to handle sometimes. I cry at the slightest thing and the idea of a good night sleep seems another 10 yrs away.

Caris

Firstly welcome to wiki,

I cant tell how recent this is from your post, it is quite difficult to tell what might have driven him to this is there is any bad blood etc? are you still talking with each other?

You must be in pieces and it sounds like you have a lot of stuff to work through, the only advice I can give you is that you make sure that you keep your little one at the heart of your thoughts, what is best for her and not use her as a pawn in the the situation.

Dont worry about what the guys may have gone through or if what you face is worse, its all horrible and the basic premise of the site is that we are all here for the same reason, we are going through it and we need some where, where we can share our thoughts and support each other.

Good luck

GM

Hi,
Welcome to the site.
I can only echo what Goodman has said re. using the child as a pawn.
As far as custody is concerned, unless there are any truly extreme circumstances, from my experience, he wouldn't have a chance. His access arrangements seem better than most already.

Regards,
Techy.

Hi Goodman and Techy

thanks for the reply. It is recent and very unexpected, the night before he left we were making plans for a holiday. At 9.30 the next morning he was walking out the door. We are still talking and see each other every day when he picks up our daughter (which i find hard). Our daughter is important to both of us and things are reasonable at least when she is there. i just never expected a custody battle on my hands. I really don't understand it as he sees her all the time anyway. Thanks for the reply guys

I want things to be as smooth as possible for all our sakes especially our daughter. it just seems like a uphill struggle and the thought of dragging this through the courts makes it all seem wrong and overwhelming.