Am i right to be annoyed?

LegacyUser

Hi i need some outside opinions on this and would like to know am i right to be annoyed by this?

My and ex and i have a child and we an agreement regarding access where i have her from a time in the morning to a time that evening once a week.

Part of the agreement is i pick our child up from her house and drop her back to her house and if anything happens or needs to be changed we give each prior notice.

I went to pick up our child for my last access day and my ex was not there but her sister to hand our child over to me.I was a bit surprised to see her there and asked if my ex was around. She said no she had to do something that do that morning. I said that's ok,things come up but i was thinking i could have at least got a text to let me know.

Anyway i took our child and during the day my ex texts to see how the child is and being busy i didn't get a chance to reply. When it cam time to drop our child home i went to my exs house to find nobody was there. i waited for about 10 mins with no answer at the door and then decided to ring her...she answered the phone i a crowded place from the background noise and when i asked if she was home she said no and asked me to drop our child to her sisters house down the road. I went and dropped our child off and went on my way.I text her to say that it wasn't on that i wasn't told the plans were changing and where i had to drop our child off and her response was " i didn't text her back earlier"

Now the reason i am currently annoyed is nobody gave me notice that the pans were changing or where i had to drop our child off. Now to be clear i honestly would have no problem doing what happened today had i been given notice to let me know and im just annoyed that i was just expected to go along with it...i mean say if i was to send my brother to pick our child up and back without telling her im sure she would be annoyed too.

Can anyone offer and opinion on this and if im right or wrong, of people think i have no right to be annoyed that is fine, i would just like to know what other people think

December2012

Let it go.

It doesn't really matter does it?

It sounds like you're not really bothered by it, rather you're sensitive and noticing things to get annoyed at your ex about.

Tokyo

OP,

TBH, it sounds like you are nitpicking simply because it's your ex, and you are looking for reasons to tell yourself that she is wrong. The fact is, she made sure that you got to spend time with your child at the appointed time, and made sure that the child was being taken care of by a competent person (her sister) when she wasn't there herself to do so. She did try to make contact with you during the day, but you were too busy to respond to her in any way shape or form, so you didn't exactly set the stage for making alternative arrangements for drop off later. And considering that the sister lives "just down the road", it's not exactly a huge inconvenience.

The fact is, you are bickering over the minutae, where you should be trying to keep on, if not friendly, at least civil terms with your ex. There has to be a little give and take here, from both of you. At the end of the day you have a child together, and it's not going to do the child any good growing up to see daddy always annoyed with mommy, or vice versa.

stop animal cruelty

Seems to me like she was annoyed that you didnt tb and then didnt bother to text you about arrangements....just dont let it get to you, forget about it

Gmol

Short answer is no.

January

You can be annoyed if you want but it's not really going to get you anywhere is it?

Plans didn't change, she still let you take the child and her sister only lived down the road so it's not like you had to bring her somewhere an hour away to drop her off again.

My advice is to just let it go.

jane82

The main thing in these instances is whats best for the child.
What happened was your ex had to go out for the day. She organised the sister to babysit before and after you had access.
Letting you know where the mother is not important. Whether she is in a crowded place or not shouldnt be an issue she doesnt report to you anymore.
I think you are annoyed she was out for the day maybe Im wrong.
Raising a child in a broken family situation is tough but its important to put the baby first. Remember the ex is only in your life now because there is a baby there. She is free to do whatever she likes so long as the baby is looked after.
From experience over the years you may have many reasons to argue. Dont sweat the small stuff its a vicious circle you dont want to get into.

lifeandtimes

jane82 wrote: »

The main thing in these instances is whats best for the child.
What happened was your ex had to go out for the day. She organised the sister to babysit before and after you had access.
Letting you know where the mother is not important. Whether she is in a crowded place or not shouldnt be an issue she doesnt report to you anymore.
I think you are annoyed she was out for the day maybe Im wrong.
Raising a child in a broken family situation is tough but its important to put the baby first. Remember the ex is only in your life now because there is a baby there. She is free to do whatever she likes so long as the baby is looked after.
From experience over the years you may have many reasons to argue. Dont sweat the small stuff its a vicious circle you dont want to get into.

Hi op here, i had to log into my normal account as i keeps saying im in a dfferent country.

id like to point out i dont care where she was, she is free to do as she likes, my porblem is i wasnt told about the changes that were made to the plan of the day

thanks for the replys,i just feel annoyed due to the fact if the shoe was the other foot she would be annoyed and probably go off the handle, i do my best to keep things civil with me ex for our childs sake and there have been times where she wants things to be strict and directly by our court ordered agreement,which is fine and i have kept that part of my side and what happened today isnt part of that you see, thats why i started this thread.

Like i said i dont have a problem doing what happened today its just i wasn't giving a text or a heads up about what happened and not being able to text back earlier on well thats fine i understand that but another text to at least say brig our child here out of courtesy would have been fair dont you think?

jane82

Why bring up she was in a crowded place though?

You could make an issue of this but some time over the 18 or so years you may have to work a day or not have the car to get there do you really want a row over every little thing?

In two years starting a new relationship with someone else do you want to be bringing a circle of arguements with the ex into it.
Dont sweat the small stuff.

Tokyo

lifeandtimes wrote: »

...i just feel annoyed due to the fact if the shoe was the other foot she would be annoyed and probably go off the handle, i do my best to keep things civil with me ex for our childs sake and there have been times where she wants things to be strict and directly by our court ordered agreement,which is fine and i have kept that part of my side and what happened today isnt part of that you see, thats why i started this thread.

Like i said i dont have a problem doing what happened today its just i wasn't giving a text or a heads up about what happened and not being able to text back earlier on well thats fine i understand that but another text to at least say brig our child here out of courtesy would have been fair dont you think?

One could also argue that common courtesy would have been to respond to her texts during the day. She was after all, inquiring as to the welfare of her child.

If I'm to be truthful, it sounds like you are both being a little bit petty here. Court mandated times are great and all, but the reality of life is that plans will change, sometimes slightly, sometimes not so much. There will be days where you'll be late and she'll have to wait for you, there'll be days where you will have to accommodate her when she is held up somewhere. That's life.

So yes, you have the *right* to be angry - it didn't follow the court mandated procedure. Should you get angry over what was a minor inconvenience in the scheme of things.... I think not, but you can decide that for yourself.

lifeandtimes

mike_ie wrote: »

One could also argue that common courtesy would have been to respond to her texts during the day. She was after all, inquiring as to the welfare of her child.

If I'm to be truthful, it sounds like you are both being a little bit petty here. Court mandated times are great and all, but the reality of life is that plans will change, sometimes slightly, sometimes not so much. There will be days where you'll be late and she'll have to wait for you, there'll be days where you will have to accommodate her when she is held up somewhere. That's life.

So yes, you have the *right* to be angry - it didn't follow the court mandated procedure. Should you get angry over what was a minor inconvenience in the scheme of things.... I think not, but you can decide that for yourself.

Thanks,i think your right maybe we are both being petty,its just im used to letting people know if something changes, suppose i should just let it go

CaraMay

Both petty? I think you are being petty. Is the child safe? Yes? Then drop it.

Tokyo

lifeandtimes wrote: »

Thanks,i think your right maybe we are both being petty,its just im used to letting people know if something changes, suppose i should just let it go

Sounds like a good plan OP, and better for your child all round, I would think.

Tasden

As someone trying to co parent with an ex and who also gets annoyed/frustrated by the petty and small things I do understand where you're coming from. Its the lack of communication and then the petty "well YOU didn't text back...", honestly though you just need to take a breath, have a bit of a sigh, shake your head and let it go. Nothing good comes from getting annoyed
over it. A lot of the time its just frustration at a lack of control, like I can tell my ex a billion times to be back on time cause I don't want her going to bed late and he'll still drop her back late and its frustrating but at the end of the day the child is getting to see her dad and things could be worse so I just have to let it go- not saying its easy! But its all you can do.

December2012

I think you're right to vent / check here OP, rather than keep this up with your ex.

Honestly you have so much more to deal with, getting caught up on "it would've been courteous to...." Isn't worth it - in any relationship, whether you're together or not.

Eg it would be courteous of my husband to let me know he wants a take away tonight when I've already made dinner. It's not something we will fall out over - we've both had a tough day. What matters is we will see each other soon.

My brother should've been more courteous and responded to texts about plans we provisionally have - but it's not worth getting bothered about, we will figure it out.

And don't behave a certain way just cos she does.

Degringola

OP as a mother if you hadn't replied to my text asking how the child was, I would have been worried. It only takes a few seconds to send a text.
But I would forget about the whole episode now and focus on the positive.

Big Bag of Chips

You were already annoyed that "the plans changed" that morning when you went to collect your daughter. The plans didn't change..

Part of the agreement is i pick our child up from her house and drop her back to her house and if anything happens or needs to be changed we give each prior notice.

You collected your daughter from her house, as always. The only thing that changed was your ex's sister was there, instead of your ex. Is part of the agreement that your ex must be there to hand the child over? I think you sending your brother to collect your daughter, would be slightly different to her sister being there to hand over the child to you. You only have a set amount of hours, one day a week, so you should obviously make every effort to use that access time to be with your daughter. If you cannot be there for the access time then you should try to make alternative arrangements for another day with her mam. Your ex has her 6 days a week, so it is much more likely that things will come up that she needs to leave her with someone else for a time.

I'd also find it hard to believe that you sat outside her house for 10 minutes, with no answer, before you decided to ring her? Surely once you knocked on the door and got no answer, the first thing you would have done was called her? Maybe this was a one off "bad day" for you, and in general you and your ex aren't so petty with each other.

So no.. you are not right to be annoyed. Your ex should have sent a quick "drop her back to my sister" text around the time she knew you would be dropping her home - but can I ask, was the real reason you didn't reply to her texts because you were annoyed that she wasn't there when you went to collect your daughter? Or were you really that busy?!

macker33

Look, a bit of flexibility never did anybody any harm, the result is the same in the end.

The stupid thing would be to make something out of nothing.

Eeden

Your child should be the most important thing to you. It's fine to stand your ground if anything serious is going on, but you and your ex trying to score points off each other about petty little things will definitely be noticed by your child, even if not consciously.

Hard as it might seem, you need to make sure that you never give off negative vibes about your ex around your child. This is not just for the good of your child, but for your own good down the line.

macker33

Yeah, i imagine nothing embarresses a kid more than an anally retentive parent.
Dont forget the kid will probably end out seeing all this.

alias06

You should have text back.

Stavro Mueller

I think you're blowing this up into something it shouldn't be because the pair of you aren't on good terms. You'd want to be careful or this arrangement could turn into a points scoring exercise. Don't lose sight of why you're still in touch with your ex - your daughter. It's not going to be easy for the pair of you to parent her at times and it's vital that you keep your relationship as civil as possible. Getting bogged down in silly things like this isn't a good start.

CarMe

You say "if the shoe was on the other foot", well I've been in that situation countless times with my ex and I must point out the most annoying part of the non full time parent taking constant liberties, arriving late, changing plans etc is the fact they only have one day of the week to just make an effort to be on time etc. She is solely responsible for your child every other day and night of the week, don't begrudge her whatever plans she had today for God sake and stop being so petty.

Tasden

CarMe wrote: »

You say "if the shoe was on the other foot", well I've been in that situation countless times with my ex and I must point out the most annoying part of the non full time parent taking constant liberties, arriving late, changing plans etc is the fact they only have one day of the week to just make an effort to be on time etc. She is solely responsible for your child every other day and night of the week, don't begrudge her whatever plans she had today for God sake and stop being so petty.

As the main carer myself I find that comment very unfair tbh, he's not begrudging her the plans she had, he's frustrated at how she dealt with the arrangements surrounding them. Who takes the child more often is irrelevant in this case, she didn't stick to the plans and didn't communicate the change in such, (a pretty huge aspect of successful and happy co parenting is making arrangements that suit everybody and communication) that's the issue the op has and its a valid enough reason to be a little peed off. To have it out with her or to hold a grudge- no, but to be a little frustrated is fair enough.

clairefontaine

What do you mean are you right to be annoyed?

You are annoyed.

Why don't you just say in future you'd appreciate some notice as to pick up drop off and leave it at that?

Dellnum

The issue here is that the OP's ex was discourteous not to have informed the OP that she would not be there but that her sister would hand over the child and that the child was to be dropped back to the sister's house. Most of us would react the same to bad manners and would feel slighted, as does the OP. However, in the grand scheme of things the OP got the child for the required length of time and that is the important thing. He could ask his ex to let him know in future if she will not be there to hand over the child or if the arrangements for dropping her off change, just as a matter of courtesy. There is no guarantee that she will do this though as she seems to be lacking in the finer points of life. So yes OP I would be annoyed with this treatment but just because it is discourteous and for no other reason.

lifeandtimes

hi everyone op here.

thanks for all the comments...

i brought the issue up with my ex in a civil manner,she saw it from my perspective and she agreed that it was a bit unfair not to notify me of the changes,she apologized and going forward we will both keep the channel of communication open.

also what ill take away from the posts here that i shouldn't sweat the little things and in the future i wont