We just had the skids this last weekend. Yesterday (Monday) BM asks DH if he can take the kids Tuesday evening to their first communion class thing at the church. She has to work Tuesday evening. He said he would if it was raining and he didn't have to work (construction foreman). Well... Boss calls last night and says 'no work tomorrow!' Oh, goodie. He tells her its fine, he can take them. Her other option, if he'd had to work, was to take them to a friend of her's house, oddly enough, about two miles from where we live, who also have a daughter in the same class. BM would have to also pick them up from there when she was finished working. DH agreed to take them to the class, and take them back to her apartment after. I said that since you are doing HER a favor, the least she can do is bring them to him in the late morning, since she is working another job that's over halfway to our house (she cleans offices or something), and since now he is taking them back home after, he's already saving her a ton of driving, not to mention sitting outside the classroom waiting for an hour and a half.
Needless to say, she flipped her shit and argued with him, and said fine, I'll figure something else out, and he immediately caved and said he would go pick them up from her house, after she was already at a job, WITH the kids. She would rather just be a bitch, make the kids sit and watch her empty trash cans, and go all the way back home rather than do one simple thing to make him doing her a FAVOR any easier. I told him it was not right and not fair, and that she is using the kids as weapons against him, because all she has to do is dangle extra time in front of him to get him to do whatever she wants.
Well apparently she decided to go full bitch mode today, because I got this pitiful text of 'BM and I were fighting on the phone, now she says I can't see my girls. They need to take showers or some excuse.' Wtf. Stupid. She just got pissed because he finally stood up to her, even if just a little. I think he talks to her far too much, they talk on the phone almost daily about the most menial of shit. She is super high conflict, never once has she ever just said, 'ok' to anything, even if it is in her favor. Always an argument. I am afraid he and I are going to have to have a talk tonight, and I am worried he will blame me for missing out on 3 hours of extra skid time...
I get that he just wants to see his kids more, but missing an extra visitation due to self respect or boundaries will not make him the 'worst dad ever'. I just don't think he will be able to see that.