Now that my ex hijacked the kids and moved them from one side of the country to the other (for the seventh time), I have to rely on video chats to see my kids.
My ex's first attempt to schedule times for video chatting was to tell me, "They can talk at 2 pm, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays." Not - what is your schedule? Or, what times work best for you and I'll see what times work best for me.... That's not how my ex works. She gives ultimatums and demands only. And she tries to make them as inconvenient as possible so that I'll disagree and she can throw her arms in the air and say, "No matter what I do, you disagree. I bend over backwards for you and you reject my attempts to give you time with the kids." That's actually a real quote, btw.
2pm Tues, Thurs and Sat?? Ummm - no? That's right in the middle of the day and completely random as to why. She doesn't have them in school - so it's not like they aren't home all day. No - the reason for this time was because she was trying 1) to be disruptive to my weekly schedule, and 2) to probe for information about my life.
At any rate, I eventually said, "Look, I'm not going to try and make a schedule so you can sabotage it. I'll be on Skype nearly every Saturday at 7 pm your time. If the kids are home and want to chat, they merely have to log on and see if I'm online. That's it."
Rejecting her attempt to control me through a schedule that flickers around her needs, she attempted to sabotage the very next Skype.
I got home at 6:30 (her time) and logged on immediately. According to Skype, they were not online. I waited 40 mins, then sent an email at 7:10 saying, "I'm online, I'll be here for another 10 mins or so and then I'm logging off."
Fortunately, I forgot to log off. At 7:30 they log on. I immediately sent messages. Hey Kids! Can you Skype? Hello? Hello??
Several minutes later a response came, "yes!" Then something peculiar happened. A message appeared before my first message (at 7:30) from her saying that the kids had been logged in for half an hour and were logging off. The message time stamp was 7:15.
Here's the deal - when you send a message, it time stamps when you click 'send'. However, if you're Offline when you send it, it will stamp and then wait until you sign in to deliver. Which means she wrote this message Offline and then signed in later so that the message would show that it was sent at 7:15.
She hadn't expected me to be online. She got my email at 7:10, stating I'd be around another 10 mins or so and then she purposely waited 20 mins and then signed on so the message would send. When I was still online and messaged her, she was caught off guard and had to let the kids talk or make up some last minute excuse. So she let them talk.
This is how clever she is when it comes to sabotage and manipulation. She knew Skype doesn't time stamp when you log in - only when you send messages. So if I hadn't been online, the records would show that her message was sent at 7:15. Brilliant, huh? Too bad I forgot to log off and disrupted her plans, Lol.
The thing you have to think about is - if she puts that much time and planning into the sabotaging of a single random video chat - just imagine how much plotting and manipulating she's doing when it's something important... This is what I have to deal with for the next 17 years of my life...
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