Not keeping to pre-planned arrangements is one of my pet hates.

I was raised to arrive on time, to leave extra early if you’re not sure how long a journey will take. (Even going so far as to take test journeys to things like interviews so I didn’t get lost and arrive late, or arrive ridiculously early)

My ex doesn’t keep to arrangements, infact he turned up almost an hour late to our first date… start as you mean to go on I suppose. So I should really have cut my losses then.

Since we broke up he has been meant to see Jackson regularly, but it has been anything but. He works shifts, meaning he works 4 days and then not the next 4, so unfortunately he can not arrange to see Jackson every Tuesday for example, however, he tends to arrange atleast one day of his 4 off to come and see us. Now the times he agrees to arrive have varied from 8am to 4pm and you can bet that he will be atleast 10 minutes late every time, sometimes 4 hours and sometimes just not show up at all.

If he says a time the day before I will set my alarm, get up, get Jackson up, we will get breakfast and then we will sit and wait. I can’t start anything because he might arrive in the middle of it, and we can’t go out. We sat in waiting for a whole day last week, unable to go out and enjoy the sunshine because every hour or so I was getting texts saying he had dozed off again and was coming in a minute, then at about 4pm he finally decided not to come because he was too tired. I was fuming at this. We lost a whole day to him messing us around and I couldn’t do anything about it. He rearranged that visit to today, and after turning up 20 minutes late without an apology he was in a snappy mood, argued with me over something stupid and left an hour and a half later. Thankfully it is still early enough to do something today, but he has just requested that he sees Jackson tomorrow. 3 days out of my week because he’s been either too tired or too angry to spend time with his son as arranged. I am in two minds as to what to say about tomorrow now, though I know that if I say no he will just hold it against me.

I don’t know what to do anymore, I’m trying so hard to be reasonable and calm for the sake of my son, but it’s dragging me down. We arranged a way we both agreed to co parent Jackson, but he doesn’t seem to have taken to arranging things a month early, nor turning up at 8am to do breakfast as agreed. I’m totally at a loss as to how to handle this. He has gone weeks without seeing Jackson in the past, being ill one time then tired, then something else another, yet for both his and Jacksons sake I want to keep contact up and as regularly as possible, but right now, trying to be the grown up in this situation is getting old fast and I just want to throw my toys out the pram and scream, but I must be the adult here!