Libertyblues

My wife has agreed to have a 3rd party counsel us. This person knows both my and my wife's culture well and I hope to find some common ground on some basics like: not threatening with child abduction. @dsayers: I was at the doctors again, this time without my wife and I explained to him beforehand where we're going and my son was perfectly cooperative, it was really sweet to watch him, I feel very proud of my son thinking about it even now, thank you for pointing that out to me I think the problem I was having is choosing which gamble would be better for my son. And a second layer of that problem is I can't really tell if I'm just being selfish at this gamble because my sexual market value seems to be better in that East Asian country. There are pros and cons I can't weight properly. For example East Asia is extremely hierarchically organized by age and title and very authoritarian. My European home country is overrun by war-traumatized immigrants and seems a lost cause culture-wise and my wife is clearly signaling that she will go back home to East Asia the first chance she gets. An other point I'm pondering is how I can be fair to my son if I start a new family. Every angle I look at it, he'll be an outsider in that family and it will become a lot harder to focus on his well-being. Having a half-sibling in his teens will be weird. Does anyone have experience with this?

After a nights sleep I thought I'll show some grit and will write Mike my situation. At least I'll serve as a particle of information to others, as Stef once put it.

Thank you everyone! I appreciate the time you have taken to reply! I read all replies and will process all the advice, (I need to re-read it) am happy about the points of improvement that have been pointed out - I don't feel backed into a corner anymore with things I can try out I'm under a lot of stress because the mother keeps threatening to take off to her home country with my son. I should try harder to fall in love with her or she'll take off, is her openly stated wish. Even after explaining to her that asking this of me is proof that she, in fact, doesn't love me doesn't get through to her. She's East Asian by the way. I'm not sure yet if she will follow through, if she does take off with my son, I told her I will follow right after her, by which I will have to postpone my bachelor degree from which I'm 6 months away from getting. I don't want to lose the connection to my son, is the reason. I want to avoid involving attorneys because I presume that getting to an official fight will only make things worse for my son in the short and the long run and won't change the outcome anyways..my goal was to keep things quiet until he's 8 but my wife tried to control every part of my life and tries to degrade me in front of my son nagging me and speaking to me in a high and shrill voice, locking herself away, leaving my son and me in the living room during his bed time (he is still breast-fed) making him cry to exert pressure on me, getting me to appologize. It's so weird, I can hardly ever really recall what the hell was happening or which point or how she's arguing..well at least one point she always makes is that it's my fault she's angry and loud and that's why it's OK - typical emotional abuse what she's doing. I love my son, but his mother is the worst nightmare of my life and I've had a couple of pretty bad nightmares (which don't score on that scale of Stef's though; I'm scared to call in though.. fear of getting recognised and also I fear my emotional charge).

Thank you dsayers, I really appreciate you taking the time! Your post really made me think again about my behavior. The thing that happened was that we agreed to go to the pool but when we stepped out our front door he turned left instead of right with his strider bike. He didn't express why he was going right but it's not as safe turning left. Now thinking about it, I could have just gone left with him and be extra cautious. The gist of the problem is that there are things he can't make his own decisions yet. Actually, turning left wasn't the problem but what the doctor said. The day we went to the pediatrician to get a routine checkup he ran to the door and opened it to leave the room to go to the toy section. My memory is a bit fogged, but I think my wife stopped him and he started to protest and then I picked him up and explained to him that we are doing a check-up. This is when the doctor explained that he's just protesting and not really crying and he is learning by trial and error to exert his will, or over-power/dominate his parents, which would lead to a difficult child/parent relationship. This is when I started to be more affirmative, meaning instead of "shall we go to the pool?" I use "let's go to the pool" instead which worked a lot better. Regarding patience "out willing someone" I agree that sometimes it really does happen, but most of the time I mean by patience that we stop and negotiate. Stopping when fully motivated to go somewhere is very difficult for a 2-year old, so I really do have to hold the bike and in my example I couldn't get him to express what he wanted to do turning left and I had no idea - I hope next time he will show me so I know what it is he wants to do there. I had the feeling he didn't have a particular reason to turn left and then when I stopped him to negotiate he tested if he could over-power me - actually, I just realize that by not letting him turn left I over-powered him first at which he might have just mirrored me and tried to over-powered me back How do you explain to a 2-year old that he can't have ice-cream every time we step out? Unfortunately there is a café just a stones throw away..and he knows it! I find it very difficult to set the boundaries but I will try subbing out the actors and see if this works to find win-win solutions.

Thank you for the advice Troubador! I'm very anxious regarding therapy because the things that my parents introduced me to in my twenties were a bad experience all around. Mind you, none of the councillors had psychology degrees but were friends of my parents. Regarding an attorney, ever since I was introduced to Stef, I thought I'd apply the NAP an try to not go through court as hard as I could. My wife has, threatened to get an attorney, to which I always said I'd give her anything she asks for. This was and still is the only way I could continue to negotiate with her but it worked to at least keep her from escalating further. Do you think that's a bad tactic?

Thanks RoseCodex. I'm here in Europe, I get a student loan and she and my kid get welfare - I know, not a virtuous arragement financially. No sex with her, thank heaven. No dating. And yes, I fell and climbed back from hell with my kid on the shoulder and her chained to both my feet. I'm going through this one step at a time, my worst nightmare yet. Thanks for the reply neeel. I'm not sure cooperate is a good term for this - I'd rather negotiate a win-win with him, which works for me most of the time. But my parents and my wife often don't have the patience or commitment, they want him to do what they ask. What started to worry about is something our doctor said when we last went there. If I let him control us, he won't respect us and things will go downhill from there. There are a few boundaries I've kept for a while. For example he's not allowed to climb onto the table, and he respects this 99% of the time. He tests this boundary in a playful way, and I jump in and stop him in a playful way. This has worked well and kept a happy atmosphere. He didn't articulate what he wanted when turning left that time, really no idea what he was up to that time.. Thanks Troubador, that was very helpful. That star-chart is a great idea, better than sweets! I will try this! I have a follow-up question. My wife is verbally abusive, she just gets louder and louder when I try to argue with her with arguments, she feels that she's in the right to just get louder and louder, and it's all my fault. I've listened to a few podcasts of Stefs' which gave me a lot more stability regarding what she's trying. He once said that it's useless to try to get the upper hand in those situation because she has a life time of practice at this kind of manipulation - that took a load off my shoulders. She argues every day about small details, and nags and nags and nags and escalates.. Ok, but my question is - what is virtue in my current situation? My sons sees this behavior and sees me in the loosing role. I'm still in the same household because I want to keep a close watch over and close connection to my son. He's still partly breast-fed and stuck with his mom for night sleep and naps. Do I continue as the dog that's regularly kicked?

Hey dads and moms, I'm a father of a 2 year old son and I'm worried that we have granted him too much freedom in the past, which now makes him quite uncooperative and I seem to be the only one left who can handle him without drama. Basically he expresses his own will and it takes a lot of nerve and patience to get him to cooperate. For example, we set out to go to the pool, he then turns left instead of right with his strider-bike. It's not safe for him on the left so I hold his bike and explain to him that it's unsafe in baby-terms and that we're going to the pool and have to turn right. He protests very strongly. I have to hold his bike, because he keeps pushing to go left and I keep holding it for a felt eternity until I can find a trigger thing for him to get him to cooperate (last time "lets look at cars that way" worked). For a couple of weeks I've been more assertive in the negotiations and I found that usually we can agree on a third option and he's happy with that. I'm very set to not use force to solve these things and just use patience as long as it takes if possible because I think it doesn't actually matter whether we arrive at the pool or not. I'm not the main caretaker though, my wife is and she very often has no patience at all and just picks him up and escalates the situation. For example, even when there is no hurry at all, she forcefully dresses him and such things. I should add that we are actually separated and just live together to raise the kid together for now, she's the housewife and I'm a university student. Long story short, she v-bombed me just when I was getting out of a depression, at a point where I didn't know about Stef yet. So I'm really asking myself lately if this is the right approach to raise a 2 year old and I'm worried that he's turning out too "difficult" to steer, for example for his grandparents.

Hey there everyone! I'm browsing a bit to find parenting tips for fathers of 2 year old sons and I was just wondering, why isn't there a fdr-wiki? I did a search and couldn't find anything on that..especially as a dad I wish a had a step-through program by age I could follow as my sons gets older. A sorted place for tips on things like games, activities, routines, exercise, dangers, health, things to look out for, diet, kindergarten, school, and work or training etc..

Thanks guys! That was helpful!

Hey Philosopher Kings, I got into an other one of those discussions regarding anarchy. The guy kept persisting that if people sign contracts with security firms, hence giving them authority to use force, it's no longer anarchy because now we have a ruler. He also persisted that giving authority to people over a region makes this place a state. Can someone help me debunk these 2 arguments? Thanks dudes!

I like the blizzard example. Let's say the hobo just runs off without mending the window he broke - if I were the owner I'd see it as an aesthetic moral problem and get a DRO to search for the guy. He'll have a DRO debt which would make it harder for him to get contracts in the future.

by the way, what part in this post doesn't make sense? If you are an ancap, as your user name suggests, it should make perfect sense to you - as an ancap you don't even care about the first part of the sentence, you have the right to shoot the guy if he doesn't back off your property.

OK thanks for insulting me. Oh and thanks for twisting my words. I didn't say: "because you can't be 100% certain that it was immoral for him to still, it was now moral" or "that someone else has to prove you're not an arsewhole". I said:"What I'm saying is, until there is enough evidence that you are not a complete asshole - you'll be shot if you get too close to someone without their consent" Have you ever tried close reading by any chance? Stop trolling me before you've tried that please. This is my threat by the way, I might be a troll magnet but I'm staying right here in my threat.

You got it bacward. What I'm saying is, until there is enough evidence that you are not a complete asshole - you'll be shot if you get too close to someone without their consent. I feel like people are not reading what I'm writing and just reply to what they think they are reading. Or am I not writing what I'm thinking? Now I'm confused.

You might be right but factually right now "we" have the burden of proof problem The closest I got to my answer is that I've heard a couple of times that high IQ people tend to talk very early, like at 6 months or so - here an example: Not a whole lot you can do wrong with an infant!