My ex was always a sex addicted sociopath who cheated a ton. But when he was with me, he was a good father. Well he was great to our daughters and not as good to our son.

Well he ended up telling me one day he was going to stay with his dad and think about his life. He never said goodbye to the kids, just waited to leave when they fell asleep. Very long story short, turns out he was living with another woman the whole time. She was allowing him to stay at her apartment, knowing everyday he came over to see us, and she had to assume we were still physical with each other.

So eventually they are out in the open with their relationship and they rent a house close to our marital home. To me, she was just one of many women he had had extramarital affair with. I did notice some things about her though that was different than the others. For one, we had a sick child at home on oxygen and going thru a lot medically and it didn't bother her at all, to sleep with a married man going thru what we were going thru. Secondly, all the others of course, hid everything...she seemed to want me to know that she was having affair with my husband, to make sure the marriage was broken. She would comment all over his facebook everyday, and left her fb page public and made fb statuses like "Don't hate me because I'm better in bed than you, hate me because your husband thinks so".

Even after I found out about everything, I bit my tongue because this was our new life now, and I was kind of waiting to see how she was with the kids before I said or did anything. I didn't want her to hate me and take it out on the kids or anything.

At the same time she was around my kids, I was around my new bf's kids. There seem to be such a difference. My kids didn't talk positively about her, whereas my bf's kids loved me and would beg for us to get married. I had one of my children bawling afraid their dad would marry his gf. It just seemed like she never tried to get to know my kids, or establish a relationship with them, which I thought given she was the "other woman" she would try harder, and earn their respect so that they could move forward and everyone would be happy.

then i started getting reports that she was nicer to the kids in front of their dad (although really not that nice) and was more mean or totally ignored them when he wasn't around. She also was not feeding the kids. They were starving whenever I picked them up. So I texted their dad and asked from now on could he make sure the kids had been fed when I pick them up, he said yeah. So the next weekend they had them she asked them what they wanted for lunch, when they didn't answer her right away she stormed off and yelled, well i was going to make you guys lunch, but no one would tell me what they wanted to eat! and she slammed her hand down on a table and sat back down on the computer. I felt like she was mad because they obviously told someone she wasn't feeding them.

Their dad picks on them and teases them, and they don't love it when their dad does it, but she does it too, and to the kids it feels like being ganged up on. Plus she doesn't have a relationship with them or earned their respect to be teasing them so harshly yet. If their dad is mad at a child she tries her hardest to add fuel to the fire and get him more mad instead of being a peacemaker. My oldest children are the ones she targets the most, and I really think she is trying to run them off so they don't come over anymore at all and they won't have so many children at their house (we have 4 kids she has 3), considering they are almost at age to choose when they want to go.

I had casually mentioned to my ex thru text that his gf wasn't being as nice to the kids when he wasn't around, but said that i didn't think this was a conversation to have thru text and he agreed. But he has never talked more about this to me, or even the kids. We have even had a few issues where she has been downright mean to the kids in front of him, and he doesn't say anything but will text the kids later, and apologize. I guess he is too scared to take up for his kids around her. I think he knows with the child support he pays, he is too worried about money and honestly has no desire to take care of the kids alone. So as long as he plays nice with her, she financially supports him and pretends to trust him so much, he can continue to cheat and she won't question him. So I feel like he doesn't want to ruin his sweet deal, even if it's driving his kids away from him and hurting them. The children just got back from vacation with his dad and stepmom and they were just emotionally a mess. My oldest is now saying as soon as he turns 16 he doesn't want anything to do with his dad. That all him and his gf did was bully them.

I'm torn, because obviously as their mother I want to help them. I think it's important for kids to have good relationships with their parents. But at the same time, I think, is this just on him? It's his life, he made his bed now he has to lie in it. But then I go right back to, this hurts my kids so I should do something. But then I go right back to, even if I talked to him, I don't think he would do anything about it.

The children are terrified of him. But my other option is to just try and make sure they get stronger, and eventually they can just tell their dad themselves? I feel like she has been such a negative influence in his life and it's sad to see the demise. We had a credit card in our marriage that had zero balance, one year of being with her and he owes $13,000. He is in debt up to his eyeballs and his kids don't like him. Its weird to see the demise. Have you guys seen your children's father change to someone you don't recognize anymore?