I'll check out the whole podcast, thanks for sharing!

I will have to make a separate spotify account because chef shares mine.  If he sees that podcast on the account, he will think I am dredging up bad memories which peeves him greatly.

Of course he minimizes the damage the skids and the Girhippo-n-clan inflicted on me.

Just listened and I can relate to so much. In our case, kids were alienated enough that they spent their time telling DH how terrible he was and how "mean" he was to BM, but still came to our home. One has now seen the light a bit, but he no longer comes around much because he's a teen and has other things to do (which DH is okay with and he still communicates with him). The other one still comes to our home and pout and sit in his room and be rude. He ignores me totally, so I ignore him in return. I told DH I'm no longer a stepmom, I'm fine being "dad's wife". The one who comes to our house also ignores our children. My 2 year old is wary of him, whereas she runs to her other brother (the one who doesn't come around because he's working or spending time with his girlfriend or friends) and jumps into his arms even after not seeing him for weeks. It does hurt me a bit that my children will not know their older brothers, but my preference is to protect them over going out of my way to provide opportunities for them to be disappointed or treated poorly. 

I totally agree with her on the theory that HCBMs expect their exes to sit around pining for them and serving them for the rest of time. DH has said that to me multiple times that he thinks both BM and his mother thought he should just sit around and be sad, pathetic, and alone and do whatever they wanted him to do after his divorce. BM was already remarried by the time I met him, but still was constantly using DH for emotional support and trying to get him to do all kinds of chores for her. 

One final thought, I don't understand why anyone ever agrees to an "every weekend" schedule or every weekend except one a month schedule. BM tried to get DH to agree to that and before he was dating he would take them on her weekends, but man, no parent wants to be the one who is stuck with every weekend with their kids. I say that as someone with kids, who loves it when I can hand them off to someone even for a few hours on the weekend. When they went to their first mediation, BM tried to say that DH agreed to every weekend, because their original agreement said "two consecutive weekends a month". He said, fine, he'd take them for two consecutive weekends and she could have them the remaining weekends (which would be three in some months). She didn't want that, so agreed to make it officially every other weekend. 

So many great topics in this podcast! Definitely checking this out!