Ex husbands

Gosh, it's hard.

I wonder how many grannies divorced their husbands, rather than were divorced by their husbands. I could make an educated guess about the proportions.

I come into contact with my ex-husband at weddings, funerals and various birthday parties. That's more than I can tolerate, really. We don't argue. I treat him with indifference unless he sets out to give me grief, usually in the form of him neglecting to support our children or grandchildren. He's mean with time, compassion and money. However, we keep it civilised.

He did contact me last year, when our eldest son was having a horrible time with ex-DIL denying access to his son, and his business was going rapidly downhill. As ex is a chartered accountant, I had asked him to assist our son. He was no help at all, attempted to lecture him. We worked things out without him. However, he perceived my request for assistance as a sign that I wanted to be friendly (I invited him and son to my house and fed him whilst we talked). I told him that, when I hear that he is behaving more like a supportive father, he will notice that I am being more friendly. I put the phone down on him then. Last time I saw him, he looked sheepish and made no attempt to speak to me. He hasn't changed.

We haven't met for about 15 years and my daughters haven't told him they have moved house. He wasn't invited to any of the three weddings or the recent grandson's wedding. His third wife has six children and numerous gc and he has taken them on instead of his own gc. His choice - he did not buy so much as a rattle for any of the first six gc so he doesn't know about the next four or the four great-gc. He was very bitter at my leaving him, even though he remarried within a year, and then again very quickly after she died. He blamed our eldest daughter for causing the divorce which was absolute rubbish, although she was very supportive of me.
The only time he contacted her was when his company sent him a course quite close to her house, and he invited himself to have free food and accommodation, even though he was on expenses. He didn't bring flowers, chocolates or a bottle of wine and boasted about how much he would make on the deal.
I have no idea if he is alive or dead - he is only 76 but very overweight and a heavy drinker. I wish my girls had had a loving, attentive father, but he was just too selfish. I think he would have been better with boys - he used to take my sister's boys fishing and bird-watching. Now, his daughters say they can't remember his doing anything with them when they were young - I was the one who took them skating,swimming, to guides, riding club, etc.