Thanks Lynn, I really appreciate your advice and thoughts and yes what you say makes complete sense. I’m trying to navigate it in such a way that it leaves as small a toxic footprint for all including myself as I have so many friends who have been down the road of separation and divorce, they are traumatised and their kids are all in school trauma programs and one close friend discovered she had cancer 4 years in to a protracted and nasty divorce. Her immune system was shot from stress. Whilst I know that We both need to live separate lives sometimes I feel that if I was somehow able to become utterly ambivalent to him dating and us all living together and thus live in a more harmonious environment as he is so happy when he is with GF and brings that happiness home with him which the kids benefit from, then it would be almost ideal. Especially if I managed to date successfully myself. This kind of mindset shift (however achieved ?) would mean that no one in the house suffers and everyone has the freedom they need and the family stays intact at least until the kids are all in college- approx 8 years time which isn’t that long. I wonder if anyone out there has successfully done this and avoided custody conversations and the descent into bitterness… I know if I go down that path my ex would never forgive me for not being able to live with his children.. his worst fear literally is being apart from them. I completely 100% subscribe to his view and fear as I know how that would feel for me- I just have the benefit as primary carer and mother of having a culturally assumed right to be with them as necessity.. I do t want to hurt him and I want to maintain and grow a better parenting and friendship relationship with him. As human beings there has to be other ways through this without destroying all that is still good in us all simply because of unrequited love, jealousy, grief… as Pema chowdron implies – everything is neutral until we place meaning and emotion into it and then it becomes tribal or dualistic and difficult to reconcile… I would love to be so neutral and so ambivalent to him dating whilst living together so as that we could raise our beautiful family harmoniously… ohh ? when I read Michael Singer and Eckhart Tolle and listen to them emphasise the supreme gifts of active surrender to things we can’t control and when we do this the gifts of the universe flow through because we have stopped resisting, contracting down and clinging …I wonder can I bring myself with practice into this state of being and when fully surrendering to this attain the gifts of peace, non suffering and the flow of abundance my way and the way of my children. Thoughts anyone? Is it possible ? Is there another way? X