My ex and I get along great now.

Far better in fact than we were in our marriage.We're far more respectful of each other as people and of each others opinions on a level we could never quite get working when married. I can't even beging to tell you how much easier it's been for the kids an each other, though she was remarried and divorced again for only three years after our own divorce.

That period was trying but ultimately, she realized how much personal refinement she needed to work on when it came to interpersonal communications (as did I, far far more than her) and between trying to make ammends and apologize and demonstrate through actions, not lip service that we will always be raising and experincing together our childrens lives we will always retain love for each other and nurture that not bitterness and malice.

As an MD she was bedside holding my mothers hand when she passed ( they were very tight) I was recently a pallbearer at her fathers funeral. Recently her mothers cancer has comeback and she is not long for this world and we all spent last Easter together (more than likely the last one for mother) and deep down I knew that was what they both and the children wanted Easter and last Christmas to be...almost like the rest of the last several years were just a brief aberration.

Perhaps the most wonderful aspect is that my girlfriend (of seven years, horrible divorce herself still suffers PTSD from it) whom I love in ways I've never loved another woman, has nary an ounce of insecuirity or a smidgen of jealousness, all she has ever said about the amount of time I dedicate and and my involvment in the diverse family activities the kids myself and the ex engage in is "You are trying to be a good father for them, I would be in the wrong to critisize that and it's about time you are helpful and nice to your ex!"

There are so many other postitive aspects to how this has worked out, but it would take up too much time to write it all down suffice to say the best advice I recieved from three different sources was, and I quote:
"Someone has to be the civil individual in this mess and it's all the better if it's you and if that is the case and she is smart she will follow."

The truth in that statement laid the ground work of what could not have been a better outcome considering the animosity that had accumulated between us over the years.

Take the high road if at all possible, you'll be glad (spiritually and morally ) that you did.

~Stiv