Brad and Kim realize the path forward would include divorce, and start talking about how to best plan for this for the children. Below is a summary of events related to this discussion as it related to moving to Minnesota.

Brad and Kim Agree that Minnesota is the Logical Place to Move

After discussion, Brad and Kim agree that moving out of Atlanta, and to Minnesota to be closer to family and in a place with better public schools would be a wise decision for the children. So, the next decisions needing to be made were where, and when.

Kim Proposes a Duplex as a Solution

Kim proposed that we both move into either side of a duplex, her on one side, and me on the other. I immediately knew that this was a very bad idea, but agreed to have the discussion with Dr. James to get his opinion. My reasons for believing this was an untenable solution were:

1. We would not agree on location: Kim prefers living “in the city,” exclusively. She has always had this very stubborn stance about living within city limits “proper.” She expressed repulsion (socially awkwardly toward friends who did live in the suburbs).  She never has communicated a rational (or consistent) explanation for this “inside the city limits proper,” and when it comes to places like the Twin Cities, there is no noticeable difference between a city and the first-ring suburbs. Before having kids, I was rather open to where I lived, and enjoyed aspects of “city living.” After having kids, all of my priorities changed, putting them at the top of all decisions. So a decision like where I would live, which would impact the children’s lives in major ways, because of the decisions relating to schools, meant that those factors were first and foremost for me.
2. We were not exactly splitting amicably: The “straw that broke the camel’s back” in determining if we could stay together was when I discovered that she had stolen the proceeds from the sale of the house we had together in St. Paul, MN. We were not going to live essentially together as though we just “romantically drifted apart.” Over the past 12 months in therapy, it was coming to light that Kim had been very strategically lying throughout the entirety of our relationship in order to manipulate me, our marital (and subsequently co-parenting) therapy, and underlying it always money. I was trying to communicate to her as soon as we agreed upon this separation/divorce that the conflict-avoidant behavior that she’d witnessed in our relationship was not some weakness that she was going to continue to manipulate; rather, it was what I knew that I had to do in order to not have big arguments, over every-single-disagreement. These arguments would always devolve from trying to have a civil conversation of differing opinions where I would lay out the rationale for my opinion, and as we hashed out the strength of each side, Kim’s would devolve into non-sense. I believed for the longest time that this was just a part of who she was – either she could not articulate her position, or she was just very bull-headed, and those were qualities/flaws that I chose to live with for better or worse. It was therapy with Dr. James that illuminated the fact that these non-sensical positions were not in-fact good-faith, stubborn positions, but without fail, they were simply covering up an underlying lie (often about related issues). Kim got caught in the middle of a web of these lies in therapy with Dr. James, and was terminated as a patient for this, due to the liability to his practice that the nature of this particular lie (claiming that Dr. James allowed ‘verbal abuse’ of her to take place in his sessions). 

 

We took this discussion to Dr. James, and he agreed that this was a very bad idea, given the number of issues that were likely to come up. He pointed out issues that I hadn’t particularly thought of, but would be telling later, like issues relating to parental time with the kids. His main point was the children going back and forth, and there would be seemingly arbitrary reasons for why/when the kids could be on one side of the duplex vs. the other. I believe that Dr. James realized that Kim was going to have a severely possessive attachment to the custody of the children.

Once this notion of living on either side of the same duplex was put to rest, “WE” were operating under the assumption that we were moving back to Minnesota some time in the spring/summer of 2020, and throughout all of 2020, she was coordinating with (or distracting) me with working on plans for moving to Minnesota. I emphasized, “we” because as it turned out, at some point Kim started operating (and telling many people) that she was not going to honor the plans she was making with me; instead, she was trying to get a job in Alabama and if she could get an offer she was going to take it, and the kids along with her, because “fuck Brad, it’s my turn to do what I want.”

** The thing to note: here about her later story about moving to Minnesota after she filed for divorce is:

1. Kim wants to quickly get past the details about “moving to Minnesota after finding out she was losing her job,” as if this were just a forced thing, she had no control over, and was acting out of good faith to just make the best out of a bad situation.
2. What this thread shows is that we had agreed upon a template for what decisions needed to be made, and an email trail showing that decisions had not yet been made.
3. When she acted in isolation, and confronted about it on the phone, she says “We’re in a divorce!” or something to that nature…so what?  When we were making these plans to begin with – we had already agreed that we’d be getting a divorce. We were not making these plans for our relationship, we were making these plans for the best interest of the children.
4. What’s this new attitude of not sharing information? There is nothing to suggest that there’s any reason by September of 2020 that if/when she was going to pivot back to Minnesota, instead of demanding that she take the kids to Alabama that these decisions would need to be agreed upon. Instead, every time she got more confident in her loan closing, she would hi-jack the weekly calls that were supposed to be only focused on what needed to be discussed for managing the 50/50 parenting arrangement, to try to get me to make commitments to her dictations. I had already told her numerous times that all decisions relating to kids would need to go through the lawyers, because I could not trust her. If the history up to this point is not clear as to why that’s a valid position, as the next event are described that should be more clear.