I want to begin by saying thanks again for all positive encouragement I received from my first post.

In order to understand my situation I think that knowing a bit of history in regards to my relationship with my ex is important. So I've decided to start from the very beginning and work my way up. I am going to try to keep things as short and unboring as possible, so if anyone gets confused feel free to ask.

Okay, so the beginning. My ex and I (him and his wife have the initials f and e, so I think I will refer to them as fred and ethel). Fred and I started dating when I was just 14. God that seems so young now looking back but I assure you....we were in LOOOVEEEE and I thought I was so cool it's actually embarrassing to remember lol
Fred was two grades above me in school, and his younger bro was in my grade so thats how we met. I was always very close with his parents and extended family.
As a side note, fred and I both have step parents on both sides. We both have good relationships with our SP. His mother and father are actually like really good friends and so is his step father with his bio father. Freds bio dad lives in a different state but stays with freds mom/step dad when he visits. Kinda wierd now that I think about it but it doesn't seem weird if you know them. Freds SF and my SF have pretty much raised us so for the sake of this blog I am just going to refer to each as our dads. Freds sf is an unbelievable man and I have heard freds bio dad say so many times how grateful he is to him.
Anyway, when I was in 10th grade, my parents decided to move to a different school district and I was not having it. It wasn't a far move, just a different highschool and I didn't want to leave my friends or not be able to be up freds ass 24/7 so of course I was pissed. freds parents and my parents decided the only obvious option would be for me to move in with them and continue at school. I stayed there all the time anyway and by that time freds parents had decided I was pretty much their daughter anyway. Again, one of those things you look back on with the eyes of a 25 year old with kids of your own and think wtf. But my parents and his were close and so thats what they decided to do. And it was fine, I went to school, hung out with friends, was up freds ass and he was up mine so it was business as usual. (my mother knew we were having sex and so did his. They actually got me birth control about a year before I moved in with freds family. that might be weird to some people but I think they knew they couldnt lock us away so tried to do the responsible thing)
Anyway, long story short, I find out I am pregnant my senior year. I graduate high school all big and preg. Eventually, fred and I get our own place. After the babies are born, things slowly start to change between us, as they sometimes do. We no longer get a long. We fight all the time. He turns 21 before me so he starts to be able to go out. He cheats on me a few times, you know....the usual bs. I can say though, that he was always a good dad and even at his worst did the best he could. We just became toxic together. We started to bring out the worst in eachother and it was not healthy. We tried, but there came a point in time where we were obviously too far gone and broken and there was no fixing it. I was still very very close with his family so one day his parents took me out to lunch to talk about what was going on. They could see the changes in fred and I both and were concerned. I told them everything. it became obvious that fred and I were staying together almost out of spite. His parents gave me the best advice that day. I told them how hard it is to leave someone who you do really love even though you know you have to. Also, how hard it is to imagine almost breaking up with an entire family that you also love so much. They told me that just because you break up with him doesn't mean you are breaking up with us. It was like, permission almost.
So, when the boys were just about 5 years old, fred and I broke up. It was one of the hardest, most heart breaking things I have ever been through. At first it was unbearable, but over time we have both come to a point where we have forgiven eachother and we are both really so much happier. Neither of us have any desire to be with the other ever again, but we are good coparents and we get along fine. Just because we were bad for eachother doesnt necessarily mean we are bad people in general.
But it took awhile to get to this point. For the first few months we couldn't have a conversation without screaming at eachother. It was a long, hard road trust me.

That's the history. It is all important info in understanding the present situation in my opinion.
Part 2 will be coming soon