Amicable divorce?

Your son will find out exactly who he is for himself. The problem with talking bad is that your son is exactly half of your ex, and children love both their parents. Just because you divorced him doesn't mean he did. I'm speaking from the point of view of a divorced child. You are literally fostering self-hatred within your own son. My mother constantly spoke badly about my father, and it made me hate myself. It made me feel like I had to hate the parts of me that were like my father, the parts that looked like my father, the parts that acted like my father. It made me feel like I had to hate half of myself and hate my own father in order to please my mother. That's not healthy. My dad took the opposite route, literally never saying anything negative about my mother even though she's literally a child abuser. I came to my own conclusions and I 18 years old cut contact with my mother forever. I'm just telling you, how it affects the child. It's not so easy to just cut off someone who's half of you, he's just a child. If you speak badly about his father, even if it's true, he's going to hate himself as well and worry that Mommy will hate him if he turns out anything like Daddy.

My mother had the same attitude as you, if you turn out like your father I don't want anything to do with you. Not only did it create self-esteem and self-hate issues, but it made me run far away from my mother and never speak to her again.

This! I played by the rules for so long, and it got me nowhere. Meanwhile, my ex would fill my kids' heads with lies. In family court, as in everywhere, women are expected to toe the line, but men do as they please. After an entire year of my ex having supervised visitation and lying to my kids on the phone about why that was, I told them the truth- that their dad has a substance abuse problem. And what did that mf'er do? He took me to court for violating the defamation clause of our divorce contract. Apparently, telling the truth is defamatory! It was eventually dropped, but not until after I'd spend thousands of dollars on an attorney so I could defend myself.

I hear that all the time- that children will find out the truth, but I have my doubts. My ex-boyfriend would always talk about how awful his mom was. He'd say that she disparaged his dad, and that it wasn't until he became an adult and met his father that he found out the truth- that his dad was a great guy, but she kept him away from him. I don't buy that for a minute! If his father wanted anything to do with him, he would have made sure he was in his life. But all it took was a scrote coming in and telling his side of the story for him to take his word as gospel.

But I am so sorry that you suffered abuse from your mother. It seems that it's always the abusive parent who works hard to control the narrative and gets to share their side of the story.