My son's mother thinks I've ruined her life.

We live in a city with thousands of people. She's free every workday during work hours. She gets every state-sponsored childcare option - AND YET:

• She "chose" to stay unemployed to "support" me in my employment, even though I never asked her to and explicitly stated that I expected her to be able to provide for herself. She then demanded and took half my tax return for that service.

• The reason she doesn't have any friends after years of living here is because I "talk shit" about her to my friends, who apparently have no minds of their own and "hate" her because of what I've said. (readily untrue, and actually somewhat opposite)

• She's miserable and alone and broke and it's all my fault. I'm the most awful person ever because I deny that I've done these things to her and "only see the good" in myself, so she "can't trust" anything I say anymore.

I've shown up every day since my son was born. I pick him up in the mornings and take him to school, he spends the night at my house most nights. I'm active and involved in his life - school, medical, developmental. I love him deeply.

My world was turned upside down when I suddenly became a father with a woman I really didn't know. It hasn't been easy, but becoming a father with my son has been the most incredible life-changing things I've ever been through - I don't regret at second of it... in fact, it's almost always been as fun as it has been challenging.

She, on the other hand, has been the single greatest source of stress and suffering in my life over the past few years. She's never happy, demands that I follow her orders exactly, and becomes insanely pissed whenever I assert my right to be a father and make parenting choices that go against hers.

Of course, she's decided to leave town, and places that choice on me - that I've forced her to move away because I've made the town "toxic" against her from my "constant shit-talking." According to her, I've made my son's life infinitely worse because it's all my fault - she takes no responsibility even for the choice to move.

I'm sure part of all of this is that I have a girlfriend now, for the first time since my son was born, and I didn't tell her right away. Unfortunately my girlfriend is also now subject to lengthy texts/emails that attack her personally - and my girlfriend is truly, deeply affected by it (and has her own personal life to deal with as well, as she's recently divorced). I wish I could unload all of this on her, but I'm in a support-position again - I have to console her while dealing with it myself.

I guess my real problem was that I cared about trying to make a working relationship and have everyone get along, when I should have marched down to the courthouse and arranged something outright. I still care, now, because her problems deeply affect my son - and he told me tonight, unprompted, that he "didn't want to be Daddy." :(

All I can do is be consistent, supportive, and even loving to everyone in my life, but I am so worried that if she does move away and discovers that I wasn't the source of her problems - that those lie with her - that she may take even more drastic actions. Or that her hatred of me could run so deep that her failure elsewhere is still somehow my fault - that she could sue me for "emotional abuse" or similar as grounds for custody.

As the father, the legal grounds are stacked far against me, even though I can readily prove I do most of the caring and providing.

Anyway, thanks r/offmychest for providing this box for me to type in.