It seems taboo to be at all negative about Ex Wives. It’s ok to moan about ex husbands. However some Ex Wives do not want to let go and cause real damage.
I’m in the slow separation from my DP, and recently have realised how much the control and stress from his Ex Wife has caused this split. I wish I’d seen this and acted sooner. As a Ex Wife myself I played down her behaviour, didn’t want to bitch about her, and that was a big mistake. I’m not the OW btw! I guess maybe my experience might resonate with other SMs? Over the years:
- has been really intrusive. Kept her key to our house. Used it until I got DP to tell her to stop. Phoned the landline every single weekend.
- completely ignored my presence. Either blanked me at events, or told her children not to listen to me.
- put down my parenting, encouraged her kids to complain about me. The children started coming out with things like ‘it’s very hypocritical that do such and such...’ and realising it was straight from their mother.
- constantly messaging my DP. Sometimes angry. Sometimes intimate. Asking favours, rewarding DP with baked cakes and telling he was great ‘for looking after us and looking after ‘our baby’ (now 17 years old). Only if he did what she wanted. Telling him he ‘never did anything for the kids’ in front of them if he did not do what she wanted.
- not parenting her kids but dictating what happened in our house. She would tell the kids they only had one mother and I wasn’t to interfere, then boot them out to send them to me while DP was at work.
- we had half the kids full time and all of them every weekend. So she was not the main parent, but believed that she was and got maintenance for all and DP bought her a house.
The result was my step kids have no interest in me and their half brother. DP did stand up to her more and more, which greatly helped. However the ongoing stress of her constant psychological battering - guilt tripping DP, making him feel bad for doing right by me, the competing for her to keep being number one, was too much in the end.
And I’m relieved to be away from the stress even if it means losing someone I love and depriving my son of living with his father. It’s too late for me.
Has anyone found a way to cope? Or is anyone else out there feeling desperate like I was, feeling too bad for even complaining, yet can’t see how to make it better?