To cut My Ex Husband Off

[Idrathernotbehere]

Good Evening,

feel like I’m in a right pickle, i had a huge fall out with my mum last august, she’s always been very difficult and has various mental health issues, trying to kill herself a couple of times, as she’s got older she’s got nastier and I noticed on my eldest sons phone she was sending him messages saying that if she didn’t have her grandkids she would kill herself, huge argument followed she refused to apologise to me or my DS and apart from the nasty text messages she’s sent I haven’t heard from her since.

Ex Husband Father to my DS 16&14 didn’t want to see or pay for them for 5 years after we divorced, got in touch with me a little over 2 years ago asking if he could see my ds again, after lots of talks my DS have wanted to see him again and he’s been seeing them probably once every 3 months since, he refuses to make a regular arrangement

but anyway I told him on a couple of occasions that I thought my mum was having a mental break and we were not seeing her at present, I found out the she was texting him and sending my DS birthday and Christmas cards to his house ( I never said she couldn’t send them cards or even talk to the kids) and made my DS conceal them but I found out tonight that she attended my exes party that my DS attended and told them not to tell me!

after 5 years of hell and upset because he refused to see his sons I just want to tell him to f**k off AIBU?

My DM has a similar history, so I empathise. I have 2 teen DDs and she was beginning to project onto them ("Why is DD so quiet today, have I upset her?" etc.), so I had to draw some pretty firm boundaries, and it sounds like you have done the same. We know that we need to prevent our own DC from suffering due to our DM's MH issues, so we do whatever we need to do.

Your ExH has massively overstepped here, and I think you'd be perfectly within your rights to cut him off. It sounds like your DC are old enough to maintain a relationship with him themselves should they wish. Has he paid any of the maintenance he owes you?!

I’m not surprised you want to cut him off. He’s very much in the wrong, especially with the added “sin” of asking them to conceal stuff from you.

What do your DSs think about contact with him? How did they feel about their GM being at his party? About being asked to keep things secret from you?

At 14 and 16, if you cut him off will you actually be protecting your sons? Or is he going to be able to contact them anyway (or them him) and so all you’ll really be doing is removing any hint of visibility you currently have into his interactions with them?

It may be better to tackle this by being more involved in the arrangements for them seeing him rather than cutting him off. And putting effort into discussing their visits with them and making sure they recognise manipulation your Ex’s manipulation for what it was and that they feel able to talk with you regardless of what their father tells them.