My son-in-law

[Wispycloud]

My daughter and son in law have an 8 month baby.

When they got together, we knew he had a child from a short previous relationship. Our son in law has always talked about his ex as being wild and mad and we accepted that and worried about our grandson in law and his home life. Our son in law paints the mother as bitter and horrible and not dealing with their split. He's has to take her to court upwards of 20 times and we've always accepted this is because she's horrendous.

I happen to have a shop and recently the mother of our step grandson came in. She didn't realise at first who we were so we had a nice conversation. When I said who I was, she thanked me for being so kind to her son. She was lovely and it wasn't the picture I got from our son in law. In fact he's been so horrible about her, saying she's an awful parent and shouldn't be taking care of said child.

I've been duped haven't I? Surely it's a good thing that the mother was nice.

@Pomegranatecarnage SIL?

Ohh I thought you meant sister in law 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

The 'bitter and crazy ex-wife/girlfriend' trope is very familiar in our society. It makes it very easy for abusive men to get sympathy when they want to portray themselves as the victim. People feel a lot less comfortable reflecting on the fact that most violence is perpetrated by men, and globally 1/3 of women experience domestic violence at some point on their lives.

IME perfectly lovely people individually can be utterly awful to each other if the dynamic is toxic. They can be vile partners to each other, but be perfectly upstanding and considerate partners to other people.

People can also present themselves as charming and likeable in these sorts of social interactions but be despicable and abusive behind closed doors (my mother was like this - however the neighbours could hear her alter ego, so fortunately her cover was blown). I think, if your DD is happy and he’s been supportive husband, I’d park the information and keep an eye on my DD for now.

My exes sister split with the father of her child when the child was a toddler. It was a very tempestuous relationship. She made his life a misery trying to get access to his daughter after the split. The daughter at 16 was invited to a family wedding (mother not in attendance). She met the 'ogre' family en masse and loved them. Several years on the daughter now has a wonderful relationship with her father, his siblings and cousins. Neither he nor his family ever disparaged his ex to his child.

Her brother my ex did the same to me. Despite him being the prolific cheat he successfully turned alot of people against me following our split. I moved away after our split so it was easy for him to create his own narrative. Sometimes people are justified in their statements about exes behaviour. It is too late now for me to try to redress the balance since I moved back (many years later) so I just carry on as best I can but it does make me mad when I get the vibe from our old friend group.