Partner's ex-wife said I crossed a boundary. AIBU? Please help.

[stclementeee]

Hi,

I've been with my partner for just under 3 years. He has 2 children from his prior marriage. They are 19 and 15. The 19 year old is a boy and the 15 year old is a girl.

The girl was spending the day at her Dad's house and got a splinter under her foot. I'm a surgeon (only saying so because I have a steady hand) and so I offered to remove the splinter from under her foot. I did so - and it was removed without too much hassle. Whole thing took about 90 seconds. She thanked me and was happy.

We carried on with the day.

She went home to her mother's house - and her mother texted my partner saying I had 'crossed a boundary' in removing the splinter from under her daughter's foot. I asked my partner to clarify if the daughter felt I had crossed a boundary - or if the mother did. He clarified that it was only his ex-wife. The daughter was perfectly happy.

I don't have kids of my own - so can please I seek advice/asked if I did indeed cross a boundary...? To be clear, as a Dr, I'm obviously trained in safeguarding etc... I do not touch people without consent!

Do you realize how ridiculous and petty this is? Do you expect the non-doctor step child to feed your children or leave them starving unless your ex DH feeds them or is your jealously limited to removing splinters from their feet???

This is the type of bullshit mentality that crates rifta which end up affecting the children because they are caught in the middle.

Expecting a step parent to have nothing to do with their stepchild is ridiculously stupid and unrealistic and you should be aiming to a relationship where your children are loved and cared for by their step parent not one where you put so many arbitrary barriers and rules that make no sense.

You should be upset when a step parent is mistreating your child or neglecting them not when they care for them and help them.

And you need to be mature enough to recognize jealous thoughts and push them away rather than act on them because "your feelings are valid".

I was just putting forward a hypothesis for how the child’s mother may have felt. It is yes completely irrational and petty. If my child had a step parent I would take these comments on board and try to be a better person.

god there are some right bellends on here! Ignore them OP utter nonsense 😊

Wow, that is strange, you'd think the ex would be happy that you removed the splinter. I genuinely thought from the title you'd done something truly terrible.

Sounds like she is a mum who is struggling with the idea of her children having a relationship with another woman who could be seen as a mother figure. She should be grateful that you helped her and perhaps kept those niggles to herself. Perhaps ex needs to reassure her that you are not trying to step on her toes and was purely helping their DD .

Absolutely not, utter tosh to make you feel like as you have no children you don’t know, of course you do. I’d be forever grateful to have you as their step mum. You carry on

Sounds like a bitter ex! Get your partner to go back and tell her she is ridiculous.

It was a splinter! Not an appendectomy on the kitchen table! She's crackernuts!

OP - the whole 'valid feelings' stuff- her 'feelings' are that she is jealous and finds it hard to think of you, her ex's partner, tending to her Dd as if in loco parentis.

It would be better of she could just acknowledge that to herself and deal with it.

Ignore,

Surgeon or not, of course you were in the right. Clearly jealousy here and feeling threatened. Sad she can’t see it was for her daughter’s benefit.

The other option would have been talking her through how to remove it herself, if it was somewhere she could see easily. That would probably have taken longer whilst maybe giving her confidence to manage future splinters.

Her mum is wrong - and I suspect knows she is. If she'd carried on walking on the splinter it would have become more embedded and would have hurt. It had to come out. You didn't force treatment on her against her wishes, you managed a minor situation in a sensible way.

Surgeons are Doctors.

I would’ve been extremely grateful to have a handy surgeon on the spot when a splinter got stuck in my child’s foot….. what a silly woman (the ex I mean, not you).

If she lived in a country where you have to pay for healthcare, she'd soon change her tune. She's very lucky her daughter's step-mother is a surgeon.

As someone who has been both a step parent and a parent with an ex I had to share my child with, I'd have been angry if you hadn't taken the splinter out.

I hate my ex husbands wife, she was the OW. There is no part of me that could be angry or upset if she took a splinter out of my daughters foot while she was in their care. I would have been angry if a splinter had been left in and not dealt with.

That is ridiculous. It sounds like the ex-wife is extremely jealous and doesn't like you having any contact with your stepdaughter, even to remove a splinter from her foot. You did the right thing.

Tell him to tell her to fuck off. I can kind of see how she's ended up in that place, because mothers find it hard to transition to the whole idea that it's no longer their role to remove all obstacles for fully grown children who are not 2, but she is still wrong. I got the rage about one of my husbands "friends" plaiting my daughter's hair when I wasn't there, but since we're together, that's a bit different. She feels jealous and left out.

@stclementeee she is being rediculous, they had a splinter, that is best taken our ASAP. She was 15 and said it was fine for you to do it, no boundary was crossed.

Goodness, I wouldn't have thought twice about removing a splinter from a child's foot. I would have thought that any adult in a house with a child of any age should at least attempt it rather than leaving them to walk on it. She probably just doesn't want you near her children because you are with her ex husband. Nobody will agree with her that you did anything wrong.

Well done for helping, if it were my daughter I would be sending you a "thank you so much" text for preventing pain, potential infection and a visit to an NHS dept for one of your colleagues to remove it 😂 she is just being petty and I am sure your partner is very grateful x

You have been entirely child focussed. The ex sounds like she is just being tetchy and insecure as you sorted out her childs medical issue rather than her. Honestly I would not give this any headspace. Ignore it.

Ex wife is the only unreasonable one in this. What did she propose you do instead?

Right so should I have taken my dsd to a hairdresser or waited until her dad got home. When I found her in tears with a hairbrush tangled in her hair? Did I fuck I took her into the bathroom wet it and saturated it in conditioner to unknot it all.

Or when she was having a sleepover and her and her friend came down covered in makeup. I don't mean just on their faces they smeared it all over their arms and hands. I had to use cleansing lotion to get it all off and run them a bath.

Tell her to feck off. She's off her nut.

What she expect it to be left and the child be in pain all day. You didn't do anything wrong. You helped the girl with her permission. People are fucking weird.