Ex-husband's wife sent this email during custody dispute, was it inappropriate?

[Kiwiana100]

FYI this happened a long time ago. 2015 to be exact. My ex and I were in custody dispute. He and his wife wanted full time care of my eldest girl (Rebecca). I had agreed to only 50/50. They felt that her autism diagnosis was wrong and that I was conditioning and enabling her. He had become highly verbally abusive and his wife (a trained counsellor) stepped in to try to negotiate. This is her email. I found it to be a huge boundary violation. I have changed the names.
Hello Hannah,

Thank you for your email. I acknowledge that you changed your mind about meeting next weekend, I find that a bit of a shame as actions toward better communication could be, in my view, really helpful.

Great that you agreed to the new schedule which is based on your revised wishes.

You hope that one day Rebecca will appreciate your decision to prevent Matthew from caring for her full time. I think it sometimes requires a lot of love and grandeur to let go of your own needs and try new things for the sake of the child. Assigning Matthew full time care for Rebecca would have been such thing. It would have been a chance for Rebecca. Why would it mean you give up on Rebecca? You had both girls in fulltime care for nearly four years and Matthew never viewed this as giving up on his children. I really wonder how you develop such views? You both, Matthew and you, have the same rights to care for the children. Hannah, that's right, time will reveal Rebeccas's views on this. I agree, one day both girls will form their opinions about their experiences with both of you. They will make up their minds what they found helpful, what not, what they liked and what not. They will do this as we all did it with our parents. Good mother or good father – at the end of the day it is for them to say what they think.

Please don't worry about the way Matthew portrays you. I am well aware of the fact that I hear only his perception. Please also know that neither of us are judging you. You can do what you want, have you own values, live your own life as you want, please don't worry about this. We never comment on things related to you towards the girls and we take our pride in this. We also have no bad intentions towards you, we both wish you all the best, why would we want anything bad for you?

But still Hannah, between both of you parents, it must be possible to raise concerns. If Matthew e.g. gets the impression that Sarah gets more attention than Rebecca he must have the possibility to raise this issue with you, would you not agree? This is in our view just a normal part of communication between parents. And btw, you do this too on a regular basis.

Since we don't see each other on the weekend, please let me say a few words about your (Matthew's and your) way of communicating. I am well aware that you despise Matthew for his bad communication style because he is sometimes getting very aggravated, aggressive and becomes verbally abusive. You are absolutely right. And I have seen him on a number of occasions finding it extremely difficult to stay calm when things are getting out of hand between you two.
But I think it is a bit one sided to point the finger on Matthew alone and see yourself as the victim. Its never right to blame just one side. As a person who witnessed you both communicating, I would like to invite you to hear my perspective of it. It can see that you still hold a lot of resentments against Michael. Your relationship ended nearly four years ago, and I strongly doubt that you reached closure. Maybe you disagree, maybe you reflect on this and find the right answer to this question for yourself. What I observe is, that Matthew never gets it right for you. In your books he is to blame for this, that and the other. Just recently for Sarah not wanting to eat at McDonalds (please see your last Thursdays texts) and in yesterday texts you even blamed him for you not having a good relationship with your daughter Rebecca. Within this framework you expect him to react friendly, patiently and respectful. Beyond that you often don't consult with him in parenting questions, you rather consult with outsiders, I suspect you don't view him as competent (??). And, I'm very sorry to mention it, you don't acknowledge his efforts and achievements with the girls. In contrast you even criticise him for that.
I can tell you that Matthew too loves his children and he actively helps them to reach their full potential, to improve their behaviours, gives them direction, guidelines, support and last but not least his love. Rebecca's improvements in math and her communication, for example, are remarkable. Both girls are happy around him. I must say, I admire that on him. I find is sometimes hard to watch how you criticise him for all that is possible while insisting to be respected, and not being criticised. Respect is of course preferable, it just has to go both ways. When we blame we should also see our own parts that we play.

I really hope that you give it a go and think about my words.

Kind regards

Katherine

As I have said multiple times, this is not eating me up inside. I have enough closure to be able to share it now, when I didn't back then. I want reactions from outside observers out of interest.

Why have you kept it? Seriously delete and move on!

Spot on

I think you've made your point now.

Sadly I think the ex and his wife won’t have given this a second further thought for a good 10.75 years

Id give fewer fucks what any of us think if I were you 😂it's just a stupid letter and we're not living your life, you are. The ongoing issues with your DDs are more pressing. Get out of denial mode and address those real issues that affect your relationships. Again, it's just a stupid letter, which you already know as you're a highly educated person. delete and move on.

Yes. This is my experience. It takes two decent people to co parent well but only one toxic parent to make it impossible

I badly wanted to have a decent co parenting relationship but even over a decade on from our split he still constantly seems to want to be as difficult as possible.

100%

I appreciate the advice, but you are making assumptions. Of course, my number one priority is my daughters! Just because I am talking about something else in this thread, doesn't mean that I am not addressing them. I wanted feedback, nothing else, and it has been extremely interesting. I wish you joy.

I agree totally with this.
Trauma stays with you a long, long time. It is natural to try to process, make sense of things.
Talking to other people can be very helpful. You can't just forget about these things. OP handled it the best way she could at the time. She is still supporting her traumatised daughters. It is hard. Sadly there many mothers on here dealing with abusive men and trying to protect their children.

(Those critical posters questioning why OP is still processing sound exactly like the person who told me to forget about my dead child and move on. Not helpful).

I am so sorry for your loss. Those comments are just cruel.

If his name is Michael not Matthew then you need to edit your post, one name was left unchanged

What on earth?! Who does she think she is spewing out personal opinions about things that don't concern her, and framing it as somehow 'professional' advice. I'd respond with ' Nobody asked your opinion love'.

Whatever the sentiment it’s none of her business, she is not your mediator or counsellor you both attend

Agree with this. Trauma like this can pop up any time in your lifetime. Just because it's been 11 years, it doesn't mean it just goes away. I'm also quite sure the OP hasn't been thinking about it every minute of every day over those 11 years.

As for the writer of the letter - she's so very reasonable isn't she? Not really of course, couldn't make it any more obvious what a nasty piece of work she is. Maybe the ex husband got what he deserved. Or at least some of what he deserved.

Some posters here seem to be remarkably invested in telling the OP to shut up and move on. If only they could take their own advice.
OP I'm delighted you've moved on far enough to be able to look back on past trauma and begin to properly process it. Of course, because he is the father of your girls you can't eradicate him from your life and thoughts completely and most people understand this! Hope you and your daughters find happiness and healing.

This is why I hate when, during a split or divorce, people say “you’ll meet someone else!” Your ex might have been best not to introduce another party into an already difficult situation.

It must be quite satisfying reading her predictions with the benefit of hindsight and knowing how wrong she was. Stupid woman.

Did you realise that in one place it says Michael rather than Matthew?

Absolutely no shaming from me for you going over something that happened years ago - it might still feel very current to you, particularly if you didn't feel able to respond in the way that you really wanted to all those years ago and it was part of a lengthy process of divorce and co-parenting. I also wonder if you were a single parent without a partner to vent to about it at the time?

I re-visit the past, some people don't or are able to just shed stuff and move on but receiving an email like that from a step mother of my children wouldn't be something I'd easily let go of and as you've mentioned now your girls are grown up, you feel it is safer to address it now.

I was cringing so much for the step mum, I couldn't actually finish the email! It's awful, completely inappropriate and lacking in self awareness. She also uses her professional training to undermine you which is unethical.

With regards to your daughter who is still very much aligned with her father and step mother, it's possible that for her this seems like the safer option (i.e. to side with the difficult parent) whilst your other daughter has chosen the no contact route. As others posters have said, she is still young and may grow out of their orbit and re-assess the whole thing when she herself has children. In the meantime, I guess all you can do is keep being reasonable and not get into any discussions with her about them which is easy enough to say on Mumsnet but probably quite hard to do in actual real life.

Can I ask who Michael is, it mentioned in her email that she suggested you had resentment for Michael, or was that a typo and meant to be Matthew.

I would be enraged receiving that email and found it hard to sit on a response for 11 years, you have more self control than me, I hope things work out for both you and your daughters.

I couldn't be bothered reading her whole email but I would have reported her to her professional body for spouting crap.
What a prize git she is.

By the time I realised that I hadn't made one change, the window for editing had passed. I will try to send a message about it.

I would be reluctant to destroy a letter like that. I would keep it as proof to myself that I wasn't imagining things. However, I would store it where it would not be found and I did not see it either.

Yes, unfortunately, it's too late to edit