Hurtful Words from my Ex

[BillER]

Good evening.

A quick intro. I'm a 46 year old male, with a 4 year old daughter. I am separated and see my daughter every weekend.

I'm not sure where to begin as it's the first time that I've revealed this issue in a public space. Whenever my ex partner and I engage in discussions about our daughter she tends to bring up the fact that I initially recommended that she have an abortion. She says things like 'you wanted to kill my baby' and it's very often when we are outside in a coffee shop or a playground. She's said it only a handful of times but it's extremely distressing when she brings it up. She did it yesterday and I felt so bad especially when she said that she would tell our daughter when she grew up. I just had to write on this forum for some advice.

When she told me she was pregnant I will admit that I wasn't jumping up and down for joy. We didn't have age on our side and our relationship wasn't going very well. This was a very difficult time however I came around to support her in whatever the decision she took and in fact my initial dismay turned into full support for her decision to go ahead with the pregnancy. We have never lived together but I regularly saw her during the pregnancy and assisted her as much as I could. I get on great with my daughter and although I only see her once a week for a whole day I always give 200%.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how I can deal with this? It makes me so uncomfortable being around my ex as I don't know when her next outburst will occur.

When people split and are hurting they say things to try and cause more hurt. I'm not proud of some of the things I said in arguments with my exdp when we split. Luckily time seems to fix things like this the best.

However some people do stay in that place and never change. My parents had an incredibly acrimonious divorce and even now, 15 years on, I wouldn't want to see what would happen if they were in the same room.

The fact of the matter is you cannot control your ex, how she behaves etc nor (unfortunately) what she will or won't tell your daughter in the future. Just don't react. Stop meeting up with her in public places and tell her you'll only engage with her by email/text and that even then you'll only discuss things strictly pertinent to your joint parenting. Try and stay as emotionless about it as possible. People eventually run out of steam.

Be the best dad you can be and then hopefully, even if she did stoop low enough to tell your daughter when she's older, your daughter will just know what a good dad you've been to her.

She's said it only a handful of times but it's extremely distressing when she brings it up

I bet it's not as distressing as hearing the father of your child tell you to get an abortion though, when you're feeling scared and vulnerable by an unexpected pregnancy. Probably even worse now that she knows and loves her child.