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Original poster

Daughters father partner. Help and advise please

60 replies

Natalie2900 · 28/04/2017 20:40

Hey,

I am wondering if anybody can help me. I just need some advise and somebody to tell me I'm either being dramatic or perfectly reasonable.

I am struggling with my daughters dads partner. I find her incredibly over power and just wish she would take a step back.

Basically she has decided to meet up on weekends with one of the mums from school who is supposed to be my friend of 4 years ( our daughters went to nursery together and now school) I am incredibly hurt by them all meeting up and spending time together.
Now I have been told of another friendship she has made with another mum at school. Am I being childish? I am always in quite a rush during school run with
Work and don't have time to stop and chat. I just feel like being friends with all the nuns isn't her place! She isn't her mum!!!!
She always is doing all the school runs and her dad lies and says it's him!
This woman has never known where the line is and I feel like she is running my time bringing up my daughter! This is me special time with her that I will never get back and she's growing up every day :-(. Why as her mum can she not just respect my wishes.
She wrote me a thank you card from me daughter for the Christmas presents I brought her! Like I'm a relative!! She is MY DAUGHTER why would she write me a thank you card. She just doesn't think.

Can I refuse her to be collecting my daughter from school and request it is only her dad? I am just sick of neither of them respecting me wishes as her mum! I sit crying because they make me feel like they are trying to be mum and dad and I feel so unimportant sometimes. Why would a woman want to make another woman feel that way? I wish she could see it if the tables were turned. Please help it's bringing me down :-(

OP posts:
WannaBe · 05/05/2017 19:17

OP,, you say that your ex is pretty useless, it's entirely possible that he's decided to up his game, on the surface at least, when the new girlfriend came along, because he didn't want to lose face in front of her and come across as a crap father who does next to nothing for his child. It's also possible that she may have put pressure on him to do more and as such has herself ended up doing a lot of the stuff he should actually be doing but doesn't, such as the school run etc.

Also, a lot of relationships which were amicable at the point of separation stop being that way when a new partner comes along, sometimes because of insecurity, and sometimes because the ex wants to come across as something he's not.

Often the new girlfriend swallows the bullshit their partner feeds them about the ex because the alternative is to believe that they're in love with an arsehole.

So if she's said unpleasant things about you, I would ask yourself what has your ex been feeding her....

whattheactualfudge · 05/05/2017 19:51

WannaBe You CLEARLY don't have kids of your OWN!!!!!!

Mainlywingingit · 05/05/2017 20:35

It much you can do about the friends thing except talk to your friends about it (risks getting back to her)

The thank you card is unacceptable and almost passive aggressive. Politely but firmly face to face have the conversation that "It is not necessary for you to arrange my daughter to write thank you cards to her own mother" and "I would prefer it if you do not do this again" . You gently and firmly need to reestablish to her that YOU are her mother.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about these subjects:

Families General parenting
WannaBe · 05/05/2017 22:05

"You CLEARLY don't have kids of your OWN!!!!!!" and clearly you've either not been here very long or are incapable of reading threads....

WannaBe · 05/05/2017 22:13

But unlike some on MN I don't view children as possessions, and aim for what happens in their lives to be in the best interests of the children not the adults.

On this thread we have posters who hope that the SM will have another baby and lose interest in the DSD, posters who think the OP should start to invite herself on friendship meetups, posters who think that befriending someone in the school playground is "muscling in on someone else's friends, and all because that person happens to be in a relationship with the ex. And this is in the best interests of the child how exactly?

The OP has stated in her previous post that her ex was previously useless. It sounds as if he is at least taking the DD for contact time, and that his partner is picking up his slack in terms of e.g. Doing the school run.

If you read the step parenting boards it is abundantly obvious that there are multiple SM's who are doing the majority of the childcare for their inadequate partners. Now we have one who it appears is doing so willingly, and she is in the wrong and out of line? Why exactly? Should she instead demand that the partner not have contact with his DD because she's not prepared to do the school run or feels that she shouldn't? Should she be hostile in the playground and refuse to engage with other people because it might offend someone?

Original poster
Natalie2900 · 06/05/2017 08:11

I think what issue for me aswell was that every 3 months or so her dad wiould ask to meet me and change says he would see her he then got to the point he wanted 50/50 and asked to stop all maintenance. ( money didn't bother me) but it all seems abit fishy. I accepted the 50/50 custody. Which completely broke me heart because for the past 4 years I had done everything on my
Own whilst he saw her twice a month. I slowly started to realise although he had her 50/50 he wasn't actually seeing her anymore it was his girlfriend. I confronted him about this and said you cannot use your girlfriend as a babysitter it wasn't fair and when he asked for 50/50 I believed this was to benefit himself and our daughter because they would spend more time together which is lovely.
Things got heated and he eventually admitted that his girlfriend hates that he paid me child
Maintenance . And basically admitted that
She would pick our daughter up purely so that if our custody was 50.50 he wouldn't pay a penny in child maintenance.
So of course I stopped 50/50 and said if it's
Not him physically spending that extra
Time with her daughter what is the point in it? I told him that I don't care a squat about the maintenance but what I would do is ask csa so the amount is completely fair. This again caused a row. Ever since csa has been completed they have both been very different towards me.
I know she hates he pays it and I can understand that to some degree.
So ofcourse again I feel like half the things she does that I find a push to far is purely to annoy me

OP posts:
Original poster
Natalie2900 · 06/05/2017 08:13

P.s I changed 50/50 because why would I give up me time with my daughter so his girlfriend can see her? If her dad was seeing her I would never
Of stopped it. i hope that
Make sense.

OP posts:
Original poster
Natalie2900 · 06/05/2017 10:39

Lovely letter... Like I said I've always been polite
To her and been thankful that she is nice to my daughter. Read my other posts
Where I state this!! I have even thanked her to her face for being there for her. And I only talk
Highly of her in front of my daughter.
What I posted was on here was me getting something off my chest to people who don't kno us so it will never be heard by anybody it could upset.
It seems the stepmothers feeling are much more considered than the mothers being hurt!

OP posts:
WannaBe · 06/05/2017 14:33

TBH I read those kinds of letters and think that they say a lot more about what the father doesn't do than what the stepmother does do iyswim. And I do agree that there seems to be some kind of belief that stepmothers are saints for taking on someone else's children, whereas with stepfathers this is an expectation.

If you look at the relationships boards there are posts by women whose partners are not entirely accepting of their children, and the response is always (rightly) to get rid. But look at the step parenting boards and the very suggestion that the step children be integrated into the family is met with "he should look after his own kids/the mother should be more involved/the ex is quite clearly a bitch because all ex wives are....." you get the idea.

My personal belief is that most women aren't cut out to be step parents by virtue of the fact that their feelings for their own children will always come above the feelings for incoming step children. There are of course men who think the same, but the difference is that on the whole, men will accept a woman who wants him to put her children first and will accept a reduction in their relationship with their own children as a result, whereas for women they will generally not tolerate a man who won't accept their kids so he never gets the chance to plead the poor hard done-by step parent, iyswim.

It sounds as if your ex was a waste of space before this woman came on the scene. But while she may have made the suggestion about having 50/50 so he could stop paying maintenance, if he'd been a decent father in the first place he wouldn't have gone along with that suggestion. The relationship between your DD and her SM will evolve over time assuming she stays in the picture. If she is a half decent person then her decent treatment of your DD will hopefully continue. If not then that will become apparent over time. And children don't stay children for ever, they grow up and develop their own opinions of people.

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