Abusive ex partner not seeing child but still requesting updates

[singlemumtobe18]

Hi All,

I'm looking for some advice and please at first glance do not take this as me being unreasonable, I genuinely do not know how to handle this and have spent 2 years having therapy helping me to deal with abuse from this man.

My child's biological father left when I was 7 weeks pregnant. Without going in to too much detail he was mentally abusive and almost drove me to suicide whilst I was pregnant with my daughter.

Despite all of this I desperately wanted to give my daughter the opportunity to have a father. He made in very obvious that he didn't want my daughter and it was me he wanted. After 14months of trying and several consultations with the police and social services I made the decision that I could no longer supervise visits (due to safe guarding concerns he never had her unsupervised)and advised him that if he wanted to continue with contact it would need to be in a supervised contact centre.

He declined this and no longer sees her, confirming that his motives were to see me and not my daughter.

He still contacts me and asks for updates&photos. This means that every 2 weeks I'm having to engage with him which is a huge trigger for me.
...am I unreasonable in thinking that if he isn't making the effort to see her in person, why should I be providing regular updates??

I haven't been unreasonable at any point in this journey and have been through hell with him.

Any advice?

If you haven’t been court ordered to send these updates, then I would stop doing it.
Get a new phone number & don’t give him it. Set up an email address only for him & makesure he has that as a means to communicate with you, check it (or get a friend to check it) once a week.
I hope he pays regular, proper maintenance for his daughter though.

I use the talking parents website to communicate with him and notifications go to my brother and he let's me know if there is a message.

There isn't a court order. I'm still stuck in the mind frame that I need to appease him so he doesn't take me to court and take my baby! This is what he threatened so much and whilst I know the courts wouldn't hand over my child, it still feels a very real threat.

I guess I'm always on edge that he is going to go down the court route and a court order would put my child at risk because I fear he would manipulate the courts like he does everyone else :(

There is absolutely no benefit to your dd to providing him with these updates. She gets nothing back from him, doesn't even know you are sharing this information with him. It will have no positive impact on her life at all. But I would imagine the reason he's doing it is because he knows it has a negative impact on you. And that will ultimately have a negative impact on your dd's life because it will affect your wellbeing and your ability to be the best parent you can be. I agree, I would change your number or block him and give him access to an email address to contact you at (so you have everything in writing). I would check it every month or two though. He's not involved in her day to day care and there is really no point in having regular communication with you.

To be honest, if he cannot be arsed to see her via contact centre, he won’t bother taking you to court.

I would be however tempted to wean him out of the communications slowly, just increase the time it takes you to reply and start writing more generic shorter messages little by little.

Thank you for your responses.

Yeah I think the weaning out of communication is the best way, I already provide short responses but I respond pretty much straight away that I need to get out of the habit off doing.

Could you send your brother weekly updates on your child and then get him to respond to any messages that come in without telling you?
That way your ex doesn't get in your head, and if he realises it's another avenue to you removed he will probably stop bothering.
Take care. You are doing great so far.

@M0rT

Could you send your brother weekly updates on your child and then get him to respond to any messages that come in without telling you? That way your ex doesn't get in your head, and if he realises it's another avenue to you removed he will probably stop bothering. Take care. You are doing great so far.

Thank you ❤

I was thinking of asking someone else to be his point of contact but when my daughter was first born we tried that with my mum and he really got in her head and it wasn't fair so I had to put a stop to it. I feel like I'm putting my problems on other people too 😕.

Maybe your brother might be less likely to be bothered by him?
I don't want to be very stereotypical but my brothers just wouldn't get half as bothered by manipulative mails as my DM.
Men can be much more task oriented, read the mail, what does he want, ok update, send that, done.
Where you or your DM would be thinking of how things were worded or what he meant by that etc.
To be honest I think you owe him nothing, just might be easier on you long term to give home what he's asking for at arm's length.
Take care

I would stop contacting him, block any paths to contact like phone/email etc.

He might take you to court, but he's going to have to show for it is a pattern of not attending contact centres and your word he's abusive (they mostly go on the word of the parent who actually knows the child when the child is too young to speak for themself).

What it might also do is make it clear who the resident parent is and give you the opportunity to protect your child legally bu having a court to back you up.

He's not going to take your baby. They all say that, but very few do it. More often these types get granted contact but mess it up, and get bored when they can't use the child to emotionally manipulate/coerce/abuse their mother.

Does he have PR and does he pay maintenance? If he doesn't have PR (not on the birth certificate) he would have to be granted that first and it can be a lengthy process. If he doesn't pay maintenance or pays maintenance inconsistently that adds to the pattern he's shown with being inconsistent with contact.

A lot of these men think that the court will do whatever they say. A life time of manipulating women 1:1 makes them feel like they are clever and intimidating. But in children's court they see them all day every day. They are wise to their methods. These men are not original. They are everywhere. And usually once the court says no to them, they slink back off to the shadows.