would I be mad to break off a brilliant relationship with dp because of his ex-w?

[blottielottie]

have namechanged in case ex-w lurks on here

we are very happy, dp adores the dcs, dcs adore dp. We have been living together for a year now and together for longer than that.

dp has one ds with his ex-w. His ex-w has said from the outset that she will never ever let their ds set foot in our house and will never ever let their ds associate with my dcs and has told their ds he must choose between her and him. I am not the first girlfriend to get this treatment. The last one, I met a year or so before, told me his ex-w's constant demands of dp and being totally ridiculous with their ds will never ever stop. I didn't believe it at first but I can see that she is not wrong. She said it was a major factor in the break up of their relationship.

I do love dp but the ex-w issues are constant. It is almost like she creates things deliberately to get him involved. So this week, dp has been at the school almost every day as she didn't send him in one day. Then she phoned dp and insisted they met so she could take ds off her hands to buy him a new school shirt. I said fgs he must have more than one but all she does is scream down the phone constantly at him then hangs up.

I used to not believe that dp was putting his foot down but tbh, I have seen him try. Their ds is quite hard work and because she has blocked him from seeing us, she can never get a break. She phoned this morning and said she is going away next week and dp must come and stay in their house.

I honestly thought that after a year or so she would tire of this behaviour but according to the ex-gf, she went through 7 years of this and never once did she let up, even when the ex-w had new partners etc.

Her phone went missing this week when she dropped ds off at dp's work and ds and dp helped look for it because she was screaming and shouting so much. Turned out it was handed in to the police station and they called ds as it was one of the missed calls. Dp picked it up on his way to work and dp had been calling it before to help look for it and when he looked on the phone, he saw that he was named as 'C*' on there!

She has told him that her and ds are a unit and if he fucks her off, she will poison him and I have seen her do it. Ds once turned up sobbing at the house because ex-w had told him dp didn't love him, that's why he was having such a nice time with his new family....sigh (poor ds).

I am just getting tired of it. I am not sure breaking up is the answer but I am finding it hard to deal with I think largely because I feel so sorry for their ds who is being used as a pawn in this all (even if me and dp weren't together, seems it has been like this for years) but I am just not comfortable with it all...

i have absolutely no experience or knowledge, so my opinion isn't worth much, but seems to me he needs to get a formal contact order and make arrangements through an intermediary. she does sound awful, and the situation sounds untenable.

poor child.

She sounds truly poisonous. I'm sorry but I don't know what to say or advise here...

Could your dp get joint custody so ds has to stay with you? I'm sure he'd love to - it must be awful for him being excluded.

Maybe it's time to get legal advice. It's terrible that your relationship is under threat because of her and as for the poor ds.... what kind of an upbringing is that?

everyone's opinion matters :)

they had some sort of formal contact order which she refused to keep up. Ds is now old enough (14) to do his own thing but she has such a hold on him, he won't do anything that upsets his mother. Ds does see dp a fair amount but all on her terms and all at his work/after work or dp has to take him out for meals, never ever in our house and she always tries to manufacture situations so that she can check he is on his own with ds (i.e. not with me). So ex-w hates his friends too so she has told dp ds cannot go to his work if dp's friends are there. It is all just getting ridiculous.

When dp tried to fight this formally, she told dp she will tell the lawyers that dp has tried to hit her before and she will claim domestic abuse and then he will have to do what she wants.

dp spoke to his lawyers and said they had experience of fighting that in court but it wasn't pretty, would ultimately mean a lot more heartache for ds and money wise, would cost him a fortune :(.

How old is his son?
This would drive me insane as well.
And I really don't know what the answer is.

(I mean dp hasn't hit her before - she's making that up to cause him problems because she knows it will)

14, so really old enough to have his own opinions etc. except ex-w has really poisoned him against us. So much so that he was ill the other day and dp picked him up from school and he needed to be at our house to let the plumber in and even though ds was being sick, he refused to come in the house and use the toilet in case his mother found out.

I am sorry to say that child is in a horrible place...really awful :(

Cross post oooppss.
Well this is really up to you now then.
It's only 2 years until he is 16 and can make his own decisions.
By then he will probably have wised up to his mother and her antics but who knows.
I have a similar situation.
I didn't see my OH kids for over 2 years (actually fine by me)
And they have only been to our house once.
He stays over at their house 1 day a week and occasional weekends.
I don't think they are allowed to stay at our house but who knows.
I just let him get on with it TBH. It's up to him how he handles things.
But... it doesn't interfere with my life. If it's affecting yours then that's a different matter.

She sounds exactly like my mum. I don't know what to tell you about whether you should let it drive you apart, but I just wanted to offer huge sympathies. Screeching hellbeasts like this make normal people's lives absolute hell.

I'm NC with my mother and I hope this poor boy has the strength to go the same way one day. I hope he knows she's poisonous and her version of things isn't the truth. He's going to have a really hard time shaking her off completely when he grows up.

hellsbells, do you mind him staying at their house?

Shes so poisonous, I would actually say shes emotionally abusive towards the poor boy.

The one thing that your DP must do is, keep reassuring his son, he'll always have a place to go to if he needs it.

thanks everyone

yes, I do wonder what the future holds for their ds tbh. I think it will be very hard for him to break free from her as she practically regards him as her partner, it's all very strange and dysfunctional and yet she is convinced she is absolutely normal.

The boy is 14 years old, he is old enough to be able to contact his father without his mother interfering. It sounds like this woman has her son and her ex husband under her thumb!

Your partner needs to stand up to his ex and he should have done this years ago, all his done is confirm to his son that he must obey his mother wishes.

It sounds like a totally fucked up situation. Good luck!

He's 14, your partner needs to take this opportunity of a week at the boy's house to sort this out.
Firstly, get legal advice.

Then talk to the boy. No child should be dragged into this, but he already is.
Tell him that he loves him, and wants more time. Explain the court process, and about CAFCASS. Make sure there's a 3rd party (a friend's parent? A counsellor? A teacher?) set up for the son to talk to.
Tell him that he'd like x arrangement, and he's prepared to fight for it, but that it will get nasty. Let the son say what he wants.
What if he wants to live with his dad? Is that possible?
Be prepared he might say "it's too much for me, can we have tea out once a fortnight and just live with her craziness for two more years then I'll move in with you for college?" etc
He must keep bad mouthing the mother to a minimum of course, but it is fair to say she is against it - He's 14, he knows.

Although it sounds very draining on you and the relationship, I think it's quite unsupportive of you to leave your partner over it.

the biggest problem their ds has is that he has realised the power he has with his mother so he has started doing things like not going to school and there is nothing ex-w can do about it because she has never ever in her life told him off.

dp told me he can still access their online banking and ds is spending around £500-600 a month of ex-w's money online gaming and ex-w isn't stopping him

it just all spells disaster, it's like watching a car crash happen in slow motion

the ds sees a school counsellor at the moment

ds wants to stay with his mum, he definitely will not say he wants to live with his dad mainly because he knows it will upset his mother (like the not coming into our house to use the toilet).

I know it probably seems unsupportive and I do love dp but all of this is incredibly hard work. We get phone calls from the ex-w virtually every morning and every evening and it is getting no better.

Dp told his lawyer he would like to only have contact through the lawyers but then ex-w starts threatening the whole domestic abuse thing and then makes up ds emergencies so she has to call him directly and it all slowly goes back to the way it was

she is unbelievably good at getting her own way, incredibly so I would say

Not at all.
She doesn't stay in the house at the same time.
She stays at her BF or a friends house or her mothers I think.
It gives her a break as she won't let them stay at ours at the weekends and I think she should have a break.

I might suggest that to dp then hellsbells.

I don't believe his ex-w would go and stay elsewhere which is dp's worry that he would turn up to be confronted by her giving him a hard time but if she can guarantee she will go and stay at a friends, or the minute she decides she won't, dp won't go round, then maybe that is an option

I can see she is starting to get really tired and even more difficult because she is never getting a break. It's her own fault really because she has manufactured this situation but on the other hand, i think it would be in the best interests of ds if she did get a break and went away and dp went and stayed with them.

I mean dp went and stayed with ds

I worry slightly that their ds might think that dp was coming back but I guess dp has to manage that with ds (and ds is old enough to understand now)

Agree - as long as she isn't going to be there it could work out nicely.
The sons gets some time with his dad. Your OH can get some quality time and bonding time and time to drum into his DS head that he loves him unconditionally, no matter what ex-w has to say.
She gets some 'me' time and it just might improve her mood (clutching at staws!)

Hmmm

I'm thinking your DP should have made more of a stand about this some time ago...
It sounds like lots of excuses on his part to some extent. I think the time has come for him to be a real father to his son and tell him he (DS) is now old enough to start making his own decisions.

Ex-W will not throw DS out and how much more horrible can she be? DS needs to know that he can take control of the situations as your DP clearly can't/won't

He's been split up with her for at least 8 years.

The DS is now 14.

His father has allowed a contact order to be broken, allows the ex wife to basically order him around as is afraid of her and her threats, to the extent that his child is now clearly going off the rails.

Nothing about this is ever going to change, because your DP simply does not have the strength to do it.

He could have enforced the court order, kept records of her abuse and probably got residence a long time ago - too late for that now.

He could have told her to go fuck herself and if she did anything to harm him, DS or herself then the end result would be that he would have his DS living with him.

He can't do that. He's too weak. Yes, it sounds horrendous, but the issue FOR YOU is still that he can't stand up to her.

There is no point posting asking about solutions to the issues with the DS. Where one problem is solved, another will pop up. It's largely too late to do anything, by the sound of it. The DS will end up in trouble. Maybe that will effect some sort of change.

But for yourself, make a decision based on what you know. You can see what kind of man your DP is. I think you know that he doesn't have what it takes to change it. Only stay if you can accept that, I think.

There are things your DH can do. He would have done better to support his DS by resisting his ex more strongly from the start. The psychological damage to your DSD will be horrendous. Just leaving him to his overbearing mother may be the easier option, but it was a bad decision.

I agree that it probably won't change, so only stay if the status quo is something you can put up with.

What's the legal stance on recording phone calls? If it can be done legally, and threats such as making up DV stories are done over the phone that it might be an idea if all phone conversations with her are recorded, and, possibly, copies given to your solicitor. Then you'd have proof of her intention to fabricate such lies.

It does sound horrendous, but if you love your do I'd hang on in there.

He's 14 I would hang in there. Your bloke needs to grow a bit of a spine though and tell her where to get off.

She can't say there was dv and it's a shame he hasn't kept a log of goings on over the years. Kids grow up and parents reap what they sow.