how to deal with a female ex who does not communicate

[supportivefather]

to all

i know this is not a great subject to talk about as normally it is the man that is the person not communicating but this time round it is the woman.

my son is 10 and she is main carer by law.

i am having trouble with her listening to me and putting my parental rights ahead of her hated for me

for back ground, split in 2012. 2015 she stopped me seeing my son with the reason on 'Mothering instict' no more explanation was given. 20k+ later i got to see my son again via a child order.

since then getting any form of communication or expansions on answers she has given i get called coercive and bullying or 'this is all i am saying on this matter' and then that is it.

i have many examples of this but for a few so you can see what i am expierencing

when the pandemic hit he got covid, i got an email over the weekend that he had a cough. i said that following govt guidelines he should self isolate for a week. i got a response of 'i have spoken to the school and they say it is ok'. so govt guidelines not followed

two days later i get another email saying that her and her partner have covid so everyone will be self isolating. so my parental rights were ignored and until her and her new partner got it then it was taken seriously, i asked why he was not self isolating prior to them getting covid, reply still outstanding

when everything was opened back up in june my son who was 9 at the time and only had a month left of school and in the court order i would pick him up from school, but as his year was not allowed back into school he was at home. so i collected him from home which put on an extra 20 mins each way to my journey.

then when the new term came around everything was back to normal until the 2nd lockdown. so i asked for a compromise on the collections and drop offs that they would be from the school not their house. they live 2 miles from the school i live 14 miles from the school. to get to the school i do not have to use any of the main roads which is where the traffic is so i can take 20 mins to get there. but adding on to her house that is an extra 20 minutes.

i asked for this and the response i got was 'not in dougs best interests' now that was it and even when going through her solicitor (which i think was in it just for the cash) i got the same response as they were acting for their client. so i had to make up time with work for the extra time i had taken to collect and drop him off which meant i lost that time with him.

now her mother contacted me to try and help resolve the situation but i said that she needs to speak to her daughter as i cannot tell her what to do. my son told me that when her mother went round to see her and talk to her when she found out that she had been talking to me she threw her own mother out of her house.

now this time, per the court order he should of been with me from the last day of school for a week, i got an email on the last day of his school stating that his brothers had a high tempreture and a cough so my son did not go to school that day and would be self isolating for 10 days.

i asked when he would be getting a PCR test and the results as if he is negative i could still have him for part of the time i was supposed to have him. so far no response and i doubt i will get one either,

taking her to court for breach of the child order will do nothing as she will get a stern talking to and then she can carry on.

2020 my son told me that he wanted to kill himself. i obviously talked to him about it and found out that he is having issues at their home, now i tried to get him to see someone but due to his age no one could see him without the main career being present.

i then contact the mother explained the situation and said that he needs a docs appointment to get referred to a specialist to get help. 3 weeks went by and i heard nothing. so i chased i then got an email saying the doctor has seen him and there is nothing wrong so no refferal needed.

i asked for the name of the doctor so i could speak to them, still no answer to this to date

so i contacted the surgery asked for a tel call with the doctor that he saw. i got a tel appointment for 3 weeks later.

when i finally spoke to the doctor i found out that there was no mention of him thinking about killing himself at all.

i tried to get another appointment with the doc and him so we can talk about it further and due to their rules as i am not the sole carrer i cannot make an appointment without her consent. i could not get approval

now to 2021, i got a phone call from school that my son was found trying to selfharm himself, he told a teacher that he wanted to kill himsellf. they informed social services and one of the recommendations was that they take him to docs to get him reffered to CAMS as this will be faster then them doing it.

nothing has happened and my son is still in a situation where he could harm himself.

i have been to court with her many times and nothing has changed. she is now claiming she has PTSD due to me. the courts dismissed this thank god.

so what i am asking is what do i do, she will not communicate with me directly, she will not communicate through her solictor with me.

all of this is putting my son in terriable harm

now i do understand that this could be a ploy from my son for attention but when he is with me (4 days of a month and every other mon evening for 3 hours and alternating half terms and 2 weeks 91 week at a time) in the summer holidays) he gets all of my attention and he wants for nothing.

i am at the edge of throwing in the towel and walking away due to the way she is behaving. but it is not just her, he told me that her partner tells him that 'he would be better off without his dad in his life' also that i am this that and the other. when asked what his mother does when that is being said, he said which is also quite worrying 'she does nothing as i think she is afraid of him'

i cannot carry on like this as it is not fair on myself as this is affecting me with depression and anxiety and it is showing with my job and my 2 year old son and my wife.

now i know it is not all about me and it should be about my son but how can i get the message across to her that she needs to start communciating better for the sake of him so he can see us getting along even if it is only on the surface and for her to stop her partner bad mouthing me.

sorry for going on but i did not want to just say a little bit and not give a full explanation of what i am dealing with so everyone can see that i am trying.

so do i throw in the towel (which i do not want to do but all parenting sites say that you need to look after yourself first) or carry on banging my head agaisnt a wall and hoping one day she will see what she is doing to our son.

now i know that me leaving is not the right thing to do but if it eases the stress that her and her partner have around me then that should improve his homelife and all in all improve his mental well being, or it may back fire and make it worse

i just do not know what to do

thank you for reading

for all of the others that have said that you smell a rat, or concentrating on one thing i.e. the 20 minutes extra or you feel that comuninctaion that i am recieving is adequate and i should not ask for expansions on answers and i should just take it. you are the stereotypical EX's that all men fear who go through life with blinkers on and expect everyything you way and i feel pity for you i really do

i am going to close this account as i feel the overall community is very helpful but the minority will spoil it and sour the advice that actual people want to give.

And there you have it. Mask off, claws out. I thought it sounded a bit fishy from the first post. I will never understand why men with a general disdain for women still persist in dating them.

@supportivefather

i came to this site to get advice from women on my situation and how the best way to handle it

for you ladies i thank you from the bottom of my heart

for all of the others that have said that you smell a rat, or concentrating on one thing i.e. the 20 minutes extra or you feel that comuninctaion that i am recieving is adequate and i should not ask for expansions on answers and i should just take it. you are the stereotypical EX's that all men fear who go through life with blinkers on and expect everyything you way and i feel pity for you i really do

i am going to close this account as i feel the overall community is very helpful but the minority will spoil it and sour the advice that actual people want to give.

😁 anyone who dares to disagree is to be pitied. Off you go then, do your little perpetratory flounce off. Don't bother reading from the script, we already know it.

Unfortunately you can't force her to speak to you. She doesn't want to communicate with you. So you need to keep referring the matter back to Court. It's exhausting and a long hard slog, but this is your son. Don't give up on him. Hopefully her behaviour will come to light. At the very least she can communicate via her solicitor to yours rather than directly.
I will never ever ever EVER speak to my ex, so called father of our daughter ever again.. He terrifies me and I never want to see his face as long as i live.. But I'm perfectly capable to instruct my solicitor to send him a letter with any details he needs to know regarding our daughter. At the bare minimum, she should be doing that. I think you need to give up on the hope of forcing her to communicate with you.

I came back, I'm naughty but I couldn't help myself. Ah so predictable!

Oh dear I upset you.
It's a shame you've flounced though since you admit yourself that the majority of the site would be helpful. Seems when balanced against the vast amounts of support, advice and help you could have here, a bruised ego wins out.

The thing about the "ladies" here is that we have children's best interests in the forefront of our minds.

We can see people like "supportivefather" from miles off, 20miles off in fact

I really hope this is a troll post because if not there is a very vulnerable and sad little boy out there who's "supportivefather" is thinking about abandoning him because it's easier for the dad to then get on with his new life with relative ease...

FWIW - Dervel seems like he has his head firmly screwed on WRT co-parenting and putting the children first and gives stellar advice above. But no us "ladies" were mean

Thank you @WhoIsPepeSilva, but I’m no Angel either. I preach non-hostility and that is most certainly the target I aim for, but I have my moments. Though I think that’s true for most people.

What’s really bringing me back as I reflect on this thread is a little boy’s suicidal ideation. If the OP comes back or just checks in on this thread again despite not being able to respond, please for fucks sake just if only in the short term make THAT the priority.

Seriously I can see you and your ex are obviously at daggers with one another by this point, and honestly I couldn’t give a whistling shit whose more to blame, but you are the one who started this thread so you are the one I can implore to, so if this sounds harsh that’s the reason why.

Put the bloody swords down, detach the ego entirely from this, I can see you are seeing this potentially severe situation as reason to escalate hostilities with the ex, but please just for a moment entertain the smallest possibility you are both culpable for creating this environment.

I don’t care if it hurts, I don’t care if backing down feels like she “wins”. I promise you nobody fucking wins if this ends in tragedy, and trust me the hypothetical moral high ground will be supremely meaningless under those circumstances.

What you do is you stop all these court actions dead in their tracks, and you focus 100% of your energy towards making damn sure every second your little boy spends with you is filled with support and unconditional love. Who knows maybe he’ll want to spend time with you more when he’s older, but don’t fixate on that. Your next immediate duty is to attend to his mental health. ANYTHING else you view as counter to that purpose.

Here is a useful exercise to help you pull back from this hostile/adversarial mindset: Try to find ONE thing about your ex you can comment on positively, it would be magnitudes better if it could be something relating to her parenting. Christ even if it’s the absence of a vice would be better than nothing like “at least she’s not a drug dealer”.

If you truly find nothing whatsoever you have to draw the conclusion that you are most likely too slid into bitterness towards her. Yes I know we live in a world of psychopathy, narcissism and negativity, but those things are actually comparatively rare, and even if she IS guilty of them, they won’t be a choice they will be a function of her own childhood trauma or some
sort of chemical or neurological imbalance.

In that case the wiser course of thinking is “why on earth did I fall for such a person in the first place?”, and take ownership of that. I’m not saying that to victim blame, more in order to kickstart your own ability to see where your own power lies in the situation. Hint: it’s not in a host of fruitless court appearances.

Focus on your boy, start the smallest possible spark of goodwill towards your ex you can muster, not for her sake but for your son and ultimately for you.

Read all this, come back and bitch and moan at me if you wish. Be angry at me or the injustice of it all, but for heavens sake allow at least a fraction of what I’m saying to sink in.

Some great advice on here, try and just skip the unhelpful ones. Your post really resonated with me as my DP is going through something very similar. Non communicative ex, her way or the high way, regular drama. We had the same during the first part of pandemic too, then after 3 months she'd only agree to 1-2 hours eow in a park near their house and she'd sometimes ring to say they had to come home after 1 hour. I think they want to make it as hard and shitty as possible dealing with them so you do give up, and I know it can be soul destroying, my DP has had very dark days not being able to see his kids. Just wanted to say we know how you feel and dont give up, you CAN do this.
Take care of yourself, your boy and your family as best you can, one day as others have said he can choose and you'll be free of her and her issues.