I know a lot of people have their situation far worse than I do. I am very lucky that we generally coparent very well and tend to be very civil with each other and communicate quite well. I wouldn’t call us friends but we are able to attend events for our son together and have for the past 5 years since we have been split up. There’s a few events we tend to do together in terms of first day of school, usually spend an half an hour together at handover on events such as Christmas for handover and might have a little chat when we are handing him between ourselves. We have 50/50 contact which was organised through court, not ourselves.
Since he has a new partner his tone with me has changed quite a lot. He doesn’t really make an effort to discuss things that are to do with my son anymore and I know legally he doesn’t really have to but it’s difficult to maintain a working relationship.
I know these words could get twisted into me having a vendetta against new girlfriend but I honestly don’t. I am happy with my current partner and I am happy my ex has been able to move on.
His new partner is playing mum to my son whilst he is with his dad and generally I feel positive about this. My son likes her and she helps out and they get on well which I am really happy about. But when I am there and is weirdly possessive over my son and is constantly trying to get his attention whilst he is speaking to me and doesn’t even say hi to me or look at me. I’ve seen her multiple times and she’s barely uttered anything to me despite me trying to make friendly conversation with her. I don’t think she likes me but I don’t know why. Really, this doesn’t bother me, I’m not losing sleep over it and I’m happy my son is happy but there’s been a change in how we parent since she came on the scene.
I appreciate these are little things and it tends to be okay generally but I’m curious how to bring these up to him without it turning into something bigger ——-
- him, new girlfriend and his family took DS 2 thousand miles away on holiday for 2 weeks. I got to speak to my son twice in this time and he was rushed to speak to me as they had activities. There was little communication and I worried a lot as he was at the other side of the world.
. when he was away he was taken to hospital, thankfully it was something minor and dealt with but I wasn’t told till 4 days later by my son on the phone before he was rushed off. For me, I need to know if my son is in hospital.
. Ex invited his new gf on DS first day back at school without telling me (this happened before with a previous partner and I asked for it not to happen again- 9/10 times I’m happy for her to come to events like birthdays and Christmas but this is the one thing we’ve done together since the start and it means a lot to my son) and it’s just very uncomfortable. I never invite my partner to these things out of respect and I don’t understand why he’s done it again.
. If I bring up anything to do with my sons behaviour or routine ex partner just says we will parent him differently at each house but I think he need’s consistency and my sons behaviour has become a bit moody towards me although it might be his age.
I want to have a conversation about this but I don’t want our relationship to break down and affect my son. What would you do and how would you go about it?