Are there really as many women as it sounds who deny ex access to children?

[Rainbow03]

I don’t personally know of anyone who has done this. But when you speak to people, especially men you always hear the story of the evil ex women denying contact or making it difficult etc.

My own partner says he has a friend whose ex only allows access if he gives her money.

Do women genuinely behave like this as much as you hear about and why is the story constantly being told.

It makes it difficult when you have actually denied contact to seem legit and I hate telling people in RL. In my case it was drugs and abuse but people probably think I’m one of those ex’s.

My friend did have this as he was abusive towards both mum and child. It was court ordered contact for a while then the dad kept taking her to court but wasn’t having contact and when he did he would leave their child with a sitter or take child to the pub and get drunk. Kept telling everyone it was my friend stopping contact. He also owes her about £20k in child support. Child then refused to go when they were a young preteen and hasn’t seen him since. Court advised him to write cards and letters to try to rebuild the relationship- he didn’t bother!

I understand its a microscopic sample size but out of 3 men who claim this 2 are talking absolute bullshit and 1 is genuine.
I know both sides.
The genuine one is a truly heart breaking story. And nobody on MN would believe it as it involves a high needs Autistic child and who on earth would turn down help. She would. Her hate outshines everything.

But the other two tell such a woeful tale. The words psycho bitch appear often. One has walked out on 3 children when his long term affair was discovered. They are now married with their own child.... it's baffling how people can lie.

Yea she was a bit bitchy during the time she found out her partner of over a decade, her fiance ( wedding booked for quite soon) and father of her 3 children was leaving her for a woman he'd been having an affair with for years right under her nose.......imagine that.

I know one that does because they are 'her' children, their father, and his family are not viewed as family. Any contact is on her terms, and yes, there are court orders, routinely ignored as 'no-one tells me who can or cannot see my children' She admitted she thought the father would give up, he hasn't so far but at cost to his health.

Another I know stopped because the father was unreliable and abusive. Totally understandable.

Yeah there's lots of women who do this, but not so directly, as they want to appear the hero.

They can't separate themselves from their children, and it's often when the man leaves for ow. So the ex dedicates her time to making the children feel negatively "what daddy didn't buy you two xboxes? I'm so sorry he doesn't care" (kind of thing) until the DC have negative feelings about their father. Then they don't want to see him and "evil Susan" he's living with.

And rather than spend the rest of his life firefighting what the exw is doing, he becomes exhausted and gives up.

So it's a combination of lazy men who don't have the energy to fight their exw actions, and the exw doing it.

I've never know any women like this. My ex probably says it about me, but he would not turn up when arranged (6 months) then huffed out of mediation refusing to agree to anything sensible. So he never saw them. I wasn't having the children's lives disrupted with him turning up when he fancied.

I know quite a few. One of them was one of my good friends, her denying her child's father access to the child was one of the main reasons I'm no longer friends with her.

Then again, I've seen the other side of it too. My eldest's dad moved to the other side of the planet and told everyone I'm preventing him from having a relationship with his child because I wouldn't fly over there with her every few weeks to see him. He is actually crackers though and everyone started to see it a few years back, so I'm not bothered what grand story he spins to people.

My ex says this about me, I'm evil and don't allow him contact with my kids.

He buggered off and started parenting another womans kids and saw my kids twice a year (I paid his petrol and accomodagion for that as well), even then he would have to leave early as he had 'family plans' and now my kids are older and have their own phones and can make their own arrangements he has blocked them all and still cries about how evil I am withholding our (2 adult and 2 teenage) kids from him.

I'm always very wary when a guy says this.

I don't think so. Most single mums would welcome a break.

I know three men who whine about this but one wants to collect his dcs at no notice, have no responsibility for feeding, clothing, educating or providing things like car seats, etc. He just wants to play.

One wants dcs delivered to his door when he rings on one random weekend a month with no forward warning.

And the third wants to only see his dcs in his ex's sitting room and nowhere else is acceptable.

I'm sure it happens but less often than is claimed.

I know many couples who co parent successfully.
I know many couples where the mum does all the work and the dad is neglectful when he has the DC. Mum picks up the pieces. And minimal child support.

I know one case where the mum and her family are controlling. He can either live with them and lose all other friends and family, or leave without the DC- and he is the more responsible parent so is afraid to do it. DC has additional needs, the mum and her family prefer drama (ambulance) to consistent care. That’s a tricky one- he’s no angel so wouldn’t have a hope through the courts either. Likeliest scenario would be foster care.

I’ve known a couple mixture of things - they wanted more money, they wanted them to have the child more often, wanted them to sign the house over as they’d moved a new partner in, didn’t want the new woman meeting their child. One woman started a relationship as she heard the dad was wealthy - inheritance. She married him, had a child, then decided she preferred women. Divorced, got a huge pay off as he was devastated and didn’t care. Then she moved her new bloke in. The ex still pays over what he should for the children but never sees them - this is what she says very loudly for everyone to hear. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know.

Equally women fighting for their child to see their dad, but dad doesn’t want to know. One case where the dad has denied the child is his, denies even knowing the mother (he’d been cheating).
Men fighting for the house they haven’t paid a penny in to.
Men suddenly wanting custody because they have to pay maintenance.

It goes both ways.

It’s the children I feel sorry for, getting caught up in toxic behaviour. Whoever starts it, it doesn’t matter. The effect on the child is huge, even in an amicable split.

It stands to reason & it’s quite naive to think otherwise.

This site is filled with stories of abusive women - DDs complaining about DMs, DMs about DDs, DILs about MILs, MILs about DILs, stories of abusive DSis & SILs, female friends, work colleagues or neighbours; there’s thread after thread of women complaining about other women’s behaviour & really good advice about going NC or grey rocking yet somehow on this very same site, we also think all women magically turn into saints with their male romantic partners.

Of course there are shit dads about & as this is a female dominated site, that’s what we’re mainly going to hear about but there are also many shit mother’s (as many women have attested too on here when recounting their childhood trauma).

I know cases where this happens; yes. They seem to think that children are primarily ‘theirs’.

I know a person who does this and she wants access on her terms and retaliates by saying no contact. Basically she has “golden uterus syndrome” and honestly believes that mums are more of a parent than dads so it’s ok to gatekeep contact.

@QueenOfTheLabyrinth yes I suppose so. I must look like one of those women on the outside. But I can hand on heart say I stopped contact for the safety of my child and in a small amount my own safety. I’m sure everyone has heard what a terrible mother I am and he gets lots of sympathy.

I did it with my first we had split up and his mother kept coming round with court papers and banging on the door threatening me. He lived with her at the time so I was too scared to let him take our newborn his mum was also against breastfeeding and was going to give dd formula so I refused - it went to court and I continued to refuse even when there was a court order.

I went back and got an order for supervised contact (by me in my home)

We did actually get back together once he moved out and went NC with his mum

Also wouldn't let him attend our wedding.

So my ex will say I have, but that’s because I won’t let him have the children in MY house. He will only see them here, he won’t take them to his house and never has. In fact he made it impossible for him to have them there so unless I allow it in my house he won’t see them. As I’ve stopped it I’m now “stopping him from seeing them” so depends if you believe that 🤷‍♀️ he had contact with the kids on the phone but he kept promising to come down to see them then the night before at 3am he would text them to cancel so they eventually decided they didn’t want contact with him anymore, he hasn’t seen them since may.

I have to be honest though from this site and other Facebook groups I’m on A LOT of women don’t seem to want their exes involved or around. If I say my ex doesn’t see our children I get “wow your so lucky wish mine would disappear”

For me (and my partner) it was a slow burn, and both mum (his ex) and dad (i.e. my partner) were at fault. I know this is true because I witnessed it first hand and saw the messages. This happened over maybe 8 years:

• mum was happy with dad having regular contact after split. A lot of this contact was him coming to the old "marital" house to see the children and them spending time together as a family. He was hoping they would reconcile, she said no he can't move back in (they were never married).
• dad tells mum he is dating, mum reduces contact, she says it's too hard to see him regularly. She says the children need to get used to him not being around. Dad is living at his mum's so cannot see the children over night. He sees them one evening in the week and one day in the weekend
• time passes and mum asks to reduce contact again due to after school clubs and homework. The one night in the week is dropped and is replaced with a phone call
• dad moves in with new childfree girlfriend, mum says she doesn't want girlfriend to meet the children yet, so children can't come to his house. Contact continues in park, cinema, McDonald's etc between dad and children only
• mum requests dad stops phoning the children as it is disturbing homework etc.
• children are getting older and have more hobbies, contact is reduced again to every other Saturday, children have now been allowed to meet new girlfriend, but mum still doesn't want them going to dad's house.
• children finally are allowed to come to dad's house, but never ask to stay over, and never want to when offered. If mum is busy over night they go to grandparents or friends
• mum and dad don't communicate as it turns into arguments. Mum asks for all communication to go through the eldest child.
• some contact days are cancelled due to children going on holiday, having birthday parties or dad going on holiday. It's hard to confirm changed dates as mum and dad don't communicate
• contact is now infrequent - once a month, and steadily reducing

Obviously both parents played a role, the mum in suggesting contact is reduced and the dad by not fighting for contact in court and gradually letting it slip away. Dad didn't go to court due to not having enough money: he was in a minimum wage job, mediation failed. It was a slow burn, kids and dad were devastated at first - tears on both sides, but gradually everyone adjusts. It wasn't just an overnight thing of "never seeing your kids again". It was a slow burn and contact dropped slowly over time.

@LilBus perhaps and I’m just speculating it’s because a lot of the men don’t want to be involved in the hard parenting stuff and want to be the fun parent leaving the women with a lot of the mental load. Maybe I’m biased in thinking that.

Considering the high rates of domestic abuse I would hope and expect there is a decent percentage who do refuse contact once they get themselves and their children away.

Surely that would mean he does even less though? I do think from my experience I would go as far as to say most women don’t want their exes involved and seem to want them to go away once the relationship has broken down, just from my observation.

I'm certain there are men who can't be bothered and blame it on their ex.

There are some genuine cases too. I know of 2 men who no longer have contact with their children. One because it no longer suited him when his new toy came along.

The other, wasn't the bio dad of their child, although had brought the child up since she was a baby. His wife left him, total shock to him, and never let him see the child again. The child is now an adult and could choose to see him, but by the time it was her choice, years had passed and the damage was permanent.

In that case, I don't know if it was about punishing the dad for a (perceived or real) slight, or just because she wanted to move on with her new bf.

Exactly.