Feel like I've been misled..? wwyd?

[YouMightBelieveTheWorldIsSweet]

I've been with my partner for around 2 and a half years.

We were both previously married and separated/divorced in the same year over a decade ago.

I am amicable with my ex husband. We have two adult children together and co-parented well. There were never any problems and as the children grew our contact became less. Nowadays, we rarely if ever have contact because there is no need. But we can be in the same place as each other for the childen, share our pride in them with each other and then go back to our own lives.

My boyfriend led me to believe that he had a similar relationship with his ex wife.

But I'm realising that this isn't strictly true.

They aren't friends (or so he says) and he dislikes her (or so he says) - this was all established in the early days of getting to know each other. They also have two adult children together who are slightly older than mine (his youngest and my eldest are the same age).

But there seems to he a lot of ongoing contact between them. Her name is always on his WA screen. I'd imagine this means their messages must be daily/every couple of days.

I know some people are friends with exes but almost daily contact 11 years after a divorce when he claims to not like her seems excessive and I wouldn't have got into a serious relationship with him if I'd known that this was the case.

He’s watering the garden!

Good luck, good for you just biting the bullet and having the conversation. Hope it went well!

Hope the talk is going well.

“I wouldn't have got involved with him if I'd known this was the level of contact.“

So say this then? He may not gave intentionally mislead you as you are probably working on subjective ideas about what is reasonable then the ages of the children etc. you need to spell things out if it’s a dealbreaker.

The football had finished. He's not that interested anyway - it's only so he can talk to the men at work about it today.

He came in when he'd finished watering the garden.

OK.

So we did talk.

He reiterated that they are not friends. He did start off saying that they only had contact occasionally but, when pressed (because I know there is more contact than that), he said he only replies to her occasionally and only if it's necessary to do so.

He said she does message him more frequently (sometimes a few times a week which is why her name is always on his WA screen) but he ignores her. I said it didn't make sense that she would keep messaging if he didn't respond. He said he didn't know what to say. She's done it when he's had other relationships too. The hostility is because she regards them as still being 'in a relationship' because she was his wife. She's done the same whenever he's been seeing someone.

He has told her to only contact him if it's important or to do with the children but she ignores it.

To be clear, his children were already in their 20s when we started seeing each other.

Thanks for everyone's comments.

Is she well? That's a really really strange thing to say that she still views them as in a relationship

I couldn't think of a better way of saying it.

It's probably more like she would still like him to be in her life and the repeated messaging makes it feel like he is. I think.

Obviously, more was said last night than I've put here but that is the gist of it. I believe that he is ignoring the messages.

But it's been 11 years. I do think he needs to be firmer with her if this is the case and he agrees. I think that she wants to maintain the level of contact that was necessary when the children were younger and just hasn't moved on from that. So because it isn't necessary anymore, she just messages random chit chat stuff or asks him questions that she could find the answers to herself. She finds reasons to contact him but she doesn't have reasons to contact him. If that makes sense.

Anyway, what he said last night ties in with what he said at the beginning but I hadn't realised that she was doing this because he hadn't wanted to criticise her. So I feel a bit better about it.

@YouMightBelieveTheWorldIsSweet he doesnt need to be in contact with her at all and he really should block her! can he not see that she messages more when he is in a relationship? It looks like she is intentionally trying to break up his relationships. the adult kids can contact him themselves and i am sure that their siblings would contact him if anything serious was to happen!

The youngest is still at home but is in the process of finding their own place to move into.

She can be a bit volatile and argues with her children if she thinks they have spent more time with him/us than her (they've told us that) so I think he is wary about doing anything that could make things difficult for them. I do understand that.

Thinking about it, the contact from her has definitely ramped up over the past few months since the youngest started talking about moving out. I hadn't made that connection before. I suppose it feels like she's losing her last link to him and she's trying to hold onto it.

I don't think he has made that connection or realised that she does it more when he is in a relationship.

He said he'll block her when the youngest has left.

I've been through this with DP, but they have school aged children, and only separated two years. She has a bf but for almost the first year of our relationship she was messaging good morning xxx and good night and kisses on everything and he was responding in kind. She'd send pics of the kids when they were young to remind him of his real family I think and would message throughout the day.

I mentioned it, politely, and said if you didn't know better you'd think you were still married.

There was an element of keeping her sweet due to previous threats of losing access to kids.

One evening I had had enough, told him I felt like the OW, and if he was sending kisses to me and her either neither meant anything, or both did, and i wouldn't compete with an ex.

Woke up to find he'd told her it had to end, had to change the type and level of communication. And she did sulk, argue, but it has changed.

Men don't often see the emotional drivers of such behaviour, they seem simply the top layer, and often won't rock the boat because they want an easy life.