I'm at my wits end with ex-dh!!

[mampam]

I've posted ages ago about my ex's continual need to be awkward/ignorant etc.

Basically ex-dh (DC's father) and I split up over three and a half years ago after I found out he was having an affair with a so called friend. He left me for her and they are now married and have a baby on the way. I have married again and am very happy in my relationship with DH. So everyone's happy and therefore in my eyes there shouldn't be a problem, but there is.

Ever since we split up,ex and his wife have treated me with nothing but contempt, acting as if I was the one who did something wrong. If ever there's an opportunity to be awkward they take it and they've been quite nasty in the past too.

DC's live with me and dh and somehow our lives are dictated to by having to fit in with what ex and his wife want (with regards to the arrangements with dc's). DC's spend every other weekend at their dads and also one night in the week which is alternated between a Tuesday and a Thursday. It seems however that these arrangements can be changed at will by them but if ever I have needed to change anything (very very rarely) there is just a point blank refusal to do so!

Dc's are due to stay at their dads tomorrow (Thurs)night and it is also DS's birthday. I asked ex if I could pick up dc's from school and then drop them into him at 5 so as ds could open his presents from us when dh will be there to see him and also he can open any post that may arrive for him whilst he's at school. I did this for dd's last birthday as it fell on a night when they would be at their dads and there was no problem then, but now.........

I am just sick to death of ex always making everything into a battle. What the hell does he think that we're battling over??? I have no problem with him, we're not together anymore but he is DC's father, end of story. Yet he seems to have a problem with me. I know his wife has a serious problem with me although I don't know why as he left me for her, what more could she want? They just seem hell bent on being as awkward as possible and being the ones to always call the shots and if I ever dare to disagree..............

After three and a half years I'm tired of all this patheticness. Am I right to be a little pissed off with this whole situation?? Does anyone elses ex give them this much grief??

Arrange to meet him privately and without her or your new husband. Tell him you need to discuss the children and it's only something the two of you need to be there for.

then explain to him how hard it can be trying to share the childcare and that you need to talk about some flexibility.

Try not to use it as an opportunity to have a go at his wife, and do not let him bring your husband into things.

How old are your chioldren? Could you have a 'family' meeting?

Not in this situation but know lots of others who are. It does seem quite common. All i can say is - they are obviously not happy and want to make you feel the same. I am sure it is hard but try to rise above it.

i do sympathise. my ex (you may have read some of the threads) is a total, well lets be polite, idiot.

he was a total, total nightmare about seeing DS and the way I got over it was to impose a strict schedule and not deviate from it for any reason. if he couldnt make a particular date then rather than rearranging he would have to wait until the next one. it wasnt ideal in the beginning but once he realised i wasnt going to budge he's fallen into line.

obviously i dont know, but it sounds to me like she is jealous of his first family and making things difficult is her way of having influence.

can you try not to get wound up by it? i feel i wasted so much time getting furious over things that I couldnt change. Once I'd pulled myself together i realised that all that anger changed nothing and only made me feel bad.

i hope things get better for you.

of course you are pissed off.... but you've go years ahead of you when you and ex will have to cooperate and communicate as parents....

some options might be:

write to him calmly and reasonably setting out what you see as problem and with any suggested solutions.... ask for his views and suggestions as to working together as dcs parents in their interests.

find out about mediation services and ask whether he is prepared to go with you to resolve difficulties of comunicating as dcs parents

go to court for defined contact order (last resort).

We had a chat earlier on this year after DC's returned home from weekend with them and a hand written note on a scrap of paper was stuffed into their bag telling me when they were taking the DC's on holiday.

Our chat consisted of me telling ex that it was a cheek having his wife write me a note telling me about holiday when he should have asked me in person if those dates were convenient. I also pointed out that if we always ask each other in advance then there will never be any reason to argue about anything and what I was referring to was that ex and wife have a sneaky habit of always priming DC's for weeks in advance about something before its mentioned to me so if I then turn around and say 'no' then to dc's it looks like I'm the big bad wolf.

The wife will go out of her way to try to aggrevate me but I can honestly say that I do not rise to it or let it be known that she is irritating me. I'll give you a couple of examples, ds started school after Christmas and I bought a special pen for the purpose of writing his name in his uniform and some of dd's new uniform too, a couple of weeks later she had ironed over the names I had written with proper iron in labels. If ds has read to me for 5 minutes, he reads to her for 10, if he does 10 with me, he does 15 with her etc etc

mampam does she tell you this or the children (about the reading)? Sounds like she is trying to undermine you as their mother. She will never be their mother. She is the stepmother and should learn to respect the positions. i don't think (i haven't actually experienced it) I would undo or go over what the mother had already done. Very rude.

mampam - it does sound very much like shes trying to live up to you and be better than you because you where part of her DH's first family.

I would suggest like the PP's that you meet with your ex, just the two of you to discuss it. Then he needs to speak to his new wife about what shes doing.

how old are your DCs mampam?

Perhaps because the relationship began with her competing against you (for your husband's affection, loyalty etc) she has continued in the same vein of competitiveness purely because that is the way that she is used to thinking about you - as the competition.

Sometimes, when someone has behaved very very badly, they hate their victim. It's a way of making them feel less of a shitbag. The victim is not the victim. They are the victim. You made them do this that and the other, you deserve the treatment you got. The alternative is for them to accept that they did a shitty thing and take responsibility for it and understand that they treated you shabbily. Rather than do this, they turn the situation round so that they can blame you for it, otherwise they'd have to face some unpleasant truths about themselves. How often do you hear people say, when they have done something unforgivable to another person - "They deserved it" "They were asking for it". Inability to face the fact that you're a shitty lowlife bastard.

My xh's sister did this. She had an affair with a married man, he left his wife, and SIL absolutely hated her. She would strop out of all parties and gatherings that the three of them attended, to make sure her partner followed her, so she knew where his loyalties lay.

At his grandad's funeral, they had been together about 6 months, and SIL was furious that her partner's XW had attended with the children. She actually said 'what's she got to do with him anymore? Absolutely nothing' - completely forgetting that XW had a 10 year history with the grandad, and was the mother of his great grandchildren. How I didn't say something I don't know, but there would have been no point anyway because she's too self-absorbed to empathise with anyone.

I think littlewoman has hit the nail on the head. Very true.

mampam, is there any chance you can meet your ex without the new wife?

Mankymummy DC's are 8 and 5.

Citronella, I know about the reading times because DC's have reading diaries (from school) where every book they read has to be recorded along with who they read to and for how long. She's even written her name in ds's diary as if she's read with him when in fact ds has told me it was his father he read to.

ex's wife does sound like littlewomans SIL. When I got married again my ex inlaws all came to our wedding as I've known them for over 12 years now and I'm alot closer to them then I am my own family. Ex and his wife hated this so obviously I somehow had to be punished for inviting them. I had arranged for DC's to stay with their father the night of my wedding and again the following night and it was arranged that the wife would take them to school on the Monday morning (DS still at pre-school at this stage) as DH and I were having an extra night at the hotel after the wedding. Early on the Monday morning I had a phonecall from ex to say that DS was really poorly and had been up all night with the runs, so this meant that DH and I had to return early from the hotel to get DS who at that time had been dropped off at ex MIL's.

It turns out there was absolutely nothing wrong with DS. I asked him how many times he'd been to the toilet in the night and he said once and that was because the wife had picked him out of bed in the middle of the night and taken him. I sure it's very easy to convince a half asleep child that they have the runs. She is very clever and this is half the problem because she always seems to be one step ahead.

Have tried talking to ex before just me and him and he is always apologetic and we seem to be on the same wavelength but I get the impression that he wouldn't dare go home and tell her that we had discussed things and agreed on things just between the two of us. There have been times when we've discussed and agreed on something and half an hour later (the time it would take for him to get home and tell her what we'd agreed) my phone would ring and he would have a sudden u-turn on the matter.

I've tried everything and I'm wondering if the only way forward is to start playing fire with fire?

I completely see your POV, but the problem is that your dc's may suffer in the fallout. Your hands are tied because you don't really want to use them as pawns in a game anymore than she is using them already.

The only thing I can think of is to become her friend. Please don't shoot me for the suggestion. I'm certainly not saying it's what you'd like to do, I'm just saying that's the only way I can think of, in theory, that might stop it.

Ooh, hang on though, how about if you thank her for all her little attentions to yor dc. She might be passed off (!)at having pleased you and stop it immediately.

No, that's no good. You don't want her not to pay your dc's any attention do you?

Thats the whole point, my hands are tied because I am not prepared to use DC's for my own gain in any of this.

I've tried being her friend, believe me not an easy task.

Maybe I might just sit back and let her shoot herself in the foot. DD is already starting to realise how controlling and unapproachable she is. For example, dd asked wife not to give her so much food in her packed lunch as she couldn't eat it all and thought it was a waste, the reply she got to that was 'it doesn't matter' and the same amount of food is put in (obviously she would have to put more food in than I do)but now dd is complaining that because her lunch bag is so heavy when wife makes packed lunch, the handle is breaking.

The saga continues...........

I got DH to take DC's to ex's house (on ds's birthday) as I was so cross with ex after the argument about whether I could see my son on his birthday and I didn't want to see him (ex). She answered the door and ex was nowhere to be seen. She said to DH that they wouldn't be able to have DC's on their mid-week night next week as they were having building work done to the house.

I've since discovered that from DC's that ex was in the house but he was hiding in a back bedroom (obviously knew I was pissed off with him and didn't want to face me), it's her birthday on the night that they can't have DC's and DC's don't seem to know about any building work being done at "daddies" house.

Am I right to be a little bit f**ked off about this? It's not a problem that they can't have kids mid-week it's just the principal that they think it's ok to pick and choose at their leisure when they can and cannot have DC's.