Husband shouted and swore at me in front of his mum.

[Strawberrypjs]

So he did this all the time and I finally left him. He used to do it in front of his mum and what I don’t understand is she messaged me and repeatedly asked me to take him back. She was in an abusive marriage herself that she eventually got out of. We are not together but his mum is still very close to him and doesn’t seem bothered at all that he treated me so badly. I don’t understand. Would you not be upset with your child if they behaved so badly and hurt someone?

Also I agree, she doesn't want him to be her responsibility anymore and wants to offload him to you again. I think self interest is probably a motivator here.

You need to cut contact with both of them as much as possible. They’re two extremely dysfunctional people who can’t be reasoned with, the reasons why don’t actually matter, that’s not your responsibility. The only thing that matters here is that it’s inappropriate contact and she shouldn’t be having any contact with you at all, block her.

Communicate with your ex-husband on a needs must basis about your child. I would make it very clear that any other unwanted communications will be logged as harassment. If your child is young it may be worth communicating through a parenting app only and having a neutral third party do hand-overs.

I kept contact open so that she could chat to our child but she’s talking rubbish all the time.

She can chat with your child when his aggressive father takes him to see his mother when he is parenting him.

It's on him to facilitate contact with his mother if he wants to.

For your sanity - try to limit contact or avoid it completely if she keeps talking like this. You don’t need to forgive her, or understand her: you just need to look after yourself.

In theory that genuinely is a lovely thing to do and in normal circumstances where all adults are capable of having a functional, healthy relationship sounds marvellous, but it sadly sounds as though this is not the case. Your kindness does you credit. It sounds as though if she’s willing to enable and encourage you and therefore your child to be in a hostile and violent household then she doesn’t have her grandchild’s best interests at heart. No one who loves or cares for a child would want them to be put through that. It often causes extreme psychological damage to a child to grow up in an abusive environment. Hence probably why your husband has turned out the way that he has. Also, if you were to go back social services could deem your child not be safeguarded and neglected and could remove them from your care or at the least be heavily involved. I’m not saying you would go back to him but this is what this woman actively wants for you by her insistence that you be with him. Even if you can be sure that she wouldn’t actively hurt them, her actions could hurt them in other ways if she were to succeed in convincing you to take him back. She is abusing you by pressurising you to be with him knowing what he has done. I would be reluctant to facilitate any sort of relationship between them with that being the case. Leave that to your ex husband, that’s his business to do so and not one bit your responsibility.

Best case scenario this woman is incredibly weak-willed and that could mean that she’s being used as a pawn by your ex husband to try and gain control of your life. She may not purposefully be acting with malice but the consequences will still be the same regardless whether it’s intentional or just simply negligence.