DH wants to be friends with HCBM....A rant.

[worklifesupport]

Conversation with DH has left me so frustrated.

To give a bit of background, BM and DH spilt after there was infidelity on her side. There was a lot of hurt following the split. The year DH and I got together, there was a pattern between DH and BM. BM would try to be friends with DH in order to get something she wanted. DH would go along with it in the hopes that things would finally be amicable. BM would ask for something and DH would say no. Then shit would hit the fan....name calling, involving her family, withholding access to SK etc. This would leave DH upset and leave me to pick up the pieces. This pattern of behaviour continued until BM started to threaten to call the cops when she didn't get what she wanted. DH saw through this and decided to limit contact to just organizing custody arrangements for SK. The name calling continued but had less of an effect emotionally.

Fast forward to this week. I could tell that DH had been feeling down. Finally sat him down and asked him what was wrong. He said that he had been having text conversations with BM. The first conversations not about custody in over a year. He said that it had left him with conflicting feelings. He said that part of him wanted to have a go at being friends with BM. Part of him felt sorry for BM. Part of him wanted to help BM because she had been 'his best friend' for so long. It had emerged during these conversations that BM had spilt with her partner. DH was worried that she was just trying to be friendly to get something out of him.

I did at this point let a few tears slip. I explained that I was frustrated. DH had allowed BM to play havoc with his emotions and the mood in the house for months and now he was getting us back on that rollercoaster. DH said that my crying was making him uncomfortable with sharing his emotions. I said the thought of him not sharing this with me was making me uncomfortable.

I love him so much, I just hate that he allows all this drama and upset into our lives. It is possible to be friendly with your ex but not be friends.

Has anyone else been in a similar position?

But to call her a birth mother implies that OP is also a mother, just a different type, like foster mothers are for instance.
I think it's unbelievably rude
Also, I agree that he's in love with his ex and you're a drama llama plan B

It really wasn't hard to understand what OP meant. Everyone making it about themselves when she was posting for support. Ridiculous!

I don't know how anyone understood that. I thought it must be his own mum.

This man would rather piss you off than BM, which tells you where you come in the pecking order.

Your answer is to leave this drama-soaked existence and carve a new life of your own. Love is not enough!

So you’ve been being supportive through this emotional shitshow and when you dare have emotions he tells you that represses him? No more support! ‘I don’t want to know. If I’m not allowed to have emotions about this whole stinking mess where you are emotionally absorbed by your ex, then I can’t support you.’

Birth mother is the expression used when a child is adopted. To use birth mother at any other time is really insulting. She is the mother

Walk. He fancies her

🤣I was confused at these too!

i would just leave this chaotic situation, I just couldn’t be bothered with someone inviting more drama into my life.

He wants to be with her. Walk away now for your own sanity.

Wtf does hcbm mean?

But yes, unpicking this it does seem like your ex still has some kind of feelings for the mother of his children. Or at least had absolutely terrible boundaries.

What an absolute shit show.

You wouldn’t see me for dust in this scenario.

Please don’t ignore all the red flags waving madly in your face, OP.

Get out now, and if for any reason you can’t get out immediately, for the love of God, ensure your contraception is water-tight.

He's still in love with her.

I also thought "birth mother" meant your actual mother or in this case the OP's boyfriend's mother 😂

Reddit is a forum for American teenagers who aren't exactly welcoming to British Mums (us "BM"s) so it's not surprising most of us haven't heard of the acronyms....

There are some really nasty replies on here. You’ve had your fun taking the piss out of a woman posting for support and signalling your righteous indignation about some acronyms you apparently don’t understand and couldn’t be arsed to google. Piss of.

OP, it shouldn’t be this hard. I know you love him but he’s bringing so much drama and pain into your life, I can’t see how it’s worth it. He won’t close the door on their relationship and is dragging you down with him.

It’s okay to decide to choose an easier life and to leave him to her machinations and manipulation.

His Child's Baby Momma?
Either way he's a twat. bin him
off

It is not righteous indignation, nor is is it merely being offended at a technicality to find BM or birth mother offensive when it is applied to a mother.

It completely devalues and disrespects the role of being a mother to the children you gave birth to.

A birth mother only gave birth to the child and an adoptive parent raises them.

I am not a mother simply because I gave birth. I am a mother because I raise my dc and fulfill that role as a mother.

To be reduced to only the person who gave birth to my dc is disrespectful, demeaning and misogynistic.

To go on a parenting forum (that has a lot of mothers) asking them for help and support with your problems, it is absolutely inappropriate to be insulting them and devaluing their role as a mother.

If you post in a parenting forum and insult motherhood, expect to be pulled up on it.

I am sick of misogyny and it is particularly enraging when it comes from another woman. We have enough to deal with in men devaluing us and holding us in contempt. We really don’t need to add fellow women to that list.

So what if you don’t like your partner’s ex. No excuse for devaluing her role as the mother of his children.

Actually I found it really confusing. I had no real idea at first whether she was referring to her boyfriends mother, if BM was indeed birth mother, I was guessing at that part too and I had no idea what HC could be.

I don't use other forums and never have. Why do you assume people spend all their waking hours on multiple forums and are familiar with their acronyms? Some of us have lives.

Yes I could have Googled, but I CBA, same as OP CBA to Google MN acronyms which would have taken her two minutes. I don't owe her my time. She's the one who came on here wanting support, why couldn't she be bothered to type out the words properly or Google the correct acronyms...

I did post in support of her, but I also happen to think using these bizarre acronyms was unhelpful and I posted to try help someone else out understanding them, really don't know why you've got a problem with that and don't care to know either.

How hard is it just to refer to her as ‘his ex’?

The whole thread has been derailed by the ambiguity.

DH said that my crying was making him uncomfortable with sharing his emotions.

This sounds possibly like an emotional manipulation? "Why are you crying and make me uncomfortable - next time I won't share my emotions"

Or he genuinely didn't want to upset you.

But your husband clearly has issues with boundaries.

I also found the acronym confusing

Mumsnet SP at its best. Woman posts about a man who is treating her poorly and emotionally manipulating her into accepting it. But she uses the wrong acronyms and is a stepmother, so she’s pilloried.

This is part of why so many divorced dads get away with treating their second wives as household appliances. So many people determined to find a million ways to vilify a woman because she’s a stepmum.

Not because she's a stepmum, because she referred to the children's mum as their BIRTH MOTHER 🙄

Or possibly baby mama, which is a cultural reference.