Alienating baby mum making our lives hell!

[TheLilacViper]

My partner and I have been together 8years and have 2 daughters together, he also has 2 kids 11 and 10 from a previous relationship. She is extremely high conflict, controlling and impossible to compromise with. She moved away 4 years ago around an hour and 30 minute drive away and refuses to do any travel so was forced to cut contact down to every other weekend and half of the holidays. During our weekends we had noticed that contact between baby mum and step children was ALOT it was continuous texting asking what they were eating for every meal telling them what time they should go to bed or making comments that it’s too late or too early if we were out it was asking where we were going. It escalated to a point that the kids were never putting their phones down as they were constantly having to update their mum and if they were pre occupied they would be bombarded with texts telling them that she is worried about them and then my partner would get a text asking them to check their phones and that she needs to have constant communication with them. She is always promising them to give them things when they get home (example, sleepovers with friends, presents ordered from Amazon, surprises, days out) which I feel makes them itch to go back home with their mum I don’t feel it’s fair when we only get the 2 days with them. My OH has had enough and has said the kids are not having their phones so that they can be in the moment when they’re with us and enjoy the 48 hours that they get while they’re here that they can tell her about their time when they get home. She has since blocked all of us from their phones including my 5 year old daughters iPad so she can’t FaceTime with her siblings! And has encouraged SD10 to call OH and tell him she won’t be seeing him anymore due to not being allowed her phone and that it’s her property to do with as she likes. This conversation was super awkward and out of character for my step daughter and she sounded uncomfortable and withdrawn. She absolutely loves coming to visit and hates any kind of confrontation so I’m certain she has been made to make this phonecall to her dad. Any advice on this. There is already a court order in place and this isn’t the only time she has stopped contact it happens every time my partner doesn’t ’do as she says’ we won’t be getting court involved it’s not fair on the kids and she’s already convinced them that it’s all their idea. I’m not sure if contacting their school maybe is the best course of action to get them support?

Your mistake was assuming I read the updates 😂

I only read the first post. As unreasonable as she is being, my point still stands. She has FOMO.

Thankyou so much! It’s nice to see people are out there with proper logic in a situation like this, there are so much aswell things that my OH wanted to bring up in court but was advised that it can come across like he’s bad mouthing his ex so not to bring it up as they wouldn’t take kindly to it it’s actually wild! The reason for suggesting going to the school was so that step kids could get support mentally from all of this and give them somebody that they can speak freely too as they can’t talk to their mother through fear of upsetting her and my step daughter has told me this too, she once made a video calling me the best step mum ever and her mum saw it and started crying accusing my step daughter of loving me more than her and made her feel absolutely terrible for it!

Victim blaming, what utter rot. "Leaving sex aside" (which we can't really, as abuse that ramps up during pregnancy and postpartum, is almost always a case of women being in a vulnerable position due to pregnancy/birth and the abuse from the man either starting or ramping up and its quite poor of you to pretend otherwise really), all we have to go on are the black and white facts. Man leaves his partner when the going gets tough with tiny children, gets with someone either straight after walking out on his babies or there was an overlap. Going by OPs given timescale.

The crazy ex narrative is one that I'm always suspicious of. It sounds like this man has walked out on the ex and baby and toddler and has painted her as bonkers to justify his behaviour. She's controlling/abusive etc yet he's been happy to leave his children with her and only see them EOW?

Have you gone through and read my responses and updates? There wasn’t an overlap and we got together after him and his ex split she also was seeing somebody else, in fact she shared that she was with somebody new before me! In no way did he leave her in the shit he continued to see his kids very regularly as this was before the move. She was more than happy when she heard about me and when the time came for me to meet the kids she came along and met me too it was very amicable at the time and she openly told me that she treated him like shit. Just because the children were young when we got together doesn’t make me a home wrecker and I’m not one so you don’t know any facts atall! I suggest you look back through the posts and look at my updates. Just because she’s a woman doesn’t mean she can’t be an abuser because men can be victims too and men commit suicide all the time because they’re affraid to speak up about it and also because of being alienated from their kids, because there are people like you out there that are completely delusional to believe that a woman can’t be a narcissistic abuser and it gives her a right to use these abusive traits on her children,
he haves the kids EOW because that’s all she will allow him to have, courts didn’t listen to reasoning and kept it at that as she told him was the status quo, they didn’t listen to my OH in anyway. You are literally what’s wrong with the world

OP, nothing you say on here to people like the poster below will resonate. They simply see man=bad, in the wrong, it's his own fault, woman=victim, wronged, any action is justified to 'protect their children'.

Some people will literally not have it that women can be abusers, manipulative, narcissistic, selfish and damaging to their children all in order to 'win' at a game only they knew they were playing.

Ive come home this evening to a dh in tears as his ex wife had withheld one of my step children (her favourite of the two) on the grounds he is 'ill', and when dh called him to see if he was ok he didn't answer. Dh called his brother (still at their house at the time) to ask him to pass the phone to the 'ill' child (on the basis that he can't ring her because if he so much as calls her re the kids she accuses him of harassment). She has then gone bananas and accused dh of 'child abuse' for involving his other son in communications. Literally just calling him and asking if he could just pass the phone to his little brother, no big deal made. And so it goes on.
And we later find that the ill child has been to football training as normal this evening. So not remotely ill. She hasn't managed to bring them both at the same time
For 6 weeks. Always some nonsense excuse. It's control, and nastiness. And That's all it is.

@DoTheDinosaurStomp 'only sees his children EOW'. Dh spent 25 grand to fight his ex wife's suggestion, (made apropo of nothing but her own assertion that she should have them more 'because she's the mum'), that he only see the kids 4 nights a month.
Not everyone has that resource and not everyone has the mental strength to go through long and invasive court procedures to disprove the lies that have been made up about them to suit the other parents narrative. Fortunately in our case the court saw through her. She has never got over that and has spent the last two years trying every trick in the book to turn those children against dh. It's indefensible.

For every headline I see about feckless dads that don't see their kids, I wonder how many of those have tried their hardest and been prevented at every turn. How many have given up to stop their kids being put in the middle and pulled both ways. I would be willing to bet it's a lot more than people think.

I'm what's wrong with the world because I think it's disgraceful getting involved with a man with tiny babies/walking out on a woman with tiny children because shes allegedly abusive oh but wait, not abusive enough to have stuck something on the end of it and not have had children with her not once, but twice? OK then. Any decent woman wouldn't get involved with a man with tiny babies, surely you'd think to yourself wait a minute, I going to step back here and not get involved in this. And surely any decent man would concentrate on getting his life together, establishing himself as a father, healing from the "abuse"? Oh no, instead he just jumps straight into bed with someone else.

His ex breezily admitted she was abusive to the ex to the new partner did she? OK then... I'm very sceptical of the "abuse" accusation when it comes from men abandoning familes. Twice now I've had friends who have been in long term relationships where the relationship has broken down shortly after children have been born. The excuse from the man? The woman turned "abusive"/controlling/crazy etc, hence why they upped sticks and left. It's like they use it as some kind of justification for walking out. The old crazy ex tripe. What else could they use?

@DoTheDinosaurStomp right, we get it. Men aren't allowed to have relationships after a split, even if they were the wronged party (which they never are, because women, especially mothers, never do anything wrong). Mothers are saints and if their relationships or marriages fail it's always the man's fault. Women never abuse, cheat, lie or treat their partners badly. Men can never be victims of an abusive female partner, and even if they were, if they move on too quickly in your eyes, or don't have full custody of their children, that means it can't have been that bad or they were lying. And any woman who gets involved with a separated or divorced father is a bad person.

Whatever men, or women, get up to, their children's welfare must come first and there is absolutely no reason for either a man or a woman to get involved with someone who is responsible for young children. By 'involved', I mean forming a long term, committed relationship, never mind going on to have a child or children with this person. Why would you? I get the falling for someone, being in love, but one can experience love more than once in life.

If a relationship falls apart sometimes one or both parties can lash out, they can also find a bit of comfort with another person but neither makes them a serial abuser or philanderer, it's just being human.

The op's fella's ex sounds like a nightmare, particularly with her constant texting and phoning her children, she must be so insecure, but we haven't heard her side of the story, nor are we likely to - unless she decides to post on here.

My hope is the op doesn't end up in the same position as this woman.

That's the thing people do find comfort in other people and they both had moved on in this scenario it was what it was but I have continued in his life all these years we are in a very happy and healthy relationship, nothing like the one he had with his ex which was more a convenience than anything due to them having their oldest so quickly. The problem with OH's ex is that she has no issue telling people of the way that she is and actually laughs about it. She's threatened to 'smack him about' while I've been with him and has been on the phone laughing about how she took her current partner from his wife and that now she hates her. It's interesting to see peoples opinions on my relationship when I only asked for a specific tiny part of the problem he is having in co-parenting and actually I already knew it was unhealthy and toxic but really just wanted some validation which I did get from some people, others accused me of having an affair and being a home wrecker😂

@DoTheDinosaurStomp any decent woman wouldn't abuse her kids because she's bitter that her ex (who she abused) moved on. Even though she was also with someone else by that time.

Not sure what your agenda is but you're starting to sound a bit unhinged.

You are the kind of person I worry end up working for Cafcass and being in the court system in charge of weather men can see their children after the mother uses them as a weapon and deflects all the controlling abusive behaviours they perpetrated onto the dad. Because a man can never be a victim. She really did admit abusing my OH she didn’t use the word abuse but she told me that she used to hit him and that she treated him like shit. You obviously can see no evidence for any of this but I’m giving you my side of the story which from experience over the years has been nothing but true but I’ve asked for an opinion based on the information I have given you and you have added your own details to make it fit your narrative which makes my OH out to be a neglectful parent and a liar, and that the person that I have actually highlighted to be the one in the wrong you see as a victim even tho that’s not a part of the real story unfortunately. It’s deluded and I worry about what you put your own kids through and then blame it on your ex!

I can't even believe some people on here blaming the OP for getting involved with a man with young children or saying parents should never have committed relationships once they have kids. It's not ideal to have split or blended families, but also not realistic to demand parents abstain from the intimacy, closeness and support that a partner brings for however long, and must sacrifice all their needs on the altar of their children. And certainly not fair to blame a partner for getting involved with a parent of young children in the first place.

I've worked in CAMHS, and I've seen all kinds of family configurations, issues, etc. There are terrible dads, terrible mums, terrible other family members as individuals, but most often there are family systems that don't work and there are multiple contributing factors to that. Most children would rather have their biological family unit together and happy, but most children also don't want to deprive their parents of happiness. It's how the new relationships are handled that cause problems, not the fact that the parent has formed a new relationship in itself.

The "crazy ex" trope often is a bad excuse brought out by crap men, and I'm certainly not a fan of labelling people in that way. But IME sometimes it actually does turn out that the female partner/mother was/is the main obstacle to a family system working in the best way it can.

Referring to your husbands kids mum as a 'piece of shit' is nasty and if that's your attitude I don't blame her for not trusting her kids around you. How much 1 on 1 time does your husband actually spend with his children or is the time always spent with you and your children (who ARE their half siblings which is not the same as full blooded siblings who share both parents). Perhaps if he saw them more often and had a better relationship with them he could just talk to them and explain that he wants them not to use their phones so much as it means he gets less attention from them. None of the adults in this situation are coming across well tbh.

He needs to go back to court. I would be seeking an order that the amount of contact between children and a parent when they are with the other parent is the same. So if your DH is permitted to contact once a day when the kids are with their mum then she gets the same.

Taking their phones off them is putting the kids in the middle. There is no way they don't know that mum is trying to contact them and this must be causing them huge amounts of stress. Your DH needs to get the court involved.

He also should be getting the kids into therapy and also seeking some therapy for himself so he can learn techniques for dealing with her whilst protecting the kids mental health. I think it would be great for mum herself to get therapy but obviously you can't ask for that. If there is mediation, perhaps it could be suggested but in a "we would all benefit from therapy to assist us in navigating co-parenting" kind of way.

And please don't call her the baby mum. It's rude and demeaning. She is their mum.

I agree with taking thier phones at that age is maybe too far and could affect your sc wanting to come becuase they’ll contact thier friends, block the mum instead ;) she can ring the dads phone in the evening to say goodnight. X

And if she doesn’t like it, she can take you back to court. Search grey rock communication. Brilliant to deal with a narcissist x

This.

Funny that isn't it. EoW and barely being a parent suits some people. It's convenient.

Well said.

I wish women would raise their bar.

@Willyoujustbequiet he's been to court. Hope that helps.