I’m in desperate need of advice and guidance.
I have a 14yo daughter. I am in a 5 year relationship with my fiancé who also has a daughter.
We are in the thick of selling his home and buying a home together.
I have an incredibly acrimonious relationship with my ex. He has a criminal conviction for domestic abuse and has caused no end of misery for us from the emotional, to financial to psychological. I have my children 11/14 days.
To the issue at hand.
My daughter and I had words as she overheard a conversation that we were reluctant to share fully with her re the house sale and she was mardy about it.
Fast forward a few hours and she sent me a code to access her Snapchat account which I manage from my email. According to her, she was logged out or something.
So I sent her the code and somehow she accessed my Snapchat account. On reflection, I suspect she knew she could obtain information re the earlier conversation behind my back and tried her luck.
I don’t particularly use Snapchat but last week while I was away with work, my fiancé and I were sexting (utilising the hotel WiFi) and one picture was saved in the chat. Unfortunately, this was a picture of his erect penis.
I’d like to be clear that the intended audience was me. No one else. The fact that she has had sight of this is horrifying and embarrassing and the emotions we (partner and I) are feeling are incredibly wide ranging.
There’s a full digital footprint of what happened- her asking for the code, me giving her it, her telling me she accidentally accessed my account then her saying she saw something she didn’t expect.
My daughter is more concerned with the fact that people of our age ‘shouldn’t’ be doing this. How this somehow makes HIM a weirdo and she feels weird about him.
Obviously we would never have intended her to see this and we are very frightened that this has the potential to be misconstrued. Especially as her dad is proactive with devastating results at times.
I’ve spoken to her about privacy. About how we haven’t done anything wrong by doing those things in an adult consensual relationship. About how we never intended her to see it. About how she was not the intended recipient and how she can’t communicate him being weird in relation to this because it has a certain connotation.
We are honestly incredibly careful and aware of our dynamic and our intimacy and I’m devastated we have potentially exposed ourselves to something which will be taken massively out of context and be life altering.
I’ve woken up to her playing music and being cheery. Saying she’s fine and no visible signs of upset.
She does have a habit of saying things to provoke a reaction and i have massive worries she will drop this in conversation to her dad or someone else with unknown results.
We honestly don’t know what to do. If anything.
We’ve flip flopped around attacking this head on and speaking to authorities or a solicitor. We’ve thought about ignoring it and continuing on as though nothing happened. We’ve thought about calling off our entire relationship incase IT’s misconstrued.
I think the issue is massively more risky because of my malicious ex being incredibly vocal about not liking my partner or me and being very bitter about the punishments he’s been given because of his behaviour. He’s said on numerous occasions he will ruin my life and he’s also intimidated he’s not comfortable with our children living with another man. For all of these reasons, we have major fear.
Any input would be appreciated.