Even after a couple has ended their relationship, one of the partners may hold on to jealous or bitter feelings, forcing the other to deal with sometimes unreasonable behaviour for the sake of their children. When marrying someone with children, it can sometimes fall onto the stepparent to take some of the brunt of the leftover feelings of their spouse’s ex. Handling such a person isn’t always easy, but cannot always be avoided.
Securing the Support of Your Spouse
The single best tool in dealing with a spouse’s hostile or jealous ex is the support of the spouse. An ex exerts far less power to cause havoc in a stepfamily if their ex spouse makes it utterly clear that their antics will not be tolerated and will not give them the results that they are seeking. Often, trouble with an ex goes on longer than needed because someone takes no action, hoping that the situation will right itself, but that is rarely the case. If an ex is attempting to make life difficult for a new spouse, the situation needs to be addressed and the ex needs to be made aware that while they will always have a connection in matters regarding the care and welfare of shared children, their input is not welcomed in any other area.
Keeping the Kids Out of Family Squabbles
Sadly, children often become the real victims of the unsavoury behaviour of their parents if the pair cannot seem to maintain a respectful relationship. A couple who were once partners in life can become bitter toward one another if things don’t work out as they’d hoped, but the children should be kept out of the disagreements of their parents. Children have every right to a loving relationship with both of their parents and it is up to both partners to make sure that their kids do not feel torn in their loyalties. Stepparents can help by assuring the children that while their parents may have difficulties with one another, both love them and want them to be happy.
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Making the Effort toward Family Peace
In the best possible stepfamily scenario, all of the adults would take steps to create an atmosphere of harmony for the sake of the children. The reality often falls somewhat short of this ideal, however, with complicated adult emotions causing ongoing hurt and conflict. Stepparents can sometimes offer calming input by assuring their partner’s ex that they are a valued part of the children’s lives and that no one has any desire to usurp their authority when it comes to the kids. Knowing that an ex’s current spouse understands and supports the need for natural parents to remain paramount in their children’s lives may help them to alleviate some of their hostile or jealous feelings.
Distancing Yourself from Drama
Despite their best efforts, some stepparents find themselves in the unfortunate position of being the target of the unsettled emotions of their spouse’s ex. When this happens, the best that they can do may simply be to steer clear of the ex as much as is possible, leaving their spouse to handle all contact with the children’s other parent alone. This is unfortunate because kids can benefit from seeing the adults in their lives conduct themselves in a mature and respectful fashion, but it is better to provide some distance than to jump in to an already turbulent situation, only adding to the drama. Taking the high road will show the children that even when faced with difficulties, responsible people can keep control of their response.
My partner has a beautiful little girl T who is 8. Me and T have been in eachothers lives for two years and me and my partner are due to be married in a few months. Recently though T has told myself and my partner that "my mum doesn't like you very much, but I don't know why, she says that you are going to make me call you mummy and that you are trying to impress me" she also said that she has made mean comments about me and my appearance about mine and my partners relationship and that we copy everything that she does. Me and my partner are devastated T was very upset and has been keeping this to herself for months she has felt guilt because she said that non of the things she has said are true but she gets shouted at if she defends me - she is so beyond her years and has strong ethics. She said she is very unhappy with her mum and we are lost as to what to do. We want her happy wherever she is and have never said a bad word about her mum to her or in her presence we talk about her mum and what thins they have done together she is her mum and we want her to be comfortable sharing her life without worry. We can't speak to her mum about this because we don't want to betray T's trust in us and she is very scared of her mum, even stopped hugging her dad in front of her because she is scared her mum will be "angry" (her words)
We have told her not to feel guilty for not defending me as it doesn't matter as we know the truth and she can talk to us whenever she wants. what can we do we want to reassure her mum again that I am not trying to be her mum and just want her to be happy but are scared T will be punished for talking about it as she has been told not to talk to us about anything between them. Please help it is giving us sleepless nights worrying about her ??
My question is overall how does anyone approach and start to make this better? I'm scared for my partner that she'll start using the children against him again and while I can't stop this happening if she chooses to I want to help him and protect him against all the pain and stress again. I don't believe in giving her what she wants for an easy life and neither does he and sadly if there continues to be no goodwill in my opinion there isn't much we can do. Do we sit back and wait for her to offer a slight olive branch? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Eventually he wrote up to 3 letters to her solicitor just about contact and copied in pictures of her text messages and finally she gave in. She still refuses video to have some control but he gets phone calls 3x a week which is all he wanted. We both suspect the content of the letter was irrelevant and that it was just a shouting out against the world but we've had no reply at all. He knows her better than me and claims she's unfortunately the type of the individual that thinks paying for things will fix them and so didn't expect another letter to come through. She's also texting his own mother saying she's got no money left which is absolutely ridiculous with her wage and ridiculously low out-goings. She apparently spent all of his money when married and threatened to divorce him if he stopped it and i've personally seen her level of shopping addiction. She spent £100 on school shorts for the youngest boy when they only had 5 weeks of school left...
Another arrangement that I noted when I met the children was that she would buy all the uniform and then bill him for half of it. He initially agreed and then realised she thought the children needed 3 pairs of Clarks shoes a year each and the most expensive top of the range M&S plain clothes. The children go to a state school that requires nothing but plain white polo shirts, grey shorts and a school caridgan and jumper with a logo on. She would e-mail him with receipts and just expect him to go halves on everything and it was particularly indulgent.
He's finally cut off the arrangement and told her they can buy separately and she's turned predictably bitter. We're now in limbo about the texts he'll receive ( even though we've agreed to ignore them) and the trouble she'll cause through the school. She previously wrote multiple disingenuous notes in their Contact Books about how she couldn't afford things or obtain them due to him. They were all ignored by us and the school.
The whole situation is rather typical in my eyes and my solution to it (and is something I always voice to him) is to ignore it. Unless it's an emergency I've said to him that I would completely ignore it. While there is no goodwill there can't be any co-parenting and I know he agrees. We're fully expecting to be messed around with contact in the future as it's only been a few weeks of constant contact and we're fully expecting text messages about uniform and
She left him and there was to my knowledge no affair, violence or anything. He bought her a house around the corner and she complained it wasn't her 'dream home'. She stole things from the house that weren't on the Consent Order and forced my partner to ask her to move in to her house a week early because he was going abroad for work and didn't trust her to not steal more.
She left peacefully but then proceeded to ring his own mother and start a huge facade about being kicked out. Since then he says she's been nothing but bitter.
Fast forward to me meeting him and there was a predictable back lash from her when he stopped answering her goading and pointless text messages. However the most important thing was that she wasn't letting contact happen with the children. They have 50/50 child care and on the weeks he asked for video phone calls 3 times a week for 5 minutes she never picked up the phone on a consistent basis. She would do it once if he was lucky and then would ring unannounced on his weeks expecting to talk to them whenever she pleased. When I was around he never stopped her speaking to them and patiently and calmly kept asking her to reciprocate with no success. The pressure rose until he finally snapped and told her he would no longer have anything to do with her unless there was an emergency. Not believing him because he'd been so nice she was totally shocked when he didn't pick up the phone and start phoning up to 20 times in a row. He did very well ignoring her and sacrificed his own 1 phone call a week if lucky with his children. I supported him in the background greatly. We had a lovely feeling of having some ' time off ' when she had the control taken away and we no longer needed to deal with anything. Texts kept coming through about the children to get his attention but they weren't urgent and he completely ignored them. It was bliss! We both knew however that it wasn't a sustainable option and eventually a solicitors letter came through the door from her stating she wanted contact 3x a week ( exactly what he'd been trying to get for the last 18 months! ) and more money and split uniform costs and lots of generic things.
My partner wrote back agreeing with contact with both of them and tried to set up a routine. This failed as she is incapable of taking instructions from him and desperate to be in control. (Before this letter had happened I had received multiple messages from her family about giving away her things. My partner and I started clearing out old furniture and things she'd left behind and wasn't interested in like bits of fabric, books and cabinets. I put these things up on offer on social media and didn't expect her to see them at all. She proceeded to be told by another female who was connected to my partner and all hell broke out! The items were things she didn'
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