Hi ladies,
I have been with my partner for 18 months. I got with him quite soon after leaving my ex husband. We both have a 7 year old son and a 5 year old girl to our previous partners.
My question is in regarding immediate family's (mum,dad and sister) reaction to my relationship.
My mother continued to contact my ex husband behind my back for some time,even staying at his place (our marital home) occasionally. She asked me to fix something in her text messages one day last April, i stumbled on a many messages where both my mother and my ex where passing judgement on my parenting to each other. I called them both out on it and firmly asked them to cease contact.
They didn't and it eventually really upset my bs, then 6, last May. It took 2 weeks for him to start playing during play times at school again.
After slowly allowing my mother to see my children at my house. The last time mum was at my house, earlier this month, she got in my sons ear yet again and said: 'i miss your father, hopefully one day i can see you at his house, don't tell your mother I've mentioned this'. My son is fiercely loyal to me we are extremely close. My poor boy shut down and cried for 30 minutes until i could get him to tell me what was wrong. By this time my mother had left.
Since this incident i have updated mine and my ex's parenting order to state she is not able to see the kids without my supervision.
My mother and i have seen a councillor together twice, however she continued to belittle me, so i put an end to them.
Have any of you found you in a situation where you have had to discontinue contact with you immediate family due to your first marriage ending and beginning a new relationship?
30 Replies
Ah that’s terrible. It really sounds like cutting contact is best for you and your kids.
I don't have experience with immediate family doing this but I went through something similar with my ex MIL, she always needs to take a side in her kids relationships and has at times befriended her children's exes while running her kids down and causing trouble with the kids in the relationship by telling them things they don't need to know, and trying to get the kids to take a side. What happened when I left my ex was she went on his side (Not surprising, it is her son) then when he got a new partner that she disapproved of she was all of a sudden my best mate while talking badly about her son. Then when I got a new partner she rebounded back to her son. She caused a bit of trouble with the kids trying to get them to take sides as she was, as you have seen this causes a lot of stress and confusion for them. For the last 4 years I have completely banned her from my kids lives because of it, to me psychological abuse is just as damaging as any other abuse and I will remove any adult from my kids lives that thinks it's ok to play with their heads. If your Mum does not smarten up her ways I would suggest you do the same. Give her plenty of warning that's what you are going to do so she has a chance to lift her game, if she doesn't I wouldn't think twice about cutting her out entirely.
He was your mums family too, you can’t just expect them to cut contact with someone because you’ve moved on. That’s not how it works. My ex and I didn’t part on good terms. My mum still treats him like a son in law even though I have a fiancee, I just ask that she not invite him to family gatherings like Christmas and Easter because he makes me uncomfortable. I think you’re being childish. You don’t say it’s domestic violence that you ran away from so your ex should be getting access to his children. If it was DV then I retract that statement. But if it wasn’t you are being to harsh on your Mum and your ex. There’s no reason to withold your children from your ex or your mother. They’ve got an opinion they can share it with each other if they want to. Sure it’s not really a good thing to do or a mature thing to do but they’re friends. You broke up with him your mum didn’t. They are adults. You cannot demand they do something. You can not tell them what to do. You need to put in your parenting orders that they can’t belittle or judge your parenting in front of your kids. And you didn’t stumble across those messages. You were helping her, saw that she had been texting him and you snooped. There’s a difference.
I get where you are coming from. We are friendly with our exes in our family too. However the mum isn’t being friendly she is stirring up trouble, and that’s different.
It will probably be easier to maintain a healthy relationship with the ex and co-parent if the mum isn’t stirring up shit.
So over mothers like you who withhold their kids for stupid fucken reasons, it's as simple as that!! I'm not going to butter this shit up, take a good hard look at yourself , woman!
She's talking about stopping her mother not her ex.
Withholding her kids from her MOTHER, is still withholding! Vile.
No sweetie, a person who manipulates their grandkids is vile!
A person who talks shit about their own daughter to her ex is vile!
Being a grandparent is a fucking privilege, not a God given right!
If this woman's behaviour is detrimental to her grandchildren, then OP has every right to cease any unsupervised contact!
Ask the kids how they feel about being told they cannot see their grandmother anymore. Just because the kids mum has a problem with her, doesn’t mean the grandkids should suffer ! Same goes for shit fathers who the mothers don’t get on with, the father is still important in the kids lives and it affects the kids if they don’t see him either, so too , applies if kids are ripped away from other family members. The mother does not own the sole rights to the kids . There are many ppl in the lives of children , and it’s the children who suffer.
As I said . VILE.
I think you're not seeing that, like most things, there's two sides and sometimes cutting contact is the right thing to do. This OP has been a bigger person than me because she hasn't even cut contact, she has put into parenting orders that her mother can not be around her child as she's proven to shit stir and upset them but even through that, she still has her mother around to see her kids with her present. Two sides to everything and there's nothing at all on here that suggests OP is 'vile'.
The mother is being very immature and not doing the right thing in regards to talking to posters son like that. It’s alright for the mother to hope for something but to say it to him is a big no.
Read the post you nasty piece of work!
Will never understand how you think you can be cunty to a person and still entitled to 'love on' their kids. What that is, is manipulation and very troublesome and confusing for the child you say you want to love, never mind the one you can't get on with but still want to access their kids.
If she continues to behave badly enough that counselling doesn't work - don't cancel it! No, at that point, cancel her and you keep going and the focus becomes how do YOU deal with that.
The responses saying she's withholding the child from the ex, I'm missing that. Where does it say it? I see her talking about her mother.
It doesn't, people read things and come up with their own version
It says he mum said to her child, it would be nice to see you at dads house like this too. Don’t tell your mum I mentioned it. To me it says dad doesn’t see the child.
If dad saw the child grandma would have said, I’ll come and visit when you’re with dad to. Won’t that be nice.
If dad saw the child and him and her mum have a good relationship she wouldn’t have had to have mentioned it at all. Now would she?? But OP is making a bigger deal out of it than what she should.
OP got angry at her Mum and only allowed her to see the kids at her house, that's why she has sneakily said to the boy I will see you at your Dad's.
The children go to their father's house every second week for 7 days.
The post is purely about the maternal grandma not seeing the children with the father as it was upsetting the son.
So many people lack reading and comprehension skills.
Some of these comments 🤦♀️🤦♀️
I don't believe there's a single mum here that wouldn't be at least a little bit hurt if it was THEIR mother who was texting the ex about how shit her parenting skills are or if it were THEIR mother that was getting in her kids ears and upsetting them.
I swear some of you purposely gloss over the real issues in these posts, lack empathy and be dismissive just for the fun of it....
OP.
Even excluding this issue, it's pretty clear to me that the relationship with your mum has probably never been great. If I may hazard a guess, I'd say that her lack of boundaries has always been a problem.
My mum only sees my children under my supervision, I won't bore you with the specifics of that but people who don't have a toxic mother generally don't understand why - that's fine, they don't have to get it.
You do what you've gotta do for the sake of your children's emotional well being.
Well said
Perfectly said!
You can't stop your mum supporting the father of her grandchildren if she thinks he is the victim or doesn't agree with decisions or actions of yours. I'm also confused why saying she hopes to see your grandson at his other home got such an extreme reaction from him. Does he think he'll be in trouble if that happens? Your children should be kept in the dark about the adult drama....
Totally agree. That poor boy crying for 30 mins is an extreme reaction or an exaggeration. I cannot understand why he would be so distraught unless OP is letting him see her anger .
Children come first and in this case the kids aren't. How sorry I feel for those children , they clearly love all of those adults but OP wants control.
You're lucky if you don't understand any of this because it means you have not been blessed with a toxic mother. There are some mothers out there that like to cause trouble in their own kids lives and once you've lived it or witnessed it then you would understand why some parents cut family members out or tell children why they can or can't see a particular person. It's about protecting them, psychological abuse is very real, common and damaging but rarely is someone charged with it because it's so hard to prove. You have to take it upon yourself to protect your own kids from that.
Thats true in some situations, yes , to protect the kids . Absolutely.
But I don't see that valid at all in 'this' post . Nothing in this post strikes me as the mother being particularly toxic, it's this post the comments are referring to. Not other situations of toxicity that arent listed here . We are talking about this post in particular, not someone else's.
In fairness, it's hard to condense a lifetime of tiny issues into a couple of paragraphs.
No, there's not a lot of information in this post but it's a fair deduction to assume this is not the full story, because these posts are never the full story!
There is subtle signs here that there's been issues for a while though, eg where the poster actually mentions that she's been to counselling with her mother but has seen no improvement in their relationship.
OP clearly has a reason to be worried about the effect her mother is having on her kids, so it sounds like it probably is for the best for grandma to not have unsupervised access until those issues are sorted.
So it would be fair to say your advice is based on whether relationship has ongoing issues or is toxic or just reading what's written. OP could them decide if it's relevant. Personally I think any time your mum goes and supports your ex against you is going to have repercussions on your relationship.
I think you are being very petty and it is your behaviour that is traumatising your child.
You need to grow up and get over yourself.
You can not dictate who your mother or your ex associate with.
You also cannot control who your child sees when they are with their Father.