This child needs professional counseling and you and her father need to heed the advice of that counselor, if the mother objects you should seek a court order. She is desperately trying to fix the adults and she feels it’s her fault. Rather than try to explain why things are the way they are, you should be constantly reassuring her that it’s not her fault. Children at that age must feel safe and secure, not try to figure out complicated adult relationships. Her father should be the one to frequently reassure her, reinforced by you. Physical contact is also important, both w/ her father and you.
Ocassionally. I think she needs to be in counseling, and I’ve told my finacee that numerous times. He just gets defensive. This morning I brought it up (I had to give her something of mine to sleep in last night because, suprise suprise, the pajamas she brought with her smelled like piss) and he jumped not only to his defense, but also to his ex’s. I had to tell him numerous times that it’s no one’s fault and that I wasn’t blaming anyone, I just thought the child could use someone to talk to.
Fiancee has tried to talk to mom about it numerous times but she gets hyper defensive, much like fiancee did this morning regarding my suggestion of counseling. She considers any concern about her child’s emotional well-being as some direct insult regarding her parenting skills. :rolleyes:
Perhaps I’ve been studying too long today, because I’m having a hard time reading between the lines. What, exactly, are you implying?
You’re in a very sick relationship and you should be considering how this will affect your life, and the child’s life, in the future. Your “fiance” is NOT considering his child’s best interests, but trying to avoid confrontation and/or responsibility.
Ignorant people often punish bedwetting. Making the bedwetter continue to wear the soiled clothing is quite common and it reinforces the guilt that the child already has. It is cruel and may have devastating effects on the child’s maturation.
I’d suggest that you convince your SO that he deal w/ the child’s problems, if he refuses, you may want to reconsider what you’re getting yourself into.
Well, I’m thinking straight out that you’re probably indirectly healing your own childhood wounds via your current situation. Just because that’s something people usually do.
But beyond that general belief, I’m not trying to imply anything in particular. I’m not claiming any specific insight into your motivations, just advising you to look inward yourself and see what you can find. You’re in a difficult situation, and you’ve put yourself there for good reasons; it’s up to you to figure them out.
Indeed. Are you planning on ever having children with this man, lezlers? Is this the kind of father you’d want for your children?
Do you know anyone in the mob?
They have a way of making problems like this go away.
Well, I’m marrying him, so yeah. I don’t think the problem is that he’s a shitty father, he really does try. My own father never made any efforts to see me unless he was trying to piss my mother off. Consequently, I barely know the man. I know that won’t happen with my fiancee and his daughter, he’ll make sure of it. The problem is, he’s spent his life around really domineering, controlling women. His mother is very controlling, as is his ex (and admittedly, myself at times.) As a result, he’s used to just giving up control and letting the women in his life take over.
With respect to his daugther, he thinks it’s an all or nothing deal: either he has no control over his daughter or he gains full custody of her. He’s not ready to have her full time (frankly, neither am I) so he thinks he’s powerless right now. It’s not that he doesn’t care about his daughter, it’s that he doesn’t feel like he has any power to change anything, short of taking her away from her mother,which he doesn’t think is possible.
Right now, I’m trying to show him that he can do something and that it’s not an all or nothing deal.
Thanks for explaining. I’m the first to admit that I care deeply about this child and don’t want to see her suffer. I see a lot of myself in her, and do feel very protective of her. I’m also madly in love with this man, flaws and all. Take those two things together, and there’s a lot of crap I’m willing to deal with.
I already offered to provide this solution in a previous thread. You can still get this sort of thing done for $40 in South Alabama.
I think lezlers is looking for a more, uh, civilized solution. Me, I’d drop Ex From Hell’s corpse in an abandoned well, then toss in a pickup truck load of rocks and be done with it.
I’ve got no credentials in child rearing but I’m going to chime in because I am scared for this child. Her dad needs to get her to a therapist and maybe even the child welfare people need to get involved.
This is not a normal situation. The mom sounds abusive and dad sounds at best dismissive. It’s time for him to stop “giving up control to the women in his life” and think about the little girl who has no control over anything. This child is caught between two people who are very messed up and I fear for her.
For the love of Pete, some folks should just never procreate. This why I have cats.
My SIL is in a similar situation. She knew the situation when she married her husband and she spent the first 3 years of her marriage in a bitter custody battle with the ex wife. It consumed him, it consumed her, and quite frankly, affected her relationship with everyone. She used to be fun to be around. For 3 years NO ONE wanted to be around her because every single conversation centered around “Psycho Bitch Susan” and the latest episode in a never ending, bitter saga.
What finally helped was when Psycho Bitch Susan finally won her attempt to regain custody of the kids. To everyone’s surprise, the unexpected benefit to “winning” was…peace. Susan suddenly had no more excuses to email her ex every day. She had no reason to call him on his cell phone with “urgent” matters about the kids. She had no one at the enemy’s house gathering information to use against them in court. In short, she curtailed her own drama. Occasionally she’d call and try to hurt her ex by saying that the kids didn’t want to come over for their weekend, but he smartly defused the situation (with the help of a counselor, BTW) by saying, “Well tell them that I’ll be here if they change their mind.” No fights. No ugly confrontations in the driveway. Peace. It’s underrated.
My advice?
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Go into this marriage with the full knowledge that this problem won’t ever go away. When you have children together you have a connection that won’t ever be completely broken;
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Quit fighting with your fiance about his former family. He’s going to have to learn to deal with them. If he won’t go to counseling that should be a big red flag to you. If he won’t go to counseling in the quest for calm with his own daughter, what’s the chances of him going to counseling should your marriage hit a speedbump?
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Deal with this child as if you were her nanny. In other words, when she’s in your house, you have every right to tell her to eat brocolli or no dessert because she’s in your charge. But when she’s at her other house, you have no say over anything because psycho bitch or not, she’s the girl’s mother.
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She’s in a screwed up situation now through no fault of her own. Don’t feel sorry for her and don’t overcompensate by trying to buy her affection with trips to Disneyland. That’s not what she needs. The best thing you can offer her is honesty and kindness. And never disrespect her mother because she is an extension of her mother.
Thanks Pundit, that’s good advice. I do try to stay out of the fiancee/ex drama. The only time I get truly irate is when she calls him drunk, gets him on the phone by telling him its about his daugther, then talking dirty and trying to get back with him. Talk about feeling helpless. This woman calls my home (via his cell phone, we make sure she doesn’t have our home number) and actively tries to get back together with him, telling him she can’t be with anyone else and that he owes it to their family to try to work things out. Half the time he drops daughter off she makes passes at him. She emails me telling me they slept together, then tries to act like I’m so pathetic and insecure for thinking there might ever be anything going on. It’s sad, really, but it still pisses me off. You’ll all be happy to know, I don’t react, however, to her anyway. I do sometimes vent my frustrations with her out on my fiancee, which I know isn’t right, but hell, I’m human!
We keep thinking she’ll get over it and move on eventually but it’s been over two years and her behavior still hasn’t changed. He has gone into counseling before with her, when they were trying to work things out, so it’s possible.
I’m thinking I should seek some counseling on my own, to help deal. I’ll wait till I graduate law school in a couple months, however, so I can actually afford it!
But, lezlers, don’t you see? You’ve already won. The only battle over him is in her deluded mind. And with every pathetic and desperate attempt to seduce him, she cements your victory even further.
FYI, my BIL did indeed sleep with his ex-wife shortly before my SIL married him. Once. It happens. The marriage took place anyway and since then the ex has deteroriated to the edge of insanity. She pretended to attempt suicide which included signing over custody of the children to him, called him at all hours even after he hung up multiple times (he’s on call or he’d have taken the phone off the hook entirely), attempted to seduce him by coming to his work wearing nothing but negligee under her coat, etc., etc. No matter what she tried, he rebuffed her. And it drove her nuts. (We joked that she was like that spoiled brat in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:” she wanted an Everlasting Gobstopper and she wanted it now!)
The funny thing is that the more she tried, the more disgusted he became by her. SIL didn’t have to do anything but retain her dignity and sanity to look fantastic by comparison.
So relax and be content knowing that while she’s still struggling for all it’s worth, you crossed the finish line months ago.
lezlers, I was the child in a similar situation, the extent of which I’m still realizing.
My mother and father divorced when I was two or three, and my father and stepmother were married when I was five.
My parents played me against each other. Strongly. When I was little, my mother poisoned me against my stepmom and my father. She told me that my stepmom didn’t like children, and didn’t ever want to have any. She told me that my father used drugs. She told me that they were hiding assets and income to avoid paying child support. They, in turn, told me that she was an unfit mother, constantly criticized her parenting choices, suggested that she was mentally unstable. When my stepmom (who was often the disciplinarian) yelled at me for something, my mom told me it was child abuse. There’s lots more.
They had dual custody for most of my childhood. Two weeks at one house, two weeks at another. I was in and out of therapy for a lot of my childhood, and they were in and out of court. I was too damned stubborn to remain in therapy; the last (court ordered) therapist finally gave up when I refused to talk to him over half a dozen sessions. That was when I was about 12, I think.
Relations between me and my dad and stepmom got worse as I grew into a teenager. My mom was fairly permissive and I rebelled strongly against my dad and stepmom’s rules. I moved in with my mom when I was 16 and didn’t talk to my dad or stepmom for nearly a year. I don’t even remember exactly what it was that finally made me leave—some stupid power struggle argument—but from the lofty vantage of my 25 years, I can say that their rules were unreasonable, and I was acting like a typical 16-year-old know-it-all jackass. I’m sure I’ll have a different perspective by the time I’m a parent.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel. My entire childhood, my parents were not on speaking terms. Any events that they had to attend, they did so on opposite corners of the room. If at all possible, they would take turns attending. When I graduated from high school, my mom threw me a graduation party, and invited my dad and stepmom. When I first told them they were invited to my mom’s house, they laughed in my face, but they eventually reconsidered, and came. When I graduated from college (which all three helped to pay for), my dad and stepmom invited my mom to the party. They occasionally talk on the phone when they or I are making a visit, to see if anything should be brought down.
I have a lot of respect for my stepmom, now. She put up with a lot from me and my mom over the years. She wasn’t an angel; some of the invective came from her. But she took far more than her share of misery on, and managed to raise me well along the way. She and Dad will be celebrating their 20th anniversary this year.
Thanks iamthewalrus, that was a great story. Sounds a lot like my situation and I’m so happy your stepmom was able to push through and gain your respect in the end. The daughter does love me and I her, my fiancee tells me she treats me far better than her mother, mostly because I don’t allow her to speak to me disrespectfully while her mother lets her do and say whatever she wants. I’m sure the honeymoon period between myself and the daugther will end abruptly right around her teenage years. I just pray she doesn’t become impossible to deal with due to her childhood trauma and complete lack of discipline from her mother.
Pundit, thanks again. I know everything you say is right. Funny thing is I’m the exact opposite of the ex. She is trashy to the T, while I am somewhat reserved and I like to think, classy. She’ll bust out with vulgar language I wouldn’t dream of using, and I’m neither a saint, nor a prude. Problem is, he likes the trashiness at times. I guess I fear that in a moment of weakness during one of those times, he’ll give in, just like your BIL. It’s hard knowing that someone is constantly dangling a lollipop in front of your S.O’s face, no matter how trusting you are. He could probably get away with it too, since she tells me they sleep together all the time and he knows I don’t believe anything she says.
Guess my only choices are get a hold of my own insecurities and tough it out, since she’s never going to stop, or leave. Of course, if I choose the latter, then she wins and we can’t have that, can we? 
This is an issue that has nothing to do with his ex. It has to do with his character. If you don’t trust your fiance implicitly, then I’d highly advise against marriage and/or co-mingling your assets.
Think very hard about this one, lezlers. The ex isn’t the only lollipop in the candy store and if you cannot trust your husband to resist sampling them, you’re going to end up hurt. You deserve more than a man you cannot trust 100%.