My wife and I have some long time friends that just divorced. They have an 11 year old son that they will share custody of. Their divorce while not bat-shit crazy, hasn’t been that amicable, but they did come to terms on the divorce and the custody arrangement, and they both care deeply for their kid.
The husband recently unfriended and blocked his now ex-wife on Facebook, primarily because he doesn’t believe that what he does in his personal life isn’t really any of her business anymore. He has also started dating again, and doesn’t want he to be stalking him on FB.
Within a few days of unfriending her and blocking her, she sent him a text message asking why she was blocked from seeing his FB profile. He has decided to just ignore her. A few days later she asked him again via text why she was blocked. When he didn’t respond again, she replied that he was not to post any pictures of their son on his Facebook feed since she would not be able to see them and not be able to determine if they were appropriate or not.
While we are trying to maintain friendships with both of them, this seems over the top by the ex-wife. I can completely understand why he would want privacy over his social media postings from his ex-wife.
Also, if she needed to have that much control over what happens to her son, she should have sued for full custody with no visitation rights by the father. But she didn’t and wouldn’t have won even if she had tried.
I say the husband has every right to ignore her demand for full transparency regarding their son.
Really?!! I’m astounded you actually believe that.
Divorced or not, they are both still the parents of that kid, and both need total transparency for the good of the child.
I’m tired of people using kids as weapons to lash out at their ex partners. The only important consideration is, what is best of the child? What is best for the child is to have two parents who are communicating and totally in tune with what is going on with him.
That’s either being controlling or using the kid as a pawn in the divorce. But neither one is good.
That seems very reasonable. He could even reply to her with the exact same demand. That she is also not allowed to post any pictures of the kid without his permission. Whether she’s using the kid as a pawn, being controlling or trying to keep him in her life (by regaining access to his FB page), it’s a two way street. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she denies him the same privileges she’s asking for.
If he really wanted to, he could unblock/re-friend her, but then block her from all (or almost all) facebook posts he makes going forward. It’s easy to set it up to do that and may keep her at bay. Especially since with her totally blocked, she’ll just find another way to watch his page. This way, she’ll only see what he wants her to see.
PS, if he went that route, he may consider similarly blocking any friends that she spends a lot of time with as well.
One last thing: How recent is the divorce? If this happened in the last 6 months or a year, she (and probably him) may just need to time to cool down. After a year or two they’ll stop being at all concerned about what the other is doing.
The idea that she needs to see his facebook feed as a means to determine the appropriateness of the father/son activities is insane. Dad is doing nothing wrong here. If Dad says “I’m taking sonny fishing.” and she requires a picture of them holding a fish to be published on the internet, then she needs to get a grip.
My ex eventually got the message that I have no interest in being friends with her or to have conversations with her. Occasionally she still tries to initiate a conversation with me or bait me into an irrelevant argument. If it’s not about our children I will not engage or interact with her at all, that seems to work pretty well.
Your friend is under no obligation to carry on her wishes in regards to Facebook, it’s none of her business anymore, some people get angry when they lose control over others.
Yes, that would be best. But he can’t have that - his parents are divorced.
‘I don’t trust your judgment about what pictures you post on Facebook’ is rather far from being totally in tune. The only thing the ex-wife needs to have communicated is “we’re divorced - it’s none of your damn business what I post on Facebook”.
Strikes me that social media is a fucking nightmare when you break up with someone.
It’s only happened to me once (and I don’t have kids) - my ex defriended and blocked me, but beforehand she sent me a very reasonable message saying she was blocking me, but it was because she needed to not see me popping up into her news feed and derailing her recovery, not because she hated me. Which I was fine with.
I think if I was the husband, I would say something like ‘we are no longer together, and as such, I think it’s appropriate that I exclude you from my private social media account. I am not prepared to concede on this point, however, I understand your desire to have transparency around our son, so I promise not to post any photographs of our son on social media, and I ask you to do the same.’
Big picture = this, IME.
OP picture = she has just suggested she sees in her ex a propensity to display the child on the internet inappropriately. If that is baseless, she needs to just accept the rather massive changes in store for her by virtue of a divorce. On the other hand, blocking her out of stalkery paranoia is similarly weak sauce. It’ll take time, but the sooner they can both start acting like adults the better modeling they will be able to do for the kid.
The first thing I did once I had the decree in my hands was block my ex on social media, my phone, etc. The divorce was expensive, but this made it worth it.
Unless the divorce decree has stipulations requiring social media sharing, dad should do as he wishes.
When my ex left, it was the same thing. We were FB friends for a while, but I got sick of seeing her posts, so I unfriended her. But even then, I could still see her comments on our mutual friends posts. Eventually I ended up blocking her so I can see virtually nothing that she posts and, not that I was concerned about it, she can’t see my posts either. In all these years, I haven’t even so much as seen her tagged in one of our mutual friend’s posts. I wonder if FB removes those entire posts from my feed.
One consequence of divorce is that each parent loses some control in how the child is parented. It sounds like the wife still wants all the control. He should probably expect lots more of this kind of stuff from her. If he takes him for pizza, she’ll say he’s being a bad parent because it’s not healthy. If he lets him play video games, she’ll say that the time should be limited. And so on. I guess I might recommend he tell her that they each have their own parenting style and they don’t have to agree. If either of them thinks the other is harming the child, they should take the issue up with the court. But otherwise, she’ll have her way and he’ll have his and they each should respect that. She probably won’t be okay with that, but he can keep repeating when she makes these kinds of demands. It allows him to push back without having to engage and justify his position.
Essentially, the FB issue is not the issue. He shouldn’t try to fight that head on because there are hundreds more issues just like that in the queue. Rather, he needs to be firm that they are two independent people raising one child and they don’t need to agree 100%.
That’s not necessarily fair though. He may be more open in his postings. Given he’s dating, it sounds like he has moved on whereas she may or may not have yet.
What if Dad has a buddy who owns a boat & they go out on the boat. Cool activity, fun time, cost him maybe a six-pack. Mom doesn’t have a friend with similar resources so she looks like a fuddy-duddy when she doesn’t post any ‘cool’ pics. She’s not giving anything up by not posting pics whereas he is.
I blocked the mother of my child from all social media immediately on our separation. She collected (and squandered) her final child support payment from me last month. It is wonderful to not be required by the might and majesty of The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to communicate or deal with her in any way ever again. The husband described in the OP should stick to his guns until he, too, reaches such a glorious day.