Very, very well said. That’s excellent advice for much more than just the OP.
I’m not sure we should take the underwear sniffing story at face value either. We’re getting the OP’s version of the BF’s version of that story. Who knows what really happened…if anything.
There are lot of options between letting the ex and child move in vs. putting them in the street. He could have helped her with the rent payment on her place (assuming that she wasn’t utterly destitute), for example.
The question I think you have to ask yourself is if you could live with this if nothing changes. Because I wouldn’t assume that it will for at least a decade.
You guys must have much nicer exes than me. The thought of letting an ex move back in with me no matter what the circumstances is just beyond me. Theres a reason why you chose to leave them in the first place, even while having a child, so i dont see any benefit whatsoever for either me or the child in letting that happen under any circumstance. Take care of the kid? damn right i would. Take care of the ex? uh, no are you insane?
I’d put the engagement thing on the back burner until the situation becomes one you can live with. Obviously, you’re bothered by this woman being in your man’s life, and that’s never EVER going to change. I suggest the three of you get together and try to find some common ground. You will be interacting with his ex regularly, and the kid is going to sense the animosity if you don’t figure out a way to snuff it out. Good luck.
To a certain extent, taking care of the child necessitates taking care of the ex – or at least, it necessitates doing what you can to protect the child from the trauma of seeing harm come to his mother. Bringing the kid into your home but telling him his mother can rot on the street is going to be very damaging to the psyche of the child.
I agree that there are other ways to deal with the probklem, such as helping with rent or with groceries or something, but you can’t separate the emotional welfare of the child from the welfare of the mother (or, barring a situation with abuse or neglect, from the physical presence of the mother).
Yeah… re what Diogenes said there doesn’t seem to be any significant comprehension by the OP (and several posters in this thread) that the problematic -ex is THE MOTHER OF HIS CHILD not just a baby sitter . MY ex and I do not get along all that well, but if she and the kids were facing homelessness I would open my door to them in a heartbeat, and my kids are 22 and 18, not toddlers as in the OP.
The ex may be manipulative psycho-bitch but she is still the mother of his child and therefore has (and will have) a prominent place in his universe for the next 20+ years. If this is not acceptable then you need to move on.
If someone tells you a hundred times a day that he loves you, he doesn’t.
It’s also something that cheaters do.
So anyone with a crazy ex shouldn’t try to build a new relationship until the kids are adults?
The ex is now three hours away. The only problem seems to be the immature BS on the MySpace page, and that can be ignored. Frequent or rude phone calls “at all hours”? Use Caller ID or hang up on her. As long as BF is cooperating, and it sounds like he is, why dump him because his ex is trying to cause problems?
As for the OP mentioning the ex being 30, it’s because the ex is acting like a teenager.
LilGypsyGirl, what are your friends telling you? They know both of you better than we do.
The only person in the world whose behavior you can change is yours.
He’s going to do whatever he wants to do. YOU have to decide whether or not you trust him.
SHE is not an issue, ***if ***you trust HIM. (There is no scenario where he is FORCED to go back to her. That is you already excusing him for bad behavior he hasn’t even committed yet, to the best of your knowledge.)
If you decide that you trust him, stop checking her friggin MySpace page, stop worrying about her, stop making yourself crazy.
If you decide that you don’t, get out of there, now.
So she’s “30 :rolleyes:”…YOU’RE the one logging into MySapce and letting her little games drive you nuts. How old are YOU? (my guess is younger than 30).
So many red flags here it’s like a Young Communists parade.
If what you say even approximates the reality, she is not over him and actively trying to salvage a relationship.
And he’s not over HER either. Lots of ex’s manage to share custody of a child without all the drama. It’s not all coming from her, imo.
He has not severed his emotional ties to her, and she is using that to manipulate him and he is letting himself be manipulated.
Unless you want this sort of drama in your life long-term, get out and don’t come back until/unless he is willing to actually break up, finally, with his ex. (hint, he’s not)
And don’t just dismiss her actions as immature or nuts out of hand; she likely has reasons for suspecting and accusing him of cheating and for hanging on to the idea of getting back together with him (his signals/actions encouraging this hope).
As Dan Savage would say, “DTMFA”.
If you enjoy the drama, stick with this guy. If you are getting tired of the drama, move on, because the drama is not going anywhere.
(P.S. Your fiancé needs boundaries with his ex. Yes, she will always be his ex, and she will always be the mother of his son, but there are still any number of boundaries that need to be installed ASAP if he wants to get on with his life.)
It doesn’t look to me like she’s violating any boundaries.
What a stupid thing to say. How does one point to the other?
Unless you are a complete loser you deserve better than this. Lovely people can have untenable personal lives. Your SO sounds like one of those people. Set guidelines for what you consider a healthy reasonable personal life that you can deal with and let him know that he can call you up when those conditions are met.
It’s overkill. It’s phony. It’s overdoing it.
Either that it’s just unhealthy smothering.
I would say that attempting to drive the new GF nuts is violating a boundry, if that’s in fact what’s she doing (trying to contact her on-line, posting comments suggestive of her desire to rekindle a relationship with the ex, etc.)
But I think the one who really needs to erect some boundries is the BF. His contact with her needs to be limited to their child, yet he is tolerating her initiating contact beyond that, either because he’s a total wimp or because he’s still interested in her or thinks he might be and trying to keep her hanging while he has his new GF as well. Keeping her in reserve, as it were.
I totally agree that if she trusts him, she should just ignore the ex and get on with life, but I don’t think she does trust him completely, which is why this scenario bothers her.
I also got the impression that the OP and her fiancée were significantly younger than 30. So my first reaction is - you’ve been with the guy for 15 months and you’re engaged?! Slow down there, cowgirl! Leaving aside dramas-with-ex-and-child, that seems a very rapid progression in the relationship. Did you get engaged before or after the ex moved in? Did he propose, or did you? Did he suggest marriage as a way of reassuring you that he was committed to you when the ex moved in?
I also agree with those posters who have pointed out that you are taking everything your fiancée has said about his relationship with his ex at face value. Trust is important in a relationship, so I’m not suggested that you disbelieve every word he said. Just keep in mind that his views will be biased - best case scenario, he’s telling the truth filtered through his own perceptions and emotional bias; worst case scenario he’s actively casting his ex as the crazy villain in order to gain your sympathy. I’m always suspicious of men who bad-mouth their exes, and the accusations of infidelity always raise a red flag with me. It means that if the new girlfriend ever suspects the boyfriend of being unfaithful she can’t raise it without being told “you’re just like my ex!”
There’s a lot of good advice in this thread, so I will only contribute this: unless you and she are actually friends, you have no reason to believe him (or his stories about her sniffing his underwear) over her.
When my ex (my daughter’s father) and I were together, he cheated on me repeatedly. I knew he did, and I called him on it a few times. Of course, he denied it, and of course I was young and stupid and in love and forgave him. He also liked to throw me against the wall now and then. When I finally left him over the physical abuse, he (almost immediately) moved in with the skank with whom I had accused him of cheating on me – pretty good at recognising these things, I am.
At any rate, he of course was still calling me (I moved back to TN from WA) and wanting to have phone sex with me, etc while he was with this woman. Being a bit vindictive, knowing that bitch had known all along that she was sleeping with a man who had a partner and child, I went along with it all. When he came down to visit us, I fucked his brains out – say what you will about him, we had a great sex life. After a few years being with her, he began to beat her and she eventually left him.
The best part (and the part that makes this story relevant)? Stupid bitch called me to cry on my shoulder. She told me how the only reason she hooked up with him was that he told her all these stories about how horrible I was. That I would sniff his underpants (WTF? seriously, I barely wanted to touch them, let alone smell them!), that I would follow him and stalk all of his ex-girlfriends (again, all of his ex-girlfriends lived in other states, how the fuck could I stalk them?), that I never gave him sex (we had sex 3 - 4 times PER NIGHT on average), and that I was physically abusive to him. She “just couldn’t understand” why he started abusing her, since she “was never a jealous bitch like” me. Yeh, I hung up on her, but not after about wetting myself laughing at her.
The moral of the story is, anyone who trash talks their wife/girlfriend/ex-wife/ex-girlfriend can’t be believed further than they can be thrown on average. Whatever her issues are, the bottom line is that if you are uncomfortable with the situation, you need to cut him loose, because his child (and his child’s needs) should come before you. Period. Maybe she is doing things to use the child to drive a wedge between you two, or maybe you just feel that way because that child isn’t yours, but whatever the cause, if you think your needs should supersede that child’s then, well, you have no business being involved with someone who has a child. Just my opinion.