So my SO’s psycho ex-girlfriend finally got a hold of my cell phone number. We were driving his daughter home on Sunday, he forgot his cell phone so we had to use mine to call. Being idiots, we didn’t think to block the number. Sure enough, the next day, I got a message on my voicemail calling me a “fucking whore.” She said there was “more to say, so [she’d] say it later.” Now, the SO and I have been together for two years. He and the ex had been broken up for two years prior to that, although they were still sleeping together off and on. The woman is a total nutjob. Even though they haven’t been officially together for going on four years, she still drunk dials him every few weeks (she has a little drinking problem). For the two years we’ve been together, I’ve had absolutely no direct contact with her. We’ve never seen each other (in person anyway, I’ve seen pictures of her) and we’ve never spoken directly to one another. She’s totally nutso and I’ve been told it’s “for my own protection” by the SO, his friends and family.
Here’s the thing, I am absolutely dying for her to call me again. Crazy, right? I’m checking my cell phone constantly! I don’t know what it is. Maybe the fact that after her being such a huge part of my life for the past two years, I finally have an opportunity to have some one on one contact with her? Maybe I’ll have the opprotunity to say all the things I’ve always wanted to say to her? I have no idea. Perhaps her nutty vibes actually made it through the phone and into my head. It’s killing me. I can’t call her because my SO would kill me. And I know it would be increadibly silly. No good could possibly come from it, the woman is totally unbalanced. But, all rationality aside, it’s killing me.
Honestly, I feel like I’m waiting for a crush to call or something. It’s totally sad and twisted.
I’m pretty much asking for opinions of why I’m so obsessed with this woman calling and what the hell I can do to get over it. Also, has anyone else has been in this situation?
I’m a fucking whore, but you’re a crazy fucking whore?
I mean, I guess I sort of get the desire to tell a nasty person to pound salt, but really, how do you see the scenario playing out in real life? If she really is bat-shit insane, you don’t stand a chance (assuming, of course, that you are not.) Never go head to head with crazy - crazy always wins.
That being said, enjoy your fantasys involving reducing her to repentant tears where she swears never to torment you again.
If you just want to talk to her to tell her off that’s sort of pointless.
You could call her to see what she has to say. Maybe she’s not as crazy as you think she is. Or she could be. Did she get crazy after he broke up with her or was she crazy before that?
Wouldn’t it be nice though for his daughter if you all could get along. Imagine how horrible this must be for her.
I had an acquaintance who thrived on what she called “shit-stirring.” She loved drama and confrontation. Nothing was more exciting to her than to have a “Jerry Springer” incident with a boyfriend’s ex or get involved in a vendetta against someone. I always thought it was sort of childish.
I’m the kind of person who will go really, really far out of my way to avoid that sort of thing. If I want drama, I’ll watch a soap opera.
The funny thing is, I don’t even know if I’d answer the phone. I’d probably wuss out and just let her leave a nasty message. I’ve already written her a long (suprisingly cordial) email which I’ll probably never send. She was crazy long before the two of them broke up.
I have this weird fascination with her, probably because she was such a huge part of his life for so long (they were together off and on for over 15 years.) For those of you who watched Six Feet Under, they were kind of like Brenda and Nate. Totally dysfunctional couple who made each other misreable when they were together, yet, couldn’t manage to stay apart.
It would be nice if we could at least be civil to each other, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
I’m with you. I am not a shit-stirrer at all. Other people’s drama can be entertaining but I never want my own. I have a friend who’s a total shit-stirrer who I’m usually convincing not to make that call, write that email, ect.
That is why I’m trying to understand why I’m so obsessed over this. It’s very out of character for me. I’m thinking if I can understand why, I can get over it.
I went through a similar thing about a year ago. I won’t go into detail, but this woman was (is still, mostly likely) bat-shit crazy, and injecting herself into my husband’s life. I was obsessing about her for weeks until the huz cut off contact with her.
Normally my life is pretty drama-free, and I like it that way. But this situation came up and suddenly all I wanted to to was force this chick to be rational and see things the way they really are, and not the way she was pretending they were.
So, lezlers, what I’m saying is, I have no advice for you, but I do very much know how you feel.
I already know what penal code I can get her arrested under (using a phone or electronic device for purposes of harassment). I think that may be part of it too. Everyone in his life has the attitude of “oh, that’s just N, she’s crazy, what can you do?” whenever she gets all nutty. She’s damaged property, made harrassing phone calls, ect.
I was actually quite happy when I got the voicemail because now I have the opprotunity to do something, myself. Of course, I can’t do so unless she calls me dammit!
Y’now I’m not much of a shit-stirrer but I come from a long line of them, and I understand the tendency a bit. For the last few years, this woman has been involved in your life without you ever getting a chance to confront her and deal with her. Now she made a move, it’s natural to want to confront her.
Exactly. And the fact that I can never make the first move, I have to wait for her to contact me. If I were to call or email her, the SO would be very pissed, as would his family. They have a kind of “don’t feed the bear” way of dealing with her. If I were to make the first move, I’d basically be prodding the bear with a red-hot poker.
Yeah, I agree with the ‘don’t feed the bear’ thing, but also ‘don’t put up with any shit from the bear’. If she does start her big spiel (don’t let your imagination run away with you there), harrassing phone calls etc. go to town and do have her arrested. His family might say you’re overreacting but just say it’s for your own safety and don’t they want you to be safe?
Stay calm and collected, don’t do anything rash and keep safe. Good luck!
Is she the mother of your step-daughter? That wasn’t made clear in your OP.
It’s understandable to want to go off on her. You’re angry at her, no? She’s been like a stain on your relationship that you can’t clean up. She’s gotten under your skin and you have been eating that for two years. Now it’s really personal because she directly contacted you.
If you happen to accidentally answer when she calls, and she starts her tirade, just say, “I’m sorry, you have the wrong number” and hang up. Anything else will just be taken as hosile and she won’t stop, you’ll be giving her more fuel. Then, I know it’s a pain in the ass, change your cell number. Seriously. She needs to know that you and hubby are done with her. You’re not going to play her game and give her ANY opportunities to get to you. Also, this behavior of hers is frightening, make a log of every phone call, the date, time and nature of the call. Hopefully you will never need it but if so, the log can help if the law has to get involved.
I went through this with an ex and I refused to give her the satisfaction of calling me and taunting me. I logged every call, and told her what I was doing. She stopped harrassing me.
Well, she is the mother of his daughter, so there’s no way to get her out of our lives for good. That’s the really sucky part. She calls and screams at him at every opportunity. I took her daughter to a movie when we had her for a week this summer and by the way she reacted, you’d think I took her child at gunpoint to watch a porn video or something. She called and screamed at him when she found out I did her daughter’s hair before a birthday party.
Like I said, the woman is unbalanced. She calls every few weeks and “announces” that my SO will never be seeing his daughter again. She’s usually drunk when she makes those calls. Then, a couple days later, she’ll call like nothing happened. That’s another reason I can’t really “feed the bear.” I know if I ever talk to her, he will be most certainly recieving a “you’re never seeing your daughter again” phone call. Even though the threats are always empty, I still don’t want to be responsible for that.
But at the same time, I feel like I have a right to confront her, you know? She has been a stain on my relationship for the past two years. I’m also tired of the SO and his family always tip toeing around her. Someone has to put this woman in her damn place! But, like others here have said, it wouldn’t do any good. She’s nutty, and there’s no reasoning with nutty.
lezlers, why isn’t your man suing for custody? It cannot be a healthy envioronment for this child to be in, and I can’t imagine a court ignoring that.
What you need to do is start documenting these calls. Keep any tapes of phone messages she leaves you. Check your state’s laws-- you may be able to record phone calls. (Some states allow it if one party is knowledgeable that they’re being recorded.) It seems that you’d have plenty of evidence to present (especially if you can get independant witnesses to her behavior) which would show that she’s grossly unfit to be raising this child.
That’s a horrible spot to be in. I feel especially bad for the little girl. How horrible to have a mother that is not well.
Ok, I know you didn’t ask for advice beyond helping you control your urge to confront this woman but I am going to be that “girl who gives unwarranted advice anyway.”
Your S.O. may want to look into ie. consult, a lawyer, not so much as to take action, but to protect himself should she ever try to actually prevent him from seeing his daughter. This is, of course, if he doesn’t already have some pretty clear custody arrangement in the courts.
I understand how the family is hesitant to take any action. Bullies, especially mentally unstable ones, can easily gain the upper hand through intimidation and threats. However, if you cannot convince them to at least be proactive in some non-threatening fashion then perhaps you can be proactive.
Quietly log every harrassing call, every threat, every action that is intimidating or bullying. If things escalate you have evidence to protect yourself and your S.O. and the daughter. (well at least you’d have tried, rather than doing nothing at all)
The biggest concern here is for the physical and emotional well being. Is she doing ok? Perhaps you, S.O. and the daughter can get some kind of counseling if this is taking an emotional toll?
I’ve been on his ass ever since we got together to get joint custody of his daughter. He keeps saying he will, but never does. I think it’s partly because he doesn’t believe she’d ever not let him see his daugther, despite her bi-weekly threats, and partly because he doesn’t want to send her off the deep-end, which he most assuredly would, just by the mere mention of “custody” from him (there’s no reasoning with her, you can’t explain that him having joint custody would change nothing.) Any legal action and all she thinks is “you’re trying to take my baby!!” We’re both in our last year of law school, I could draw up the paperwork right now, but that won’t help unless he’s willing to sign and file it.
There’s many more reasons why he doesn’t want to get full custody of his daughter, despite the woman’s loonyness.
I am logging any phone calls she makes to me, but I’m not sure how I could record phone calls between them, or if he’d let me. He’d rather just ignore and dismiss her calls, partly out of embarrasment over the fact that he was with such a wack job for so long and partly because he’s afraid of what she’d do if she found out. The calls are also embarrasing for him (she likes to tell him how much better she could fuck him than me, that kind of thing). That’s why I’m so desperate for her to call me. That seems to be the only situation that I have any control over and can do anything about.
As far as counseling, she’d probably spontaneously combust if she found out we took her child to counseling…
Wow, lezlers, what a sucky place to be in. I totally understand how you’re feeling. All this time, you’ve been sort of downhill from all this drama, having to deal with the fallout but not able to deal with the source. If she were to call you directly, you could finally have a shot at the source. You’d have an opportunity to dish it out rather than resignedly take it. Again.
I get that.
But I also see that you’re mature and understanding enough to see why this is a bad idea intellectually, even if that hasn’t resonated in your emotional “gut.” Good on you for warding off the temptation as best you can.
For what it’s worth, I went through a similar mini-drama last year. My husband is a musician, his ex-wife used to manage him. She is also batshit (not just my opinion, but that of every single person who knows or has met her). Their ugly divorce is long over, but her hatred burns on. Anyway, after a couple of years of avoiding one of his old favorite venues, my husband had an opportunity to play there again and took it. We found out a few days before the gig that she would be there. My husband agonized about it for days, was a stressball getting there, and went up on stage and just completely kicked ass. Apparently, as soon as he stepped on stage, she stepped out for a smoke and though she said a few choice things, she didn’t cause a scene or pick me out of the crowd (we’ve also never met).
For those days leading up to the gig I thought carefully about whether or not I should go because a dark part of me very much wanted her to seek me out and just try something. After all these months of hearing about her and helping my man work through some of the baggage she’d left him with, I was itching to stand up to her.
As to custody: I do think your husband should get legal guidance. There’s no reason for her to know what steps he’s taking until he’s decided to take action (if he does – and if he doesn’t, she’ll never know at all). What has he got to lose?
And continue pushing him to attempt for custody. For the same reasons, I’ve been pushing my boyfriend to gain custody of his oldest daughter - her mother is a mental lunatic and a raging alcoholic (although she always straightens up when her daughters’ social worker comes by). It’s not a revenge issue. It’s honestly not healthy for his child to be there.
The mother has no idea I exist - if she did, she’d have called me and ripped into me by now. The Tashaboy, however, thinks I’m more than a mental match with her. I have the ability, when confronted in person, to reduce a person to tears. I always feel bad afterwards, but I suppose it’ll come in handy some day.
