My ex is very cool, but she has a massive aversion to danger to our children.
I grew up in a fairly permissive home, where… well, where accidental damages meant a trip to the hospital, but if my mum judged the damage to be less than ambulance calling, would treat it herself. She’s pretty good.
I, on the other hand am not. I have a high fear tolerance and a lot of trust in my daughter and son (9 years old, and 7 years old)
So we arrived at the house in which I am staying, but I don’t have keys yet. Both kids climb ove the fence, problem solved, they got the guy with the keys to open up.
But holy fuck, I mean I did similar in my youth, but scaling a 12 foot fence??
I don’t understand. Is your or your mother’s fear tolerance high or low? Yours sounds low. I guess 12 feet is kinda high for a 7 or 9 year old but you said you did similar as a child and so did I. So why is your ex-wife relevant here? Is it because of some custody issue where she’ll say they’re in unsafe conditions?
Back in the good ol’ days, all kids climbed 12 foot fences.
Nowadays, though, there are different issues. The bigger problem for parents isn’t fear of heights…it’s stranger danger.
[panic] “You let your kids out of your sight, to go talk to the guy with the keys-- who you don’t know!!!”[/panic]
I’ve had the good fortune not to speak to my ex-wife since our divorce. The divorce cost me a fortune, but was worth it as long as I don’t have to interact with her.
She was at my son’s wedding in Florida a few years ago. My kids were kind enough to excuse me from any situations where she’d be present. They know (and understand) how I feel. .
She was also present for my daughter’s celebratory party a year after they eloped (COVID). I did not expect her to be at the party. I assumed she was one of my son-in-laws relatives I hadn’t met. When she approached our table I went to get another drink.
Later, my gf told me that the woman I walked away from was my ex! I couldn’t believe it. Time has not treated her well (neither did I).
Yeah, there are Twitter memes of ER doctors talking about if a farmer shows up by himself, assume you are going to call a code. That was my mom with doctor visits (back in the days before well-baby checks): if she took one of us in, the doc assumed we were within minutes of death. NB: none of us died, so her instincts were pretty good.
Sure, but my point isn’t that I married her because she was pretty cool (which is true) but that she still is despite the divorce (or maybe rather because of it). I got lucky there.
My bro had the same experience. They made a lousy married couple but 30+ years later they’re still good friends, eat together frequently, etc. I like them both and I certainly agree that apart was the right way for them.
Conversely, I expect my soon-to-be-ex-wife and I will settle on “He never existed, so therefore she never existed.” I expect we’ll studiously ignore one another or perhaps exchange a bland “Hello” when we have our first chance encounter.
What good would it do telling her? She would not listen anyway.
If she listened, she would not understand it.
If she understood it, she would not believe it.
And if she believed it, she would not act accordingly.
I did try, really hard, to remain friends despite my intense emotional hurt.
She told me “I can’t carry you anymore” which in itself annoyed me, because I was not asking for help, I was asking for peace, especially as we have children.
My previous girlfriend (we lasted 8 years, as opposed to 10 with my wife) and I are great friends. We were both hurt by the breakup but we chose to remain friends. She is one of my best friends.
My ex, despite her many positive attributes, is not. I wish she was.
My ex-wife and I didn’t interact at all for the first 4 years after we got a divorce, apart from the occasional email from her asking for more money.
We were forced to talk to each other last spring when our younger daughter was hospitalized for a week and literally within 5 minutes, we were raising our voices, which something that is a perfectly normal occurance for her but is exceedingly rare for me.
We still managed to calm down and she asked me how things had been since our divorce. She knew I’d been in a long-term relationship with a much younger colleague for a couple of years and wanted to know lots of things about how it had started (perfectly legitimate since that relationship started very shortly after our separation) and why it had ended (creepy).
Frankly, after 18 years of abuse, both verbal and physical, I didn’t feel like taking the high road and didn’t spare the details.
I did refrain from mentioning the fact that I had more sex in 2 and a half years with my colleague than I’d with her in the last… decade, I guess. And that most of it was sooo much better.
TIL that apparently a fair number of guys think that bragging to their ex-wives about how much better their sex life became post-divorce is some kind of rhetorical score.
I’m not an ex-wife myself, and have amicable friendships/acquaintanceships as an ex-girlfriend, but my ex-boyfriends and I never discuss our post-relationship sex lives at all.
So I don’t have anything like an authoritative opinion on the subject, but off the top of my head, ISTM that most any ex-wife hearing such a boast would basically be thinking “oh jeez, is he STILL butthurt about my not wanting sex with him when our relationship was crumbling? I am SO glad he’s some other woman’s problem now.”
I’ve only had sex once since divorce, and yes it was fun. I did not brag, but I did let my wife know there was a potential girlfriend - so she would learn from me, rather than via the kids. It was, unfortunately, just a once-off, though we remain friends.
My ex is seeing some other guy, I don’t care to know any more detail than that.
That she’s an overly religious, self-righteous hoarder whose idea of a decent sex life was to grudgingly offer it up once a month or so. Also, that it was a relief for me to go on the frequent work trips/deployments that were required for my jobs just to get away from her. As for the second part, no I didn’t tell her any of this; I just finally divorced her after 20 years.
