Partners exes games

[Genevtana]

My partners ex is constantly trying to influence the 6yr old to hate me. She posts pictures of her and my partner as her profile pics. She has self harmed badly twice and so my partner entertains her demands for fear of her acting out again. He is too scared to confront her on anything. He genuinely believes it best not to rock the boat. I am affected by this and am starting to wonder how much longer i can tolerate this attitude from everyone around her. Nobody calls her out on her bad behaviour... and I am asked to block her so as not to hurt her feelings in case she does something to harm herself again. The 6ur old acts out and can sometimes be very cruel to me. How do ideal with this... I'm a believer if you protect someone they never learn to cope on their own.

[athene1399]

Genevtana,

I am sorry you are going through this. SD and I have a good relationship, but I would consider BM at moderate to high risk of another suicide attempt so I can understand that aspect of it.

1) the x is not your partner's responsibility. You should have a talk with your partner about this. If the x tells your partner that she is thinking of self harm, he should respond with "if that is the case, here's the suicide hotline/I'm calling an ambulance/please talk to a professional". Choose an option that you are comfortable with that doesn't directly involve your partner. If she says you need to come here or I will hurt myself "I can't go there, but I can call an ambulance for you". You two can discuss and agree on how best to respond.

2) you should be open with your partner abut how this is affecting you. Some of us tell our partners that we don't want to know about some of the stuff the x is texting them.  That is okay if that is what you choose. But this is something you two should discuss together. 

3) with the six year old, the best option is to discuss "how to treat others", "treating people how you want to be treated". Find age appropriate ways to discuss being nice to people. If the kid says something like "Mom told me to be mean to you" you can't say "mom's wrong", instead ask "how would you feel if i were mean to you?" or "Should we be mean to people?" sometime that gets the child to think about why the behavior they are portraying is wrong.

4) As step parents, we really aren't involved in the discipline of the kid. If the child is very mean to you and should go in time out, your partner needs to enforce this. You can have a talk about kindness, but the actual disciplining falls on the child's actual parent. Unless the child is about to be unsafe, then of course you can step in.

I hope some of this helps. I'm sure others will weigh in as well. And I totally agree with you on if you enable someone by bailing them out all the time, they never learn. They sometimes never learn regardless, but ultimately that is not our problem.

[Penny Lane]

Hi Genevtana and welcome! Fellow stepmom here. I know - we all know - how hard this can be. 

I and probably most of the other stepparents on this board can REALLY relate to coming into a situation, realizing that an emotional terrorist is controlling everyone, and feeling powerless to do anything about it.

I think you are totally right that everyone should not be catering to your partner's ex, it makes things a million times worse. Ideally, you would both get on the same page about how to handle this. I spent a lot of time talking to my then-boyfriend (now husband) about the long term consequences of kotowing to his ex's crazy demands. It seemed like he was making bad parenting decisions to appease his ex, but then she wasn't appeased and she would throw a temper tantrum anyway! Ultimately his choices were: make good parenting decisions at his house and let her make bad decisions at her house OR make bad decisions to appease her and she will still make bad decisions at her house. I also felt very strongly that if H enabled his ex, his kids would grow up learning that it's OK to treat people like that and that you should let them do whatever they want.

But here's the thing that I didn't really realize back then: Your partner is recovering from an abusive relationship. It's very, very hard to undo the conditioning from that. He had to make these kinds of decisions to survive when he was with his ex. It takes an incredible amount of strength to break through it and he has to WANT to do that. You can't do it for him and you can't make him do it either.

What you can do is set boundaries for yourself, both with him and with the 6 year old. Boundaries aren't about what you will allow someone else to do but rather what you will put up with yourself.

So that might look like: If he is going to drop everything to do what his ex wants, you don't want to hear about it. Your money doesn't go to subsidize him giving her money (like, if you live together he can't take that out of the household budget or you don't pick up the tab at date night because he spent his money on his ex). You are not going to sit there and listen while he talks his ex on the phone about her self harm threats - you will leave to do something else.

You can be supportive in smaller ways. Like, help him brainstorm what to do if his ex threatens suicide. (I suggest "I am going to hang up and call 911"). But you've gotta do it with the attitude of "it is your choice whether to use this or not." Otherwise you're setting yourself up for a lot of frustration.

I will add: Obviously it worked out for me and I'm so glad it did. But it is ok for you to say that you don't want to be in a relationship with someone who spends so much energy on their ex. There is no shame in saying "we have such a fundamentally different idea of how to approach this major life thing, I don't think this is going to work out." I don't know if you're at that point but I just wanted to throw that out there for you to think about and see how you feel about that idea.

I agree with Athene completely that in most cases it should be up to the parent to discipline the kid. But you can certainly set boundaries around how the 6 year old treats you. Both with the kid and with your partner. The attitude I've always taken with my stepkids is "your feelings are ok but it's not ok to express them however you want." So I say things like "I hear that you're upset at me but you're saying it in a very rude way. Do you want to rephrase it so we can work on problem solving or should we take a break from this conversation?" Another boundary would be, you tell your partner that you will leave if he doesn't back you up and insist his child treat you with respect.

I want to emphasize that the kid needs a place to express these feelings - they are probably feeling both hurt and confused. They need to have lots of opportunities to express that, just not in a way that is rude or mean. And if hearing those feelings hurts YOUR feelings (totally understandably), there's also no shame in taking a little break, either going home or going for a walk or going in your bedroom to read a book. I actually think that models really good behavior! Take yourself out of the stressful situation until you can pull yourself together to be the adult in the room. I certainly do that and so does DH.

This stuff is all so hard. I'm sorry you're going through it. At the top of the page there's a toolbox and some other resources - that might help you figure out how to set limits and how to advise your partner.

Good luck! Hope to see you around on the boards more often.