Respond constructively to ex, about son, or not?

Started by gfuertes, November 04, 2021, 10:36:02 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

gfuertes

Background:
My NPD (possibly Antisocial PD) ex-H was in prison while our son was 10-12.  Now our son is 13, and things are pretty prickly between him and his dad.  Instead of trying to understand and relate to our son and support his interests and ideas like I try to, my ex unilaterally chooses interests for them to share.  Some are fine.  Some, he's imposing on our son, and says harsh things that make our son feel bad, if he's not into them. Others are purely aspirational - big events my ex promises, but which he exclusively tries to schedule when our son has Scout campouts, or it's my birthday, etc.  Then he blames "my" scheduling for "never being able" to do them.

Meanwhile, my ex ranges from passive-aggressive to hostile about our son's individual interests.  Specifically:  Last spring break, our son received a substantial scholarship for a High Adventure sailing trip with his Scout troop.  My ex easily agreed to share the remaining cost with me.  But after the trip, my ex badmouthed the Scout leaders.  Then he argued that our son should skip his annual week of Scout summer camp to spend extra time with him, claiming his own activities with our son are far superior to the troop's, and that the High Adventure trip was a prime example.  He offered no explanation for any of this.

Current issue:
My son recently expressed a fervent wish for AirPods.  I'm pretty thrifty, but I try to get my kids one big thing they want, for Christmas.  I've already bought my son's Christmas gift for this year, so I passed on to my ex the idea of AirPods.  (Just to be clear, my ex landed a 6-figure job straight out of prison - the likes of which he'd never had, before prison - so I was not suggesting an expensive gift to a person who's struggling financially.)

Later, my ex blasts me with:
A) He's considering getting our son a sailboat instead, since our son liked that Scout sailing trip so much;
B) Our son is overeating at my ex's house; and
C) He'd like me to discuss both things with our son - feel him out about a sailboat, and fix the late night snacking problem.  WTH?!

In case it's not obvious from what I said above, the sailboat thing is at best an aspirational gift/activity idea; at worst, it's passive-aggressive, after my ex has been so derogatory about our son's sailing trip.

Is there ANY point in trying to share my more constructive, civil thoughts about these?  Or is the only functional response that my ex needs to decide on his own, how to handle them?

Associate of Daniel

Grrr. So frustrating for you!

My ds is almost 15.

His uNPD father (my ex) and I, to my recollection, never discussed presents for ds.  We've always done our own thing.

Maybe that would work for you?

Your ds might take to the idea of telling his dad that he wants Airpods.  If his dad (and you) don't end up buying them for him, perhaps they can be a surprise gift/reward from you at a later date. Or perhaps you could pay him for doing odd jobs around the house for a while and he can then buy his own. Subject to your finances of course.

If he gets them from his dad too - great. One set at mum's one set at dad's.  Lucky kid!

In terms of he eating at dad's, I wouldn't respond to your ex.  I don't bother replying anymore with such demands from mine.

But perhaps weave healthy eating etc into conversations with ds when he's with you, without mentioning anything about dad's place etc.

Something like "oh I read an interesting article the other day about intermittent fasting and insulin etc"

You know your son best and how he'll respond.

All the best.

AOD

Penny Lane

I would say, however you respond, don't expect productivity on his end. Exactly what you say depends on 1. your capacity to deal with whatever bs response he comes back with and 2. what you know of him.

A good tool here is the BIFF response. Brief, informative, friendly, firm. This is my DH's guide to responding to his PD ex. And it has served us well.

In DH's case, his ex will respond with nastiness to pretty much any communication. But sometimes she will take the suggestion and implement it (while pretending like it was her idea). So for high-stakes things, DH will give her sort of a blueprint for how to handle them. For lower stakes things, like Christmas presents, he pretty much doesn't bother and just lets her sort it out, because it's not worth the stress on our end to deal with her response.

These are just examples, but here are some ways to handle this:
A) "Sounds great, hope you guys have fun sailing!" (The sailboat thing is truly insane. A 13 year old does not need a sailboat and probably does not want a sailboat. To say nothing of the hypocrisy around the scout trip. However! None of that is your problem. Let your ex deal with the insanity.)
B) "I try to model healthy behaviors around eating at my house by cooking meals with a protein, a starch and a veggie, and I ask DS to help me cook once a week. I also have fruits and veggies available at all times. This has led to good results around DS's eating habits." (You're not telling him what to do, or even asking him to do anything. You're modeling good behavior for him. Whether or not he implements it is totally up to him, but you've given him a blueprint.)
C) "I'll let you handle talking to DS since these things are really between you and him. Hope you can resolve it, let me know if you want to hear more about how I handle this stuff at my house." (I think you can also let your silence speak for itself, that you're not going to get involved in issues that are between the two of them. But I like to say it explicitly, once, and then keep the boundary. If your ex is confused about why you're doing something, he can refer back to that boundary.)

You could definitely go briefer - like just say C or A and C. I guess the question is, do you think that responding constructively will change anything?

And on his point C, we would pretty much never do something like this for BM (not that she would ask it of DH). Our involvement in her house is basically limited to coaching the kids about how to best deal with the uncertainty and bad behavior on her end, pretty much only if they ask for it or if it's a safety issue.

Now that I say that it kind of feels like the sailboat thing is a trap. Like he wants you to imply or say that he is going to get your son a sailboat. And then when the sailboat doesn't appear he can make you out to be the bad guy, for not "letting" him get the expected sailboat. Or whatever. Definitely best to engage on that as little as possible.

Ultimately, I'm with AOD, DH has learned that offering information like "DS wants airpods," although meant in the spirit of kindness, is never going to be well-received and pretty much always leads to more stress. The more you can follow a parallel parenting model, the better. It sucks, but it is NOT your fault.

square

My take is that your ex likes to use information against you. So if he knows you'd like X (and that includes "son being happy with Airpods") he will dangle it, leverage it, and blow it up in your face.

I think if you try to suggest anything constructive, you'll simply inform him of what you care about so he can leverage it.

Believe me, I know suggesting the Airpods was totally reasonable. Any reasonable dad would say thanks for the heads up on that, and get them if they fit his budget and values. Because his goal wpuld also be to benefit is son.

I think there are other goals more important to your ex. So the less he knows, the better.

I think I wouldn't even suggest son ask him directly for them, at least nit since you already brought it up. I'd just plan on son getting them through other means, next Christmas, birthday, earned through chores, whatever.

Also the eating thing, I'd totally ignore that. If ex pressed me directly I might say "oh sure I'll talk to him" in a totally disinterested tone and then forget all about it.

gfuertes

#4
Thank you all for the insightful responses.

Brevity is so hard for me!  It makes me feel rude, like I don't respect a person enough to respond to them genuinely and fully.  But in this one relationship, I see the wisdom of the BIFF format.

And the sailboat thing IS insane, and a trap, on several levels:
 
- If I bring up a sailboat to our son (which I have no intention of doing,) Ex thinks any gift from me will thereafter pale in comparison.  And - like you said - even if he doesn't buy one, he'll make me responsible for any disappointment.  He'll tell our son HE wanted to buy one, but I said he shouldn't; or that he never told me he was actually going to do it, so I shouldn't have gotten our son's hopes up. 

- If I tell Ex it's a great idea, he'll take it as an admission that his ideas are always better than mine.  If I say the opposite, he'll take it as an admission that the sailing trip - and Scouts - really aren't such big priorities for our son; they're really about me trying to pre-empt stuff Ex wants to do with him.

- Ex also l-o-v-e-s assigning me tasks that we both know aren't my job, and seeing if I'll do them anyway, for fear of him telling someone I refused, and them thinking I'm an uncooperative jerk, because after all it was such a small request...

- Then there's the maniacal fact that when we got married I had twin sons, and Ex had a slightly younger son, all with birthdays the same month.  When the twins turned 13 (the same age Ex's and my son is now,) Ex and I threw a huge birthday party for all 3 boys.  The twins' wealthy paternal grandmother swept in from her home near the ocean, towing the little, vintage Sunfish sailboat the twins' dad owned, as a kid.  She insisted it was for all 3 of our boys to share.  But it was still a grandiose gift that overshadowed everyone else's...and one that never got used, because the parent with the means to store and maintain it (not me) never had time to take it out, with the kids.  It took me a long time to discover how bitter and jealous Ex felt toward my first ex, over his family's money and connections.  He is wanting some affirmation from me that now, with his job and money (and theoretical useless sailboat for our 13-y-o,) I'm as impressed with him as he believes I was, with my 1st ex.  For God's sake, I married him because I was so much MORE impressed with him than with my 1st ex, and it had nothing to do with money or sailboats.  If he just hadn't lied, cheated, been abusive, used me and everyone around me, and brought so much toxicity into our family, I WOULD see him the way he wants to be seen.   :stars:

Not having simple things become messy, emotional morasses with no good outcomes SHOULD be one perk of divorcing him.  You guys are right:  I can get AirPods for my son later, myself, or let him earn the money to buy them himself.  I can give my ex a perfunctory response, and just not play the game.  If treating our son to a nice gift he's excited about were my ex's top priority, it wouldn't have required more conversation.

Penny Lane

Wow, the context about your previous ex and the sailboat really gives his actions some clarity. He wants to throw his money around the way he saw (imagined that) your ex's family doing so. This is about his own feelings of inadequacy. Like you said, this is no longer your problem!

Often I feel like our PD tries to goad DH into one response or another, trapping him into engaging with her. So like here, he either wants you 1. To say "Giving a 13 year old a sailboat is a bad idea" (so he can argue with you, so he can feel like you weren't so enamored with your previous ex, so he can tell your son that he would have gotten him a sailboat IF ONLY mom didn't stop him) or 2. He wants you to feel out whether your son wants a sailboat (so that he can blame you for disappointing your son when the sailboat doesn't materialize.)

Usually if you step back for a minute, there's a third option that circumvents the trap. In this case it's not engaging at all, just saying ok, like you said. He might take that as proof that his gifts are better than yours ... but so what? I don't think a sailboat is a great gift anyway. Sure, it's an expensive gift, but it's not a particularly thoughtful one. You know that you are a good mom who buys good, reasonable gifts for your kids.




gfuertes

#6
Thank you again, for your suggestions.  I'm wordy, and my instinct is always that the solution to any problem is usually to use more words.  But I resisted that impulse, and didn't react to my ex's message, except to say that it sounded like the issues he raised were things he should probably handle/decide, himself.

Apparently, he decided to buy the AirPods I recommended, for our son.  I know this because he "accidentally" used my address when he ordered them, instead of his own.  We have the same first initial, and he had the pckg. addressed to "G Fuertes" so it wasn't clear which one of us it was for.  A minute after it arrived today, he texted me to ask whether I'd gotten it, and mentioned his mistake.  I interpret this to mean that he wanted me to know he'd bought them, and wanted a reaction from me.  I told him I know our son will be so excited to receive them.   I'm pleased that I sidestepped getting sucked into turning our son's Christmas gift into an unnecessary drama, and that when I declined to participate, Ex appeared to back down and just buy him a nice, reasonable gift.

Stillirise

Glad to hear it worked out!! I too, have learned this lesson the hard way.  Little to no reaction is almost always the best response.  I should probably apply it to even more areas of my life, TBH.  Best wishes for a lovely, and mostly drama-free, holiday season!
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
—Maya Angelou

square