Emotional Abuse

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. Would he not have PR rights, he was married when son was born June 03 and his name is on the birth certificate. Sorry I am so rubbish at all this, I have never been married and after all this, never will. We just need to get all the facts right before he discusses anything with her.

He would have PR.

I think the issue is that his parenting time at the moment is dependent on his ex's goodwill, which gives her power. Your ptr has accepted a secondary status, for a quiet life. You do what you can to keep seeing your kids - it's wrong to describe this as weak behaviour. That said, the balance between appeasing the ex and maintaining a relationship with yourself has clearly gone wrong somewhere.

In terms of a solution, I think you need to consider 2 areas.

1. Legal - your ptr applies for a contact order. He represents himself to keep costs down. He joins families need fathers to get support/advice. The outcome ought to be a court order that defines parenting times effectively removing the ex's power.

2. The ex - you both need to take a step back and work out a strategy for dealing with her. At the moment she does more than dictate contact terms, she is an intrusion into your lives and is a destructive element. A court order on its own won't change that. Your ex needs to manage the relationship in such a way as to minimise the nastiness from her, and, make her less inclined towards nasty behaviour. Outright hostility is just going to fuel more problems. Perhaps just keep communication very polite and to a bare minimum.

Thanks for your response. This situation is starting to make me quite ill. I have decided to let my partner come home as I will not let this woman deny 2 children a full time father. I think the only thing I can do in this situation is totally detach myself and our daughter from that part of his life. He can go and stay at his mothers when he has his son and he can come back home once he has dropped him off. The ex may have control of him because she uses her son as a whipping stick, but I am not going to allow my daughter to be exposed to this. When his son is old enough to tell his mother that he wants to spend time with us, I will gladly have him back in our lives.

Are you having your partner back because you want a relationship with him or so he can be dad to your child?

If you want a relationship with him, you have got to find away to deal with the ex and somehow stop her being in control of your lives.

Good luck

I do want a relationship with my partner, even though things are very strained between us at the moment. His ex wife is very dominating and he is, for some reason terrified of her. I am not here to tell him what he should do with his life, all I can do for the moment is sit in the background and hope he comes to his senses and realise what this woman is doing to his son. She just wants to make sure that my partner cannot give his son a stable family life which is a shame as when we are all together that's exactly what we have. The damage she is doing to her son with all her shouting and screaming will soon become irriversible and this is what I now have to detach myself from as I will not have my daughter exposed to this kind of life. A childs innocence does not last for that long, so the longer I can protect my daughter from that, the better, as the children are the most important thing in this. Just wish this woman could see this.

Its very difficult when the ex still tries to control everyone lives.

My partner ex didnt want to remain married to him (she had the affair) but now thinks she can still control every aspect of my partners life.

Whenever the phone rings (he has a special ringtone for her so I know who it is!!) my heart starts pounding wondering what unreasonable requests she will make this time.

Luckily my partner is standing up to her and so she is slowing realising that things have changed and when she say jump my partner has the right to say NO!