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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2024-04-10 06:01:23.
I am not The OOP, OOP is aitadinnerwex
AITA for coming to dinner with my ex and his new GF uninvited?
Originally posted to am-i-the-asshole-official Tumblr
Thanks to u/PitaEnigma for suggesting this BoRU
EDITORS NOTE: Changed the initial “K” to Kim for easier reading
TRIGGER WARNING: emotional manipulation, theft, verbal abuse, controlling behavior, parental alimentation, drug use, mentions of alcoholism, harassing a child and neglect
Original Post Aug 12, 2023**
This situation is long and messy, so I’ll try to include the relevant info only. I (F32) broke up with my long time partner (M33) right before COVID hit. We stayed in the same house during lockdown and continued to live together after lockdown was lifted, because we generally get along and we had a child (F11) to raise together. Over the last 3 years we’ve been roommates and co-parents and that’s it.
One day he was supposed to take our daughter to buy new school clothes, and she came back 10 minutes later in tears. She said they were on their way to the store when his new GF called, and he drove her back home and dropped her off so he could go spend time with her. He even asked our daughter to lie to me for him, but she was tired of covering for him (implying she’d been lying for him for a while now).
When he got home we had a massive argument. I didn’t care if he dated other girls, I cared that for some reason he thought he had to sneak around, and it made him act like a jerk to me and our daughter. I told him if he had been a man about this new girl and just introduced me to her then maybe we could have all been friends, but instead he had to act like a horny teenager. It ended with him moving out to live with his parents.
A couple days later he called and apologized. He said he hoped it wasn’t too late for him to do things right, and he hopes we can all be friends. I was hopeful that we could finally co-parent in peace for the sake of our child.
This is where I may be TA: I have always been close with my ex’s parents, to the point where even after we broke up I would be invited over regularly for dinner. They said even if I wasn’t their son’s partner I’m still their grandchild’s mother, and that makes me family.
So one day when my daughter texts me while at my ex’s parent’s house and invites me to dinner because they’re having my favorite meal, I don’t think twice about coming over even though my ex and his GF I’ve never met now live there. I figured everyone had to be okay with it, since my daughter was inviting me.
I end up having dinner with my ex’s parents and daughter, but my ex only comes upstairs to grab two plates of food and goes back downstairs. I ask my ex’s mom why and she says his GF doesn’t feel well today. Whatever, I think. She’s just sick and I’ll meet her another day. I have a perfectly pleasant dinner with my ex in-laws, help clean up, and make a promise to bring them a coconut cake (ex father-in-law’s favorite) and take my daughter home.
Later my ex blows up my phone with texts and calls, saying it was so weird and rude that I came over for dinner uninvited. That I made his new GF uncomfortable, and like she wasn’t welcome there. And that I caused trouble in their relationship because she assumes we must still be in love for me to come over and see his parents out of the blue like that, because “exes don’t do that. it’s creepy.”
I had a talk with my daughter and asked her calmly if she had asked everyone else if it was ok if I come over before she texted me, and she sheepishly said she didn’t know she had to ask since it had never been a problem before. (I didn’t tell her about her dad’s meltdown at me, or tell her dad that she’s the one who invited me. She’s a child and shouldn’t be involved)
Instead I just told him I’m sorry me dropping by made things awkward, but I thought he wanted us all to be friends from now on and I figured this was a good place to start being friends. He said there was no way she’d want to be my friend now that I made her feel uncomfortable in her own home.
It wasn’t my intention to make anyone uncomfortable, but I admit I’d be perturbed if he brought this woman into MY home and I had not even been warned first. So AITA?
VERDICT: NOT THE ASSHOLE
UPDATE: My daughter has gone no contact with her father and grandparents for the foreseeable future. Sept 1, 2023
Hey, all. I saw a post here recently about not getting a lot of updates to stories submitted to this blog yet and figured I could give mine, even though it’s a sad one. I also maybe need to vent a little about this situation. Under the cut to save people’s dashboards:
(from now on, ex’s new gf will be Kim, ex father-in-law will be FIL and ex mother-in-law will be MIL)
I’ll start from the day after the dinner and try to give a concise recap of events.
The day after the dinner I bring FIL the coconut cake I promised, but not wanting to stir up trouble I text that I’m bringing it over instead of dropping by unannounced like I normally would. FIL meets me on the porch instead of inviting me in like he normally would, and I gathered from his distant but polite tone and body language that he was basically shooing me away. I was hurt that a man who had always treated me like a daughter was being cold, but I didn’t say anything about it and I left.
Over the next couple weeks my ex in-laws continue to hold me at arms length where once I would consider them not only family, but close friends. I used to take MIL to doctor’s appointments and shopping trips, but texts asking her about her next appointment or inviting her to come shopping with me went unanswered. I used to go fishing and go-karting with FIL, but these invites also stopped. I had a sneaking suspicion my ex was behind the sudden change in my ex in-laws, and I also started to notice a change in my daughter.
Because my ex and I were never actually married, there was no actual custody agreement between us. She would just text her dad if she wanted him to come pick her up, or text me if she wanted to come home. She’s always been a daddy’s girl and spent more time with him than she did home with me, and I was fine with that. But after the dinner she spent a lot more time home with me, and one day she went with her dad only to call me within the hour, crying and asking me to pick her up. On the way home I gently reminded her that she could talk to me about anything, even if it was hard. That adjusting to her dad having Kim in his life would be a challenge, but if she had any problems she could tell me and I would help her fix them, and she told me what had transpired over my ex and Kim’s relationship from her point of view:
My ex and Kim had been dating for about 6 months before my daughter told me, and she pretty much knew about it from the beginning. My ex told her she couldn’t tell me about it, and she agreed because she didn’t want us to fight. My ex also had Kim around my daughter from the beginning, and my daughter was wary of her at first but started to like her. (so the people saying I should meet Kim before she was around my daughter, that ship unfortunately sailed long ago)
The day after the dinner MIL texted my daughter and basically said “You’re not in any trouble, but don’t mention your mom around Kim again”. My daughter texted back asking why and she said “It’s just easier not to upset her”.
Kim started doing all the things with my ex in-laws I used to do. She took MIL to doctor’s appointments, she took MIL shopping, she went fishing with FIL and tried to replicate my coconut cake. My daughter tried talking to her dad and said it felt like Kim was trying to replace me, and my dad just said “she’s just being their daughter-in-law, your mother isn’t their daughter-in-law anymore”. Still, my daughter is stubborn and insisted it wasn’t fair that her mother was being excluded from the family. Her dad just kept repeating “she’s not family”, to which my daughter yelled “She’s my mom! That makes her more family than Kim”.
At this, Kim apparently got up and left the room while my ex ran after her. Kim didn’t just leave the room though, she took her keys and got in her car and drove away. My ex drove after her, and MIL and FIL started scolding my daughter and saying she needed to apologize to Kim when she got back. That’s when my daughter called me in tears and asked me to come pick her up. She’s insistent that she doesn’t want to go back over there until they all apologize to her, and I don’t blame her.
I’m honestly at a loss at all this. My ex never had a problem with me being close with his parents even though we were broken up. Hell, I was the one who stayed with MIL in the hospital for 4 months after she had a heart attack and subsequent heart surgery in 2021. I was the one who went to doctor’s appointments, and organized her medications, and helped her with physical therapy. I was the one cooking meals every night and bringing them to FIL because both he and my ex have been spoiled rotten by MIL and don’t know how to cook for themselves. I was the one cleaning the house for them for over a year while …
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1c0cfme/aita_for_coming_to_dinner_with_my_ex_and_his_new/
I’m honestly at a loss at all this. My ex never had a problem with me being close with his parents even though we were broken up. Hell, I was the one who stayed with MIL in the hospital for 4 months after she had a heart attack and subsequent heart surgery in 2021. I was the one who went to doctor’s appointments, and organized her medications, and helped her with physical therapy. I was the one cooking meals every night and bringing them to FIL because both he and my ex have been spoiled rotten by MIL and don’t know how to cook for themselves. I was the one cleaning the house for them for over a year while MIL recovered. I did it all because I loved them, not just as family to my child but as dear friends.
I don’t know if this sudden change in behavior is how my ex felt all along, or if Kim had something to do with it. Though I suspect it’s a combination of both. My ex has weaponized incompetence down to an art form, and I suspect now that he has a replacement woman to take care of him and his aging parents he no longer needs me to do it.
But that’s basically all that’s happened over the last month. Radio silence for me from people I used to love dearly, and them pushing my daughter away till she ran home in tears. As sad as I am for me my heart breaks tenfold for her.
ADDITIONAL COMMENT FROM OOP
Thank you for your perspective. It’s only been a couple days since my daughter called me crying, and she’s been distracting herself with school and friends so I haven’t really had time to sit her down and talk about how she’s feeling about it all. All I’ve asked her is if she wants me to tell her if her dad tries calling, and she said yes, she wants to know if he tries to call.
She’s had monthly online therapy sessions since her dad and I first broke up, but the first thing I did in light of this was contact her therapist and schedule her for an emergency in person session soon.
I’ve seen several people mention contacting a lawyer and getting a custody agreement set up, and I’m a little ashamed to admit it hadn’t occurred to me to do that. My ex hates anything to do with court proceedings, it’s an almost irrational fear of his. He once had a panic attack over getting a jury duty letter. So part of me thinks he won’t take this to court, but the other half of me knows that I don’t even know this man anymore and I am absolutely not leaving anything to chance.
I’ll be looking into getting a lawyer as soon as possible, and see if we can get some sort of emergency custody order that says she doesn’t have to go back there until the matter of split custody is decided.
VERDICT: NOT THE ASSHOLE
RELEVANT COMMENTS
anonymous
ur MIL sounds like a total enabler to her son’s incompetence, i’m kinda wondering why u let ur daughter be around that in the first place
OOP
Oh trust me, it was a point of contention. I was with my ex since high school and she used to subtly try to tell me I should be “pampering her baby boy like he deserves,” but I think she eventually got the message that I wasn’t someone who could be pushed around. She hasn’t tried to tell me how to run my household or raise my child in many, many years.
My daughter is also super stubborn, just like me. She knows her grandmother has very traditional views on a woman’s place in the home and thinks those ideas are stupid, and she’ll tell MIL such to her face. I’ve never seen MIL try to guilt my daughter or make her feel lesser than for not agreeing with her, though.
I used to think maybe MIL was proud of how stubborn and willful my daughter was, and wished she could have been like that when she was young. Now I’m not entirely sure what’s going on in her mind.
UPDATE: Kim stole from ex in-laws and left. Dec 11, 2023
I honestly did not think I would be updating this post any longer. In the last couple months I’ve gotten a lawyer and have been working out custody with my ex which was rough at first but then calmed down. I don’t want to go into too many details because this situation doesn’t really involve me anymore, just my ex. And he IS still my daughter’s father. So I’ll give the short version:
When my ex was contacted by my lawyer he started blowing up my phone saying I was trying to take his daughter and all his money away from him, and how could I do this to him because he would never do this to me, etc etc. I shut that down quick and told him I didn’t want a dime from him, I just wanted some assurance that the agreement we already had in place (daughter stays with me but is free to visit him) stays in place. He kept trying to say lawyers were unnecessary because he wasn’t going to try to take her, I stuck to my guns, and he eventually caved.
Meanwhile I had my own things to sort through, and so did my daughter. It took a while to fully own the fact that I definitely contributed to the pain she is now feeling. When I broke up with my ex I comforted her by telling her nothing would change. We were still living together. Then her dad moved out and still I told her, nothing will change. I’ll still be active in FIL and MIL’s lives. I’ll still go over there with you all the time. And while that was a nice thought it didn’t really prepare my daughter for the reality that families change all the time and change doesn’t have to be bad or scary.
This whole time she was basing her mental health on the idea that nothing about her family will change, so Kim’s introduction slowly started to crumble away that feeling. But change is good. Change is normal. I may not like being cut off from FIL and MIL, but they’re not wrong when they say I’m not family anymore. They’re not wrong for trying to be welcoming to the new woman in their son’s life. It sucks, but life goes on.
Anyway, my daughter has been going over there for a few hours about once or twice a week with lots of caveats that she, her dad and I all agreed to: She gets to decide when she comes over. Her dad can invite her, but she’s allowed to say no and he can’t argue. No one will force her to interact with FIL, MIL, or Kim if she doesn’t want to. No one will take her anywhere if she doesn’t want to go. If anyone makes her uncomfortable she’ll leave and walk to Diane’s house and call me to come pick her up. (Diane is a coworker of mine who lives 3 blocks away and has known my daughter since she was a baby)
This arrangement has been working out and my daughter has said everyone has been extra nice to her, but they haven’t actually said sorry for anything they did. She slowly started to seem happier and happier over there, and asked if she could go to FIL’s birthday party because her aunt and uncle from out of state would be visiting with her cousins, and I said yes.
Well, tonight she came home and told me a doozy of a story: The party was great, everyone was having a good time, and my daughter’s older cousin was showing her how to play the nintendo 64. Kim was nowhere to be found. Apparently she “didn’t feel good” again, and my ex went downstairs to check on her. Suddenly they hear him screaming “Where is it?! What did you do with it?!”
Everyone got quiet and looked to the stairs where my ex stomped up and said everyone had to turn out their pockets, because some money was missing from FIL and MIL’s safe.
For some context: this safe is locked under the stairs and needs a key and combination to get into it. It has important documents for the whole family and emergency cash in it. FIL, MIL, my ex, and now Kim are the only ones who know the combination, and the only key is hidden in FIL and MIL’s room. My ex went downstairs to check on Kim and she was asleep in bed, but the door to the cupboard under the stairs was open. He got a bad feeling and checked the safe and about $2,000 was missing. He woke Kim up and she cried and said she had been asleep the whole time and someone must have come down and stole the money while she was sleeping.
I was pretty gratified to hear that my ex’s family are nowhere near as naive as he is, and immediately tore into him for believing that lie. None of them had a key or knew the combination, and all of them had been hanging out in the living room. Kim cleans FIL and MIL’s room all the time and knew where the key was. He told Kim the combination. Kim was downstairs the whole time. Kim is the only person who could have done it.
He tried to defend Kim and told everyone to leave her alone, but FIL put his foot down and told his son to find the money or he would call the cops to do it. My ex went back downstairs to talk to Kim, and everyone upstairs could hear her sobbing and calling him names. She went to get in her car and my ex followed her, and what did he see sitting in her backseat? A bag stuffed to the brim with money. A bag that wasn’t there a few hours ago.
My ex tried to stop Kim from leaving, but she tore out of the driveway like a bat out of hell. FIL and MIL are furious and want to press charges, and my ex is begging them not to saying he can get her to bring it back.
Idk where this is going to go next but honestly? I’m just kind of glad Kim and my ex didn’t take me up on my original offer to be friends, because holy shit.
TL;DR I now have sole custody of my daughter, but my ex is not restricted from seeing her. She’s been in therapy, and he’s been extra sweet to her trying to get her trust back. I’ve totally stepped back from my ex’s family which my daughter hated but is getting used to. Today (12/11/23) was my ex FIL’s birthday, and my daughter went to celebrate with her dad’s side of the family. Some money came up missing and it was found in Kim’s car, but Kim got away with it.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
anonymous
looooool at your ex saying you’re trying to get all his money and then his shitty girlfriend stealing from his parents
OOP
I wasn’t gonna say it but that did strike me as humorous, yes. 🤭
NEW UPDATE FINAL UPDATE: Kim’s back, daughter cuts contact. March 11, 2024
Hey guys, long time no update. To be honest, I got spooked off being on here too much when one day my story showed up on a friend’s Facebook feed. Sharing details about my personal life was nerve wracking enough when it was just Tumblr I was sharing with, but suddenly having it shared all over the internet without me knowing, and people I know in real life seeing it? It was a lot! Couple that with the fact that this situation is well and truly not my monkey not my circus anymore, and I wasn’t sure whether I should do this update or not. But I figured I could give this one final update with everything I know, since things have sort of come to a close. (Sorry, but this is long. It’s full of a lot of context I just didn’t have until now. I’ve added headers to hopefully make it easier to just skip to what interests you)
TL;DR Ex got the money back from Kim and she moved out. I find out a lot of things I didn’t know about Kim, then just 2 weeks later Kim and my ex get back together. Kim is still being weird about me and doesn’t want me around FIL and MIL, which upsets my daughter. Family dogpiles her to tell her to get over it, now she barely speaks to any of them.
AFTER THE PARTY
I didn’t press my daughter to tell me anymore about the Kim situation in case she didn’t want to talk about it, but she shared with me on her own that my ex found her the next day and she had only spent $50 of it, which she payed back, and he returned the money to FIL and MIL who decided not to press charges. Kim was not allowed back in MIL and FIL’s house after that, so she and my ex broke up.
Almost a week later (12/17/23) I got a call from MIL, the first one I had gotten from her since August. She started out by apologizing for not talking to me in so long, and invited me over. This time I DID ask who was going to be there, and she said it was just her and FIL in the house (ex was at work). I said I’m not sure I should come over if it would be upsetting for my ex, and she said “To hell with him, it’s my house and I invited you.” So I went over that evening.
FIL was glued to the TV and just nodded at me when I came in. MIL lead me into the kitchen to talk privately. This time she apologized for being so distant, and said it was my ex’s idea that she and FIL cut all ties with me. I asked where he got the idea since it was never a problem before, and she said he didn’t want to upset Kim. She said walking on eggshells to not upset Kim was, apparently, a common occurrence while she was living there. That she could be perfectly sweet and friendly but the second you did anything to step on her toes she would get in her car and leave and swear she’s never coming back. In fact she told me a great deal of things I didn’t know about Kim and that my daughter was too young to ask about or notice, for instance:
THINGS I NOW KNOW ABOUT KIM
Kim is 52 (as I mentioned before on this blog) and has 3 grown children. She was living with her oldest son when she met my ex, but after about 8 and a half months of them dating her son kicked her out and she had nowhere to stay, so she moved in with FIL and MIL and my ex. Why? She’s a drug user.
MIL knows Kim was on drugs because of she admitted it to FIL. FIL is a retired cop and noticed strange behavior from Kim like sudden bursts of energy followed by collapsing in a dead sleep, mood swings and irritability, coming and going at odd hours of the night, etc. FIL confronted both her and my ex with this information and they admitted she was addicted to drugs, but insisted she was getting treatment for it. Apparently, that’s actually how Kim and my ex met.
My ex is a recovered alcoholic (was never brought up until now because it wasn’t relevant to the situation until now). It was really bad when we were young, but I assumed he had been sober since 2015. Unbeknownst to me he had slipped back into his drinking habit sometime in later 2022 when we were still living together. I was there for him when he was at his worst and can say with 100% certainty he wasn’t acting as bad as he was back then, but he did stay out late a lot and always seemed tired. I just assumed he was working late, or hanging out with friends, or hooking up with women. We weren’t a couple at that point and I felt it wasn’t any of my business what he spent his nights doing as long as it didn’t affect our daughter, and at that point I didn’t believe it was.
Fortunately he realized on his own he needed to stop before he spiraled too far out of control, and recognized he could not stop on his own. He joined a local Drug and Alcohol Addiction program, and that’s where he met Kim. They were in different programs, but those programs were in the same building. They ran into each other by chance, hit it off, and started dating. Apparently my ex even confessed to trying Kim’s drug of choice, but swore up and down he was a recreational user only and wasn’t addicted.
MIL and FIL said Kim could only stay with them if Kim continued treatment and any and all drug usage in their house stopped, and my ex and Kim agreed. Then the party happened, and MIL clarified a few things about that for me:
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE PARTY
When my ex went downstairs to check on Kim that day he could tell she had been taking drugs so he went to tuck her into bed. To get to their bedroom you have to walk by the stairs, and he noticed the door leading under the stairs was open just a crack, when usually it’s latched shut. He put Kim in bed and went to check it out and didn’t see anything wrong, but he didn’t trust it and opened the safe just to check. (at this point I interrupted and asked why Kim even knew the combination, and MIL just said my ex said she needed to know it “in case of an emergency” and she was stupid to agree to that)
They usually keep 10k in cash in the safe for emergencies, but my ex counted it twice and was sure 2k was missing. My ex freaked out and shook Kim and shouted at her asking where it went, she said she didn’t take it, he came back up to accuse the rest of the family. He lied and said Kim was sleeping the whole time to avoid mentioning she had taken drugs in his parents’ house, but couldn’t keep denying Kim had to have done it when everyone else kept telling him it she was the only one who could have.
He went back downstairs to confront her, she yelled that he scared her when he shook her and screamed in her face for no reason. He told her she was the only one who could have taken it. She kept denying it and he kept pushing, so she got her bag, stuffed a few clothes inside, and went out the back door to her car. She threw the bag in the backseat so hard the stuff inside spilled out, and my ex saw several stacks of money rubber banded together, just like the money in the safe is. He tried to open the car door but she had already locked it and sped out of the driveway.
The next day he found her in her car in the parking lot of her oldest son’s apartment building. She had asked if she could stay there with him, he said no, so she spent the night in her car. She cried and said she hadn’t been to her treatment program in weeks, and now she needed money to pay some people back, and she was scared. My ex said he didn’t care, give him back the money. She gave him back all but $50 that she had spent, he said she needed to pay him back in a week or he’d call the cops on her, and a few hours later she did. She also came with her daughter to pick up the rest of her things from MIL and FIL’s house just a couple of days before MIL called me.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
Leading up to Christmas both FIL and MIL kept in touch with me almost to the point they had pre-Kim, and I was cordial and polite with them but kept my distance. MIL even tried dropping hints that she wanted me to come clean house for them at one point and I just directed her to the number for a cleaning service. Quite proud of myself for that one :)
However my daughter stayed in close contact with them, and held out hopes that I was going to go over there for Christmas like I did every year. I tried gently reminding her that might be awkward for everyone, and she just insisted it wouldn’t be awkward because Kim’s gone now. And besides, if I didn’t go to FIL and MIL’s house I would be alone on Christmas (my only living family are on the other side of the country and we are not close at all) and according to my daughter that was unacceptable. Then it happened: On Christmas Eve my ex texted me that he needed to talk to me and my daughter and came over to tell us he was getting back together with Kim.
KIM’S BACK
He said he’d been talking to her and she said she was sorry about taking the money. That her plan was to use it to pay back some bad people who had been scaring her and then replace it before anyone noticed it was gone. That he believed she really was sorry and really would do better, and he wanted to be with her again and give her a chance to prove she can change. I didn’t say anything, but my daughter (bless her heart) just said “You really bought all that?”
My ex looked annoyed at her tone but continued and said he was there to invite her out to dinner with him and Kim, because Kim had already apologized to MIL and FIL and wanted the chance to apologize to her too. My daughter was quiet and looked uncomfortable so I told her she could make whatever choice felt right and I would support her. To his credit my ex did too, and said if she didn’t want to be around Kim he wouldn’t make her be. She ended up saying she didn’t want to go to dinner right then, but maybe later she would change her mind.
Then she brought up Christmas and asked if I could still come over, and my ex’s face fell. He said he doesn’t think Kim would be comfortable with me coming over. My daughter lost it at this (and so did I, but just internally). She already proved she would steal from the family at a social gathering! Less than a month ago! She hasn’t done anything to make up for that yet! But she gets to go to Christmas and I don’t?
My ex just said it was already decided that Kim would be there for Christmas and my daughter throwing a tantrum over it wouldn’t change it, and after he and her exchanged some more heated words he left.
I tried telling my daughter I am absolutely, 100% fine not being invited to Christmas. That she should still go if she wants to, because it would make me sad if she felt like she has to pick me over the rest of her family. I told her she if she can’t forgive her dad yet she should still go to see her cousins and aunt and uncle, and she can ignore him the whole time if she wants. It took a while, but she eventually agreed she still wanted to go. That is, until she started getting texts.
THE TEXTS
First MIL texted my daughter saying she was disappointed in her for causing drama on Christmas Eve, and how everyone else has agreed to suck it up and be nice to Kim for Christmas and she should too. While she was showing me that text with tears in her eyes she got another one from her aunt that said “Shame on you. I can’t believe the way you’ve been talking to your father.”
This sent my daughter down a spiral. She realized her dad had been talking about her to the rest of the family, and probably twisting the situation to make her look bad. Her. A 12 year old girl.
Y’all. I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes in this situation, I know I’ve been naive. But I feel like I’ve been a saint going out of my way to make sure my daughter doesn’t resent her dad for any of this. I’ve been telling her over and over again that he’s her dad, and he loves her, and he wants what’s best for her, but this- I can’t talk him out of this. I don’t know where to begin. She begs me not to make her go over there for Christmas because she doesn’t want to face her whole family, not knowing what her dad has told them about her. I told her of course she doesn’t have to.
I text my ex that our daughter doesn’t feel safe going over there for Christmas anymore, and my phone stays silent. But my daughter’s phone blows up. She ended up blocking most of her family to get them to stop texting her and cried herself to sleep.
SINCE THEN
I have not tried to get my daughter to contact her dad since 12/24/2023. He’s called her a few times since then, and she mostly just answers him with short 1 or 2 word answers. She doesn’t go places with him anymore. She doesn’t want to go see him anymore.
He has called me a few times to accuse me of turning his daughter against him, but it’s pretty easy to shut him down with “Would you want to talk to someone who turns everything you say against you? To your own family?” I’m sure he’s told his family a whole slew of colorful things about me, but I don’t care. And none of them have reached out to me with vitriol, just the 12 year old child. Imagine that.
I don’t know what’s going on with Kim or MIL or FIL anymore, and I don’t care. I’m just focused on trying to bring my daughter back to that loud, boisterous, stubborn kid she used to be, and I think we’re getting there slowly. Therapy is helping her. And I’m so, so glad I got that custody arrangement when I did.
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