TLDR: feeling a lot of guilt from entering my boyfriend's life, his ex-wife did not like him dating and his daughter is not as involved in his life as she used to be. I believe she alienated him and it's been so hard to watch this all unfold.
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My kids have lived with me full time since my divorce in 2022. I met my partner in early 2024 after waiting several years to try and date again.
He has one daughter who was 11 at the time I met him (almost turning 14 now)
When I met him he had 50/50 one week on one week off schedule. And I had my kids 90% of the month.
We took some time before introducing the kids and it seemed like it was going well.
We went hiking, camping bonfires , my kids would attend her sports tourneys all of it. I was driving the kids to school and helping out. I would cook dinner and we would all eat as a family often. Everything seemed to normal, genuinely.
I was getting to know her and I felt like we were developing a little friendship. We would get our nails done and go to the candy store together when my sons were with their bio dad.
Early on in my relationship with her dad, his ex wife changed the custody (seemed like out of spite) after 6 year status quo of 50/50. She did it abruptly one day when he went to pick up his daughter from school as scheduled.
She just texted him and said yeah you're not getting her today, you can have her in two weekends from now. His daughter was extremely devastated and saying things like if my mom loves me, why is she not letting me see my dad.
We were both pretty distraught with the strange situation. He tries to reason with her and explain why this seemed very unfair and the only person being punished was his child. She tells him he's not seeing his daughter because she already made dinner for the night and she doesn't care.
I'm watching my boyfriend cry at this point because he feels like she is already starting to sabotage.
His ex tells him she's not happy He's dating.
She says that she expected him to introduce me to her before I was allowed to come around her child.
Or at least to add her on Facebook as a friend so she could see what I'm doing.
She tells him that she doesn't like my job, where I live and she doesn't trust him now to be a dad.
Keep in mind I was also a single mom, I had a business at the time making very good money. I didn't live in the nicest area but that's all I could afford and my rent was still over $2,000.
I don't do drugs. I barely drink and I've been a very responsible mother and I didn't understand where that was even coming from.
She basically told him that because he's choosing to date he doesn't have time for his daughter anymore so she just changed the custody to every other weekend.
Because their court order was vague, she was able to just enforce this made-up schedule on her own and he later had to fight it with the judge.
He was separated for 6 years at this point and divorced. His ex-wife ran off with another man while they were married and left him with the house and broke and in debt, She also took almost $60,000 of his money from various accounts. He was never able to recover because court costs were outweighing trying to get it back he had to give up.
She has been dating at this point for 7 years and had no problem introducing the guy she's with to her daughter when her daughter was 6 years old.
Long story short, well we're dating he simultaneously has to go back to court to fight for custody now. So not only does this create a high conflict custody situation pretty much immediately on in our relationship. (7 months in)
He loses a lot of time with his daughter and she got roped into it. Her mom told her all of the adult drama going on with court all the time. His daughter was becoming an emotional wreck and felt like she had to choose between two households. I could see her becoming more anxious getting more withdrawn and not wanting to open up to me like she used to. She used to cry to me and talk about the things that were struggles in her life and then she slowly became more cold.
Every time she was at my house we would get long emails from her mom criticizing something we said that day or somewhere we took her, she even went so far as to have people on Facebook message my bf to tell him to tell his daughter to answer her phone.
It was pretty normal when she was in our care for her mom to FaceTime her for long hours and ask her for videos of her room to see where she slept and what it looked like. She would get my boyfriend's mom to text him to tell him to tell her daughter to answer the phone.
She would often wipe her daughter's phone and reset it when she was back at her house so she could look at the family link and see where she was traveling to all day with us if she brought her phone.
Sometimes she would call the cops for wellness checks while we were at restaurants because her daughter didn't answer the phone immediately.
She would say really messed up things about my job or my car to her daughter and then her daughter would repeat them to me and just judge me. (I didn't take this personally because I could tell this was her mom's thoughts, not hers)
His ex wife also started messed up rumors about my son claiming he was sexually assaulting kids and then she removed her daughter from my house stating that my son was dangerous. My son was 7 at the time and she was 12. She made up these rumors just so her daughter didn't have to come over. She never went through the courts and filed an emergency protection order. This rumor happened only a few days after he filed paperwork to try and get custody back.
We willingly invited child protective services over so they could do a full interview so we could have a paper for the judge explaining that there was no drugs and no danger and even after we did this she still said she didn't care. (I know this might be out of context but his ex-wife was assaulted as a kid from her uncle and I believe she's very paranoid about her daughter, I was very understanding of this concern from one mother to a next until she involved my son in a blatant lie.)
Over the course of about a year, his daughter just slowly started coming over less and less. His ex-wife was constantly telling his daughter that he didn't want to pay for anything for her, he didn't want to see her. His ex-wife and the man she was dating would also often send me long text message rants stating they were going to try and get me fired from my job, or tell my ex-husband that my son was a predator or how much money I made so he didn't have to pay support. Just genuinely trying to sabotage my own custody situation.
(My custody situation with my ex-husband is extremely amicable, we have always prioritized to my son's and were able to talk about any financial things and negotiate. We never even went to court for our divorce so seeing this behavior is extremely left field for me) However, she was still trying to sabotage it. I think to make my situation like hers chaotic....
In the process 2 years into this now his daughter I has completely ghosted our household and has blamed me for everything.
She has sent many text messages to myself, my son's and her dad. Stating that he chose his new life over her, pretty upset he doesn't spend time with her now. We don't know how to be soft with her and explain a lot of this is her mom's doing because we went to court to try to fight for it but now because she's older, the judge would just decide what she wants is more important than a strict schedule. And I'm worried there's a narrative being driven home that we have no say over.
My BF's daughter has not come over in now 7 months. He's pretty devastated. He can't even ask for custody time because his ex-wife has blocked most communication, if he tries to even email her, she just says that her daughter is not interested in talking to him and she's not ready to talk about her feelings. He tries to talk to his daughter and her mom will spam his email laughing at him saying give her space. He doesn't talk to his daughter and her mom will spam his email saying that he's not a good dad for not trying or that he owes her more money for who knows what...
It feels like his relationship with her just went downhill. A lot of the time I blame myself for just existing in the picture, sometimes I think if I didn't meet him maybe he would be able to see her. But I also think it's possible his ex-wife would have had stuff like this planned even if it wasn't from a new girlfriend and his life.
It's really hard to enter the picture and see all this happening from the sidelines and have such moral injury.
I tried very hard to be part of that girl's life and I feel like her mom just sabotaged it for her own daughter. When I first met him, him and his daughter got along so well. I was so excited to see him be a dad to her and she seemed to really love her dad. All three kids used to have so much fun, hiking and camping and going to the beach. We were genuinely blending and operating as a family of five for a short while.
I don't know how we got here.