How to respond (if at all) to bf's high conflict baby mama

[Anonymous]

This is a preview of the rest of your life. It's only going to get crazier from here. You decide if that's worth it to you.

[Anonymous]

His ex isn't playing nice and has called you mean things. I understand why you are hesitant to meet someone with preconceived notions of you but meeting her in person might end this drama. Either meet her in person or break up and date someone without kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I mean you sound immature as well. I'd recommend getting out of the relationship.

This. Grow up OP. If you want a relationship with this man then be an adult and address this woman. You can say that you are aware of things she has said about her and do not wish to build a friendship with her.

But if you want to be in this child’s life, then get over yourself and quit being so immature.

I don’t believe I’m immature for not willing to meet with someone who has called me a “f****** b**ch” among other disrespecting terms, verbally abuses my partner when given the opportunity, talks shit about me on social media, and will not respect a single boundary that my partner has put up out of respect for me.

Whether you believe it or not doesn’t really matter. What matters is you’re handling this situation very immaturely by blaming some woman you’ve never even had a conversation with for your problems. Stay off social media, stop listening to your boyfriends messages, take an hour to have a conversation with the mother of the child you’re starting to raise. If you can’t handle that you’re too immature and don’t deserve to be in any type of parenting role to this child. You talk a lot about respect but you’re showing this little girl zero respect by ignoring her mother like you are.

+1 Also, no one said you had to meet with her. Refusing to acknowledge this woman is immature enough.

Well, that’s why I’m here asking for advice about how to acknowledge her, isn’t it? I’m just not sure how any of this makes me immature.

Encourage your boyfriend to get professional input and co-parenting counseling. Asking on a message board is unlikely to be helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP should care about the well-being of the child but the child’s mother does not seem like a good co-parent. Insist on your husband getting therapy with the child’s mother, and then get a court order to have all communication go through a family app as is often done in cases of divorces. Communicate through the app. Meet with the mom with a third party such as with the co-parenting therapist order to make sure that communication is productive and child-focused. If the other mom is actually verbally abusive and mentally unhealthy you may be able to limit interactions just to this. If even more verbal abuse and mental instability is revealed everyone will need to think through what is best for the child

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean you sound immature as well. I'd recommend getting out of the relationship.

This. Grow up OP. If you want a relationship with this man then be an adult and address this woman. You can say that you are aware of things she has said about her and do not wish to build a friendship with her.

But if you want to be in this child’s life, then get over yourself and quit being so immature.

I don’t believe I’m immature for not willing to meet with someone who has called me a “f****** b**ch” among other disrespecting terms, verbally abuses my partner when given the opportunity, talks shit about me on social media, and will not respect a single boundary that my partner has put up out of respect for me.

Whether you believe it or not doesn’t really matter. What matters is you’re handling this situation very immaturely by blaming some woman you’ve never even had a conversation with for your problems. Stay off social media, stop listening to your boyfriends messages, take an hour to have a conversation with the mother of the child you’re starting to raise. If you can’t handle that you’re too immature and don’t deserve to be in any type of parenting role to this child. You talk a lot about respect but you’re showing this little girl zero respect by ignoring her mother like you are.

+1 Also, no one said you had to meet with her. Refusing to acknowledge this woman is immature enough.

Well, that’s why I’m here asking for advice about how to acknowledge her, isn’t it? I’m just not sure how any of this makes me immature.

You can acknowledge her by simply acknowledging her. Get out of the car, shake her hand, smile and say happy holidays. You can be fake about it but refusing to get out of the car when she is standing right there is ridiculous. No wonder she wants to meet you. The way you and your bf are acting, she's probably wondering what you are hiding. Show her that there is nothing to hide. You are making this way more difficult than it needs to be.

[Anonymous]

Doesn’t matter what you do. Courts don’t care, neither should you. Perfectly fine to let the “baby daddy” do all the communication.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone who was the “baby mama” I will say that I was in no way comfortable with my ex bringing girlfriends who were not willing to do a 5m meet and greet with me. But frankly, I assumed that my ex had been trashing me to the women he dated after our divorce. I expected that they heard a lot about how terrible I was and how victimized he was, which was not true.

Consider that your boyfriend lied to this woman about who was spending the night with her child and picking her up from school. No wonder she’s furious. It sounds like she is trying to be civil to you, which you have received like a damn child - leaving her unread so as not to be accountable for a message you definitely received? Are you 15 years old?

What you do is respond to the message and meet her as requested. Stop hating her for allegedly disrespecting your lying boyfriend. Feel free to be upset about the things she says to you, but stick to your own indignation. It’s not a good look to refuse to meet this woman because she was mean to your boyfriend on social media.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP should care about the well-being of the child but the child’s mother does not seem like a good co-parent. Insist on your husband getting therapy with the child’s mother, and then get a court order to have all communication go through a family app as is often done in cases of divorces. Communicate through the app. Meet with the mom with a third party such as with the co-parenting therapist order to make sure that communication is productive and child-focused. If the other mom is actually verbally abusive and mentally unhealthy you may be able to limit interactions just to this. If even more verbal abuse and mental instability is revealed everyone will need to think through what is best for the child

+100

Yeah, but he isn’t OP’s husband and she isn’t a step mom. He’s a guy she’s been dating a minute. She’s a legal stranger to this child. For OP’s own good, she should decamp.

[Anonymous]

If a person who spends time with my DC didn't even want to say "hi" to me, I would've seriously questioned the maturity of that person. And whether she is grown-up enough to take care of my DC when I am not there. OP, you sound like you are still in HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I mean you sound immature as well. I'd recommend getting out of the relationship.

+1000 This poor kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Doesn’t matter what you do. Courts don’t care, neither should you. Perfectly fine to let the “baby daddy” do all the communication.

This is sadly true. Once I got a call at 2 AM to come pick up my DD in VA because her dad’s then-brand new gf had a custody dispute with her estranged H who was a police officer. My XH did something that counted as assaulting an PO and got arrested. The GF called me to get my kid. It was the first time I’d ever heard of her and I had no idea my kid had slept at her house. Our custody agreement had all kinds of provisions that covered where DD could sleep at night.

I provided all of this to the court and they didn’t care.

[Anonymous]

I'm not a crazy person at all, but I absolutely would want to meet someone who is in my child's life and is spending the night with them (aren't you spending the night at boyfriend's house while child is there?). It would really upset me if someone wouldn't meet me. If I were to get divorced I would want this in our custody agreement. I'm positive my DH would want to know even more if some random man was sleeping at the same house with his children.

Clearly baby mama is crazy, but you should be respectful enough to meet with her.

[Anonymous]

Didn't your mom teach you basic manners? Get out of her car, shake her hand politely and say good morning. She is this child's mom! You're making this child's life more difficult for no reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You don't owe this lady anything. If you don't want to meet her you don't have to if the court doesn't say so. It's not like she's going to be able to know if you're a safe person to be around her daughter based on a 5 minute meet and greet so that's not what it's actually about. She just wants to maintain as much control as she can. The dad is just as much a parent as she is and assessed you to be fit, and that would be good enough for any judge if you were wondering.

That said, you might think about extending some kind of goodwill so the narrative can't be spun that you're not being cooperative. You can have firm boundaries but also do some of the inconsequential things that she wants with a smile (like saying hi at pickup). Don't be stubborn for the principle of the thing. You're not losing any self-respect by doing that.

That's not so much a narrative, as exactly what OP is describing about her own behavior. Refusing to open and read text messages, refusing to say hello at drop off - OP is not being cooperative at all. That's not a narrative, it's reality and very childish.

[Anonymous]

OP you can change your text settings so as to stop them from showing the other person that you read their text.

I don't like having people know if I read their text or not because I want to choose the time that I reply to texts, and I don't want them to see that I read their text at 1pm but didn't get back to them until 8pm.

In your situation, you don't want BM to know if you read her texts at all, so just change the settings.