Reply to What do I need to know about marrying a man with an ex and shared custody of kids?

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "What do I need to know about marrying a man with an ex and shared custody of kids?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]OP, my ex and I have both remarried since our divorce. We have one child together. He has one child with his second wife. DH and I are planning to have another child, but don't have one yet.

A few things to note:

1) How your man and his ex interact - in what contexts, how often, with what tone - is really, really important. How do they coordinate things like school holidays? How do they decide about activities for the kid? Do they maintain some awareness of each other's lives outside of kids? My ex and I used to have a fairly cordial relationship; I would say it was similar to any close acquaintance I had - we knew each other's general work situation, informed each other if something major happened with one of our families of origin, etc. When his wife came into the picture, that pretty much all stopped because for whatever reasons, she is not comfortable with us having any kind of relationship that is personal beyond talking about DD. She also wants to participate in decisions about DD (camps, extras, etc.). She doesn't want or have a "vote" (nor does my husband), but she is not comfortable with those conversations taking place without her. I'm not particularly thrilled about that dynamic, but I will respect his desire to include her because it costs me nothing to do so.

2) re: the money: definitely talk about what his financial commitments are for his kids, all down the line. My ex and I have some pretty strict agreements about what our priorities are for DD going forward, money-wise. We talked about those things with our new partners pretty much immediately. DH knows who much ex pays in child support, what financial things he's responsible for now, what our agreement is for DD's college, etc. Those things factor into our conversations about having another child as well, because it's important to me that we do not set up any hugely dramatic double standards (kid 1 goes to fancy private school, kid 2 goes to terrible public school - or something like that).

3) I don't really agree with the points about "your needs coming last" or the needs of your bio kid coming last. I think that mostly depends on how the relationship between the exes is. For us, having 2 families means that DD's needs are 200% covered at all times. I cannot think of a time when I have ignored DH's needs because something was going on with DD that I needed to attend to, though she's still young, so I suppose there's plenty of time for that in the future. I don't see our kid-adult need balance as being fundamentally different than in any other marriage with children. If anything, because we share custody with my ex and his wife, DH and I get MORE time to attend to each other's needs than other married couples we know.

4) Most importantly, re: the kids. I can only speak for myself, but as the bio parent, it was really important to me that DH and DD develop a relationship with each other that independent of me. It was important that they get to know each other and figure out ways to relate to each other that were special. They share a couple of interests that are not my interests. He loves teaching her things. He is better at some kid-maintenance things than I am. When they first met, I tried to have that happen in neutral situations. We'd go out to dinner, or we'd go to a park. There is a lot of difference of opinion on this site about when that sort of thing is appropriate. Personally, there was NO WAY that I was going to agree to marry someone without seeing how he and DD clicked. In your situation, there would be no way that I'd agree to marry someone without seeing what his relationship with his kids was like.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics