Hi,
I am new to this forum, but I am hoping to find some advice that may help with a current conflict my spouse and I are having. We have been married for a year and a half. He has 2 adult children from his previous marriage. I will spare some of the details to prevent a very long post. At the beginning of our marriage he refused to talk to his ex-wife. I encouraged him to develop a civil relationship for the sake of their adult children. Which he did. In May his ex-wife began harassing me over text while he and I were separated. She blamed me for things I didn't do, and said quite a few hurtful things in these text. At this time, his adult son, his son's wife, and her child who were kicked out of their house and then moved into our home that I was still living in until my children were finished with school while my husband was away for training because his son's wife's mother wouldn't allow them to stay with her because they can be quite the handful. I had asked him to please not put that burden onto me since I was already having such a hard time with his desire for a divorce. But he told them they could move in anyhow. My husband had barely spoken to me this entire time, but was still having a lot of communication with his ex-wife with whom he shared personal details with about our problems. His son also began stalking me and reporting all my activities to both his mom and his dad (my husband)We are now trying to work through our problems and overcome many issues from the past, but I still feel uncomfortable with communication between my husband and his ex. He has told me that he has told her that their communication needs to stay centered on the kids, but I still feel that she calls too often considering that their children are adults and her calls will still trail off to talking about her aches and pains or car problems she might be having. One time he had even refused to show me messages between him and her because she had given him her new phone number and didn't want me to have it, and he was trying to protect her request over my feelings for reassurance. Her phone calls instantly trigger negative and resentful feelings on my part. My husband says he can't help that she calls and that he has tried to establish boundaries, and I just have to trust him. I know that to some extent they need to be able to communicate about their children, but I don't know how to cope with these resentful feelings I am having. I also don't know what can be done to establish an enthusiastic agreement for this situation. I still hurt from the things that happened, and I have never truly felt defended or reassured by my husband. My husband tells me that if I can't let go of the past, we will never be able to move on. Any suggestions?

Welcome to MB.

Please ask - don't demand - that he cuts all contact with his wife. If won't do that, you should not take you attempts at reconciliation any further.

Don't threaten him; just tell him that you would like him to do that, and that your marriage cannot work if he and his ex have any contact. Don't plead with him or try and give him lots of details of how and why this is painful for you. You can tell him that it's too painful to endure the contact between them, but don't spread it on thickly. What you would be trying to do is to see whether your H will put your welfare above that of all others. If he won't put you first above all others, and put his ex out of his life altogether, then you will have to endure this pain indefinitely, and there is no reason why that should be.

His adult children are not a reason for contact; indeed, very small children are not a reason for personal conversations after remarriage. Do not get drawn in to justifications and rationalisations about their children.

Are you willing to do that?

I also have children, however, mine are all younger, the oldest being 16. I have no problems being willing to limit my interactions with their father, however, I think he may ask that I should stop talking to my ex altogether as well. Should I also agree to never speak to my ex as well?

Yes, it would be a good idea to never communicate with any x-spouse. It is completely unnecessary. That is how conflict and very often, affairs begin. I know our culture believes in the mythology that it is a virtue to stay in touch for the "sake of the children," but that is just a myth. Staying in touch with an ex is almost always an unnecessary disaster.

Honestly, there are so many problems in your marriage that I would strongly suggest you leave the marriage. Talking to exes is the very LEAST of the problems. The biggest, most glaring is that your husband does not care about your feelings. He puts everyone else before your feelings. That is a marriage that has been rocky from the start.


Why were you separated?

Also, I'm not sure whether the adult children are still with you now, but they need to go. You should not ever live with them again, and they should not be prominent in your marriage, taking up your husband's time and attention. Of course he should see and speak to them if he wants to, and you can do so if you are happy to do so, but he should not be sorting out their problems, much less inflicting the adult children on you.

Some of your problems stem from the fact of being a blended family. These families have more problems than traditional ones, and conflicts over each other's children are major factors in the breakdown of second marriages. You need to read Dr Harley's advice about blended families, in his articles on this website.

Technically speaking, you, your husband and your younger children form the blended family, and his older children should not really be part of that description.

I agree with this advice.

Only a year and a half, and yet in that time you have been separated? What on earth could have happened in so short a time to bring that about?

You have described such serious problems that it might be better, for the sake of your younger children as much as anything, for you to give up on the idea of reconciliation. If your marriage is to stand any chance of being successful, you and your husband would have to embrace the Marriage Builders programme with enthusiasm. Do you think your H would be enthusiastic about using MB, and working with a coach for at least a year?

I hope you can see now that it was a serious mistake for you to encourage your H to reopen a relationship with his ex. They were close to each other for some time, and all you've done is encourage them to rekindle that closeness.

He has been doing MB with me. He even went and bought most of the books. Our marriage was very rocky from the start. Soon after our vows were exchanged he started doing things that I considered to be emotionally abusive. His son is out of the house and has been since June which is when we reconciled. We were separated for a number of reasons. The main one being that he had accepted a job (side note: he has a good stable job where we are now, the job wasn't out of necessity) on the other side of the country without my enthusiastic agreement, and I wouldn't be able to take my children with me, and I didn't want to have a long distance marriage for one to three years. At the time he accused me of being unsupportive of his career and said he was tired of fighting and told me that as soon as he got back from a month long training he was going to start the divorce process. But, before the end of the training he found out that the job was not going to be available and decided that he wanted to work things out between us. He was extremely apologetic and said he realized that he had made a huge mistake and he would no longer consider taking a job that would take me away from my children until they were adults. That way I would be able to join him. As far as the communication with his ex-wife about their children, there are situations that often arise with his son, who is married with 2 children now ages 1 year and a baby who is about 1 month. His son has a lot of issues with poor decision making skills, lying, and a lack of common sense due to what they believe may be an undiagnosed learning or mental disorder that his mom now is trying to find treatment for. He is still in need of a lot of guidance. He is now living with his grandmother on his mother's side in the same area my husband's ex-wife is living, so I do see some need for communication, since his son tends to get himself caught up in situations and they are able to exchange what sides of the stories they are getting from him to be able to give him the best support without enabling him. I really don't mind necessary communication. I just feel like she is highly disrespectful of boundaries.

Also, I do realize and feel that I made a HUGE mistake in encouraging him to be civil with his ex-wife.

There are many people on this board who have no contact with their ex's even though they still share small children together. They find a way to do custody exchanges, etc. with no contact. Surely you are not saying that your H needs to communicate with his ex because of an ADULT child.

You feel threatened by his contact with her, yet don't mind that he contact her. That is confusing to me and must be equally confusing to him.

Btw, you SHOULD feel threatened by her. Dr Harley advises no contact with any ex lover because we still have a love bank for them and an affair could easily start.

Your H's son is a full grown adult with his own family. He is not really your H's responsibility to manage. If you put his full grown adult son's drama before your marriage, it will come between your marriage.

You make a very good point unwritten. It would be confusing, because it is very hard to know exactly what is justified as necessary and unnecessary, also who has the privilege to make that call. I have been divorced for 6 years and I feel like communication between parents is at times very important. However, my children are getting old enough now that most communication is done through them. But I have also read that you shouldn't make your children the middle man. So much contradicting advice... from so many reputable sources can make things very confusing.

I agree unwritten, his son has been a huge source of conflict in our marriage, and I know he is making adult choices such as getting married and having children, but his maturity is not that of an adult. I have a daughter who is 13, but has high functioning autism. I believe that she will most likely still be under my care even after becoming an "adult". So I suppose I have empathy for his desire to still look out for his adult son. But I still agree with you. His son is married now with children and he can't be treated like an adult half the time and a child with a disablity the other half. But, my husband could say that his desire to help his son is an emotional need for him, and if I want him to respect my emotional needs, I need to also respect his. How do I respond to that?

AR, as you can see for yourself, communication with your H's ex is wrecking your marriage. The facts should be a reputable emough source for you to agree with Dr. Harley's sage advice. There is absolutely no valid reason for divorced parents to stay in contact. It does not help their parenting skills, it almost always makes them worse for a variety of reasons.

Our culture teaches us many stupid things - that remain unquestioned - and this is one of them. This folk wisdom is just accepted without question to the detriment of many, many people. From a practical standpoint, we have only seen negative consequences. And when a spouse refuses to let go of his/her ex, it is usually becuase there is an ulterior motive.

It is not making your child the "middle man" unless you are passing adult information through them, which is not recommended. Adult issues can be passed through an intermediary, but things like pick up times, report cards, etc, can always be communicated through children. We have hundreds of divorced/separated couples, many with small children, who do not communicate directly. It doesn't hurt their children one bit, rahter it helps them because there is no conflict.

Secondly, the consistent poisonous thread in your marriage is your husbands independent behavior. Does he realize that it will doom your marriage? Have you read the policy of joint agreement? Will he agree with that policy, which is to never do anything without your enthusiastic agreement? If he won't agree to that, then this is a non starter.

He should not make ANY decisions without your enthuiastic agreement. Saying something is an "emotional need" does not neccesitate an entitlement to trample over you. It also completely misses the point. Meeting emotional needs should always be done in a way that ENHANCES the romantic love in your marriage. If his "EN" hurts you it should be eliminated, period.

He should help his son in a way in which you are ENTHUSIASTIC. If you are not, then he shouldn't do it.

Secondly, you and your H don't understand what emotional needs are. They are a need, that when met BY YOUR SPOUSE, create an incredible attraction for the other person. For example, you may have a EN for affection and when met by your husband effectively, you feel an incredible atraction.

Saying he has an "emotional need" to take care of his son doesn't make sense within the context we are using here beucase you can't meet that need, therefore it would not have any effect on the romance in your marriage. See what I mean?

ML. These are all very good points. You have said a lot of things that have given my perspective a different way to look at the situation. I have been aware of Dr. Harley's concepts for quite some time. But, I think you're right, my take on ENs has been skewed. I have been approaching this topic feeling like my request would be a selfish demand which would withdraw love units out of H love bank, because he gets quite upset when I try to place "rules" on his interactions with his ex-spouse.

In addition to the other advice you're getting please read up on parallel parenting.
Parallel Parenting

It is not a selfish demand to ask your spouse to stop hurting you, especially when they do not have your enthusiastic agreement for their behavior. A selfish demand is demanding that your H do something against his will or there will be punishment. Asking him to stop communicating with his wife absolutely does not fall into that category.

Neither of you should be doing anything to withdraw love units from your love banks and that is exactly what he does when he communicates with his x-wife.

The policy of joint agreement: never do anything without the enthusiastic agreement of the other spouse

Thank you Brainhurts, that was very helpful.