You are here

Beautiful Boundaries & BM’s tantrums

CoffeeandQuiet's picture

My husband finally set and enforced boundaries with toxic BM. We printed a binder full of her crazy text message harassment. He then blocked her from contacting his cell completely, and informed her he will only communicate via email from now on. We put in a home phone and gave BM that number for her to call SD at. (Keep in mind for the past 7 years BM has rarely ever called to speak to her daughter...maybe once every 2 weeks.)

Oh the drama that ensued the first few weeks, from long sad emails detailing her struggles in life and how she had "no idea why you won't let me call/text your cell anymore" to raging ALL CAPS monologues "email only is such bullshit!!". She suddenly developed a burning desire to *actually* call her daughter and would call every single night ringing the home phone continuously until SD answered. The calls last not even 2 minutes because BM has no meaningful relationship with SD it's sad. So now it is silenced and SD checks it once an evening and calls back IF she is home and feels like it.

The latest random tantrum BM threw was to email us to "inform" us that she will be getting a cell phone and giving it to SD "to keep with her at all times" so that BM can call her "anytime she wants no matter if she's home or not". Oh, and she said "and I'm not ASKING your (f*ing) permission I'm telling you what I'm getting. Haha!  My husband put her in her place and shut that scheme down pretty quickly...since then it's been very quiet. 

 

Harry's picture

She has to give it to you hen she enters your home, you turn it off.  If she wants to call BM she can used the house phone.  No taking pictures in your home. No FaceTiming in your home.  No texting. No video recording in your home. 

Kes's picture

Well done to you and your DH!  I'm wondering how long it took him to get to this point?  It took my DH 5 yrs and even then, he didn't ban NPD BM from calling, but he would put the phone down on her the second that she raised her voice. 

CoffeeandQuiet's picture

it took years too long to get to this point. SD is 9. They were never married, split up when SD was a few months old. He went from 50/50 to sole custody over a year ago. He finally went to email only three and a half months ago.  I think it didnt even occur to him for a long time that he didnt have to put up with her disruptive crap. It's like a lightbulb came on finally, when he went to court and won sole custody.  

strugglingSM's picture

DH also got many desperate and angry messages when he refused to take phone calls anymore.

- It was child neglect if he didn't take BM's calls.

- She and her family agreed that it was ridiculous that he wasn't taking her phone calls.

- It was too time consuming for her to email.

- It disrupted decision-making if she couldn't get an immediate response (spoiler alert - she never involved him in decision-making anyway).

-Why did her hate her? (This one was sent over and over and over again).

-Why couldn't they be friends?! Followed by, the kids are devastated that DH is not friends with BM (they weren't "friends" when he took her phone calls, she would regularly yell at him in front of the children).

-If DH didn't respond immediately to her messages, she would tell him that email clearly wasn't working and she'd have to go back to phone calls. She didn't seem to realize that even if she decided to call again, that didn't mean he had to answer.

- Then she started having the children call on her behalf. The child would call and you could hear BM in the background telling him what to say. BM later said she had to communicate through the children because DH "didn't want to talk" to her. This was all despite the fact that she regularly had lawyers send DH letters threatening to take him to court for "communicating through the children."

It was definitely eye-opening to me to watch an adult rage on like a toddler over being cut off from having her daily fix of calling DH on the phone to complain to him or tell him he was a terrible person. 

CoffeeandQuiet's picture

Oh yes, sounds very familiar. The rage and desperation that comes out of them when limits are set- you're right, its like a toddler having a tantrum! We got these gems:

"limiting my means of communication to where i cant call your cell is not in our childs best interest!" 

"Stop acting childish!!! Email only is such bullshit!!"  (projecting much?)

"It doesnt say in the court order that I CANT call your cell phone!!"      

tog redux's picture

Nice. Isn't it sad that what these women really want is to control/abuse/harass their ex, and not to see their children or parent them adequately?  If a man did this to his female ex, it would be clear it's harassment, but women get away with calling it "co-parenting" instead of the stalking and harassment that it is.

MissK03's picture

Men would arrested for the type of stuff BMs do. Or the need to think they should still have this emotional connection with their ex husbands for all of eternity even after settling down with someone new themselves. 
 

Example of the waves BM here does. SO had not heard from her in a month. Easter morning.. she texts him because she wants to pay pal him money for the skids for Easter. She hasn't done Easter in a few years and my guess since she got $500 on the stimulus she had some extra cash I guess. 
 

That conversation was 30 plus texts about how to do it etc.  I mean, she could have stopped at the house and dropped the damn money off. This was aka I need a reason to text my ex husband.  Next day roll along, she texts SO, are you home skid isn't answering me. Next day, Hey is skid up I tried calling, Next day, no one answers me. Next day, I'm dropping off a baked good to your house for skids. (THAT WAS A FIRST) This went on for two weeks. Then hey, I found a pic of SS16 you want to see it? SO, send it to skid. That pissed her off so as far as I know it's been kind of quite. SO though only gives me vague details.  He said if she DID send the picture he was going to call her and be like hey cut the BS. 

I told him because you guys were kind of chummy in the Easter texts she took that and ran with it. She was trying to bait him into more convo with the other texts but, he did stop replying. 

i can't stand that stuff. 

Rumplestiltskin's picture

BM in my situation also used the "dropping off baked goods for the kids" when he stopped taking her multiple daily phone calls and letting her have full run of the house. The tearful messages about "what happened to our coparenting communication?" It's amazing how pathetically alike these HCBMs are. You would think they are personally being abused if you ask them to sinply follow the fricking CO without their constant fix of attention, er, i mean coparenting! 

MissK03's picture

Yeah the baked good thing happened a few weeks ago. That was new.. she never did that before. It was banana bread and we make banana bread all the time. SO enjoys it. So (using my BM senses) this had an underlining meaning. SO agreed with me when I said that. He didn't come straight out and say what it was. She claimed it was the infamous "for the kids." 

He didn't eat any of it though. Half of it got thrown out. 
 
Mines better Smile

Dogmom1321's picture

Omg, you just described our situation PERFECTLY! Yes, BM is all about having control and being jealous. No interest in the ACTUAL kid, just interest in "winning" and "getting back at" their ex. 

BM now has a BF 7 years younger and has gone radio silent. Not surprised. When her fun with the boy toy is over, I'm sure she will be right back to harassing and making threats yet again. It's like these women are bored and don't know how to live WITHOUT the drama!

CoffeeandQuiet's picture

Yes. Its sad, and toxic, and so easy to see right through! For years, Ive waited and watched and really thought that in time this person's bitterness would subside. It hasnt. 

Rags's picture

We were fortunate.  Our blended family experience during the minor child years occurred before the advent of everyone having a cellphone or even email.   The SpermClan never made any effort to call to talk to the SKid.  The only contact was from SpermGrandHag to set up visitation travel arrangements. Since we never lived nearer than several States away from SpermLand the visitation schedule was always long distance rather than the EOWE that would have been the case had we lived within 200 miles of the SpermIdiot.  There were at least 3 instances where they refused visitation for a year or more due to claims of financial strain.   There was even a period of about 2 years where the SpermIdiot moved across the country from SpermLand and never told us.  So visitation continued as if he was still in SpermLand for those 2 years.  SS on average saw the SpermIdiot for portions of about 3 days per year during the 7 weeks of annual visitation ordered in the CO.  He just never gave a shit.

They taught SS how to treat them. They didn't foment a relationship with him beyond visitation so he never called them.  Even after we got him a cell phone in 8th grade he didn't call them and they didn't call him.  After he got his phone we would call him once each week and talk with him for about 15mins while he was  on visitation.  He always answered and was enthusiastic to talk with us but we also did not want to interfere in his time with them.  SpermGrandHag would get pretty bitchy when we would call his cell but even with our example none of them would call him.

SpermLand (OR), has always had a fairly balanced stance on parents rights though they until recently would regularly award single moms full physical and legal custody and the dad's in out ow wedlock spawning situations were pretty much SOL.

That has changed apparently.  Which isn't a bad thing.

Family law and the courts are infuriating.  For all the claims of the courts that they act in the best interests of the children there seems to be a way too frequent tendency to ignore toxic crap and reward mere existence for people who really have no business having interaction or influence over even their own children.

As apparently is the case in FL.

CoffeeandQuiet's picture

deleted

Rags's picture

I completely agree with you on this. Kids are smart and when they have the love of a quality and truly caring parent they know it, they also know when the a parent is manipulative and self serving.

Particularly when the caring and loving parent makes sure they have clarity.  The self serving manipulative parent will do little for the kid and nearly anything for their own aggrandizement.