Ok. I suppose I need to give a little bit of back story before I get to the mess that is what passes for mine and DH’s “relationship” with the skids now.

DH and I have been together for 11 years now, married for 2, and have 2 bio kids together aged 5 and 2. Skids are 19, 18 and 13. There is an 8 year age gap between me and dh hence the skids being so much older than my bio kids. DH had been divorced for a year when we met after his x left him for another man who she is still (unhappily) married to now.

When we first got together I made a huge effort with skids and we build up quite a good relationship. I never tried to be mum, more of a friend and we had fun together. We had the skids staying with us 3 nights a week and everything was running as smoothly as is possible with separated families. X wife was always friendly to me (not to my husband, they barely spoke, she acted as if she couldn’t see him unless she wanted money/childcare….) I use the term “friendly” loosely, her behaviour was frankly bizarre. She would pull my top up and touch my belly and say “Oooh mine used to be that flat” and slap my bum and say “I wish I had a curvy bum” and tell me about her new husband being “less than well endowed”. It was all very awkward and embarrassing, but for the sake of the skids and keeping the peace with what I was well aware was a very volatile woman, I just smiled and laughed in appropriate places and basically put up with it. I didn’t want to rock the boat. I knew full well she could flip at the push of a button, when me and DH first got together she came down, opened his flat door, smashed a load of glasses and scratched him down his face with her nails. Simply because her DH and her disagreed on something. Also, I need to point out, this is a woman obsessed with appearances, she is 45(ish) and wears her 19 year old daughters clubbing outfits and is constantly tanning to the point of resembling someone off the TV show Benidorm. Not that I’m being bitchy…. Lol!! But, anyway, I am 13 years younger than her and for someone as vain as her, and as obsessed with staying looking young, it must have been hard to swallow, even though she was the one who ended her marriage. So I trod on egg shells and always made an effort to be as pleasant and tolerated her oddness. Her relationship with DH was rocky as ever, he was never able to confront her about her inadequate parenting (she self-harms in front of skids, she is often on the brink of leaving her husband and having firey rows with him, she has severe OCD that she refuses to get help for etc etc – she’s basically a mess). Every time DH tried to tell her she was behaving inappropriately around the skids she would stop contact and feed them poison about DH doing nothing over the years and her being both mother and father to them. I thankfully never got involved.

Then, the teenage years came for the skids. It wasn’t pretty, with the eldest especially. She morphed into a mini version of her mother, the less clothes the better, all about the money and total disregard for anybody’s feelings but her own, like a scarily bad and complete lack of empathy. We put it down to her age, but it started to become apparent it was definitely her personality rather than her age. She never grew out of it and instead grew worse. The middle one developed social anxiety disorder. None of them could catch buses as their mother had told them they were full of germs (DH doesn’t drive so it was left to me to run round after them – if they couldn’t get over DH didn’t see them). The youngest turned into a recluse, sat in his bedroom from morning till night playing his games console. They became rude, arrogant and constantly looking miserable, only coming to visit when they could get something from us (money/holidays/birthday gifts etc). They even thought I was dirty as I didn’t change their bedding every single time they had slept in it as their mother does. They never said this to me, but I got messages via DH about them being uncomfortable with sleeping in “dirty” bedding. I stayed out of everything completely, never giving my opinion, always rising above it and being pleasant to everyone.

Then I had a baby…. Then another…. And wow, did things get even worse…. If that was actually possible!! Now I can understand the x wife feeling a slight twinge of “will my kids get left out now??” because I suppose it’s only natural to want your kids to have the best of everything, but this was far more than that. She constantly told DH that the skids felt left out (believe me we went above and beyond to include them and make sure nobody felt left out) and that they felt like DH had a new family now and he didn’t care about them. This was sooooooooooo untrue, I seriously cannot emphasise enough how wrong this whole statement is. We went as far as is humanly possible with these kids, but nothing was ever good enough. DH and I have not had a holiday abroad for 9 years because we would never have been able to afford to take all of them, so instead of going just us we haven’t been at all so we don’t upset them. They are all asked on every single day out we have, literally, we can’t do anything without involving them all so they don’t get upset!! It started to grind me down, especially as it became apparent that the only kids that were missing out in the whole equation were mine!!

Then we saved up for a family visit to Ireland this summer. By family I include skids of course… but it was to visit family too for DH’s mum’s birthday. Eldest skid was asked over and over if she was sure she would be coming before we booked tickets (we couldn’t afford for her to cancel at the last minute) and even though her visits to us had reduced to 2 times a year at the very most she insisted she wanted to come. So we booked the tickets. 2 days before we were due to leave we get a phone call from eldest skid “I don’t think I am coming now, I have decided to spend the summer working abroad….” Obviously I was livid. DH heartbroken, mortified and embarrassed that he had to tell his family she had let us down at the last minute. So we cancelled her ticket to try and avoid losing any more money. DH told her the day after that her ticket was cancelled…. And she went crazy!!!! Her mother went crazy!!! She apparently hadn’t decided for sure that she wouldn’t be coming, DH had never been a father to her, she hated him, she never wanted anything to do with him again, he always put me and my kids first, it was HIS fault him and their mother split up and left her without a father etc etc…..They were screaming and swearing at him going completely nuts. Then DH had to explain to his family what happened…. His mum (who I have a great relationship with btw) decided she was so desperate to have all her family together for her birthday that she would rebook the ticket for toxic skid number one!!! So off we all went. Now all the way up to this point I have kept my mouth shut for the sake of DH. I never, ever once got involved, but when you see your DH gradually and vindictively being played and ground down to the point where he literally can’t take much more from this vile child I just couldn’t take it any longer!!! I stayed well away from eldest skid all week we were away, I left the room when she came in and only spoke when I had to for the sake of politeness. It was plainly obvious to everyone, especially her, that I couldn’t stand to be around her. I discussed the whole situation with my mother and sister in law and they made it clear that they agreed with me and the only reason they had given in to skid was to try and not make things worse for DH and wanting the whole family together.

So home we went. Luckily (for me) skid number one doesn’t bother with DH at all unless she is telling him how to parent her siblings (skid siblings, not mine, or else there would be trouble lol!!) And that was that. Until 3 weeks ago.

So x wife was outside my house picking up youngest skid after DH has taken him to a medical appointment. She was parked in front of my drive so I pulled up behind her and got out of the car. She said “oooh sorry, do you want me to move?” I said “oh no, its fine, don’t worry, I can move the car later no problem” and proceeded to get my bio kids out of the car as quick as possible so I didn’t have to spend any time getting into conversation after everything that had recently happened. I didn’t want to get into a slanging match and quite frankly I didn’t want to act like best friends either, I thought I will just be civil and get into my house after a hard day at work asap. I started walking down my path and she rolled the car window down and said “Are we not talking these days?” to which I replied, incredulous, “what are you talking about??” so she muttered something insulting and drove off. I went in the house and told DH exactly what happened straight away and he just laughed and said she’s crazy or words to that effect.

Now I would like to point out I am by no means a weak person, I do avoid confrontation, but if I have to I can definitely stick up for myself, but for all these years she has belittled and emasculated DH I have kept my mouth shut but I literally can’t do it anymore!!! She’s destroyed those kids beyond repair, they are so brain washed by her poison on DH it is so disturbing to see!!!

Anyway, 2 minutes after telling DH what had just happened, he starts getting text messages from youngest (13 yo) skid, with a barrage of abuse from x wife, basically saying “your wife was ignorant to my mum, my mum has done everything for us, your wife was rude, my mum will never be driving us to your house again” etc etc (with plenty of expletives added in for good measure. I thought, ok, lets nip this in the bud, stop the kids fighting for their mother, I will try and contact x wife myself and keep explain I was just rushing to get in and I don’t know what she is talking about… She had blocked both mine and DH’s phone numbers. So DH continues to get vile messages from his 13 yo son from his mother. 5 minutes later eldest skid phones DH screaming and carrying on about “his wife” being awful to their mother etc. DH decided to put me on the phone to tell eldest skid what had happened to which I gladly got on the phone and proceeded to tell her exactly what had happened…. She wouldn’t listen to a word I said, screamed at me, swore at me, told me not to bother arguing with her “because I would never win” and literally just went nuts. I stayed calm but told her exactly what I thought about the whole situation (at last!!! Seriously the relief was great!!!) but didn’t lower myself by screaming or shouting or being personal back.

Now obviously, I have known I have needed to, and have been starting to disengage from them all for some time, but this has completely left any relationship I had with them as destroyed. I seriously don’t ever want them at my home again, I don’t want them in my company, the way they spoke about and to me I don’t even want to breathe the same air as them!!! But this leaves things even harder for DH. He is utterly beside himself, not one of them will contact him or answer his calls or texts and it’s been 3 weeks now. I really don’t know what to even say to him anymore. He didn’t even do anything wrong (neither did I!!!!!) but still they all have totally cut him out of their lives and as a parent myself I know how much that must hurt!!

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this??? Can anyone offer any advice on how to move forward from something like this??

Thank you!!! And sorry for the long winded rant, but boy did it need to come out!!!!!