How do you deal with someone awful that has to stay in your life?

First of all, welcome to Fluther!

I’m not sure what to say – you are in a pickle and I feel for you. I’m divorced but my kids were grown up when it happened and some things are still very hard.

The most practical suggestion I can give is for you to minimize as much as is practical your actual contact with your Ex. Nothing is as corrosive as being constantly put down. Is there anybody who can be there when he is picking or dropping your daughter off? If not alone, maybe a friend could be with you at least and that might decrease his bad behavior. If it is so toxic, maybe the court can appoint a guardian alt litem to help out in the transfers.

Another thing I would suggest is that you communicate any decisions that need to be made or changes by text or e-mail. He is more likely to stay focused and not be insulting in that way if you minimize the verbal exchanges.

Good luck and keep coming here for support as needed.

Thank you… all communication is done by text or emails, that’s why I’m so surprised he’s to rude as I just take them to my lawyer.

He’s a big drinker and I think a lot of the issue comes when he’s drinking as he just gets abusive.

It’s awful, I have never treated anyone with such disdain, nor would I allow my child too – let alone the father treating the mother of his child like that.

I“m quite disgusted actually and honestly I have no idea how to deal with it!

I know this doesn’t solve the problem but just think of one thing – someone else will be putting up with him most of the time now.

ha ha that’s true.

Doesn’t the Court have a scheduled pick up and drop off time? Can you not report to the Court that he is not keeping up his half of the deal by not adhering to the schedule?

I can yes but he was doing me a favor this weekend by meeting me half way…. which he agreed too but then made it almost impossible.

His behaviour is abusive. Let’s just be upfront and name it for what it is. Abuse. He’s doing it to undermine you and to weaken your resolve. Why, I don’t know. I don’t know what his motivation is and what he hopes to achieve, but it’s abuse.

You can’t remove him from your life. He’s there for the long term. @jca has provided the answer. You need to speak to your legal representative and/or representatives of your legal/social security system to see what resources are available to have a mediated drop off and pick up situation. So he doesn’t come to your house. You meet in a neutral zone and he picks up the child there. I know we have such options available here (in Australia) so check if something similar is available here.

Stop thinking he’s going to change. He isn’t. You’d think him entering a new relationship. He’s obviously still feeling bitter and powerless about your relationship and that may never change. So do something to protect yourself and your child. Try to keep all communication to email or ensure it takes place in a mediated situation and don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by him suddenly being Mr Niceguy. Set up processes to put a buffer between you and him and leave them there.

This is heartbreaking and I’m sorry you and your daughter are having to go through it. There’s great practical advice above, so hopefully that helps with what to do. I hope it goes well. The other part is how you take care of your feelings and attitude through all this so it doesn’t affect you more than it has to.

Blustery, belittling, controlling personalities are kryptonite for people who want to see others happy (that’s me, and it sounds like you). They never act happy, so you keep trying, and they keep the upper hand. If something goes wrong (and there’s no way something won’t go wrong in the next 15 years), they can come back to the belittling and know you’ll try to make it right, feel bad, and somehow absolve them in some small way. After too many meetings with folks like that where I left drained I started treating those interactions differently. Maybe some of those tricks will work for you?

If you know someone is that type, simply absorb and discard the insults and small digs, like you haven’t even heard the part that wasn’t important to what’s going on. I know it’s not easy with someone you used to care about, it takes confidence and sometimes control, but in my experience it does make it stop, and also makes interacting with you less of an outlet for them, so they keep it to the important bits as well.

You’re interacting for a specific purpose, to get a time, or place, or let him know your daughter has a cough. So just do that, let the rest slide off. If it’s an email, the perfect scenario is that you guys get down to just one line back and forth with just the information needed. These aren’t greeting cards, unfortunately you’re not friends, but you do have a shared goal of raising your daughter the best you can. Focus on that and only engage with him on the things that pertain to that. If it improves at some point in the future, great, but get back on even ground first.

If you have to change a time, and he responds with “I’ll be there, but I’m tired of this and wish you could get your life together and stop being so stupid”, you only respond to the first part. Don’t even let the rest touch your mind, and definitely don’t take it to heart. After 3 or 4 times of that, he should understand he’s not getting a reaction, not an explanation, not a retort, not a valid point, not a return insult, nothing. On your end, that bs is disappearing into a void of wasted breath, along with any future insults, so he might as well quit. “See you then” is all that needs to be said.

If he still wants to engage in insults or blame, realize it’s about him, and not even about you. You’re each inconvenienced by having to share your daughter with the other. Once he stops affecting you, you can simply do what’s best for both of you. And he’s lost the right to affect you like this.

Thank you so much for your answers, I just went to pick my daughter up – he’s fine on pick up and drop offs, it’s just the in between and the texts, but I will speak to my lawyer and see if anything can be done but I think she will just say ‘it happens, deal with it as best as you can…’ I will read through your responses again and again as they are so helpful – thank you.

I would say if he was doing you a favor by meeting you halfway, try to be in a position where you don’t ask him for favors, and then you will be sticking strictly to your end of the bargain (Court agreement) and he’ll have nothing to hold over your head.

Yeah I agree – now. No more favors.
Funny thing is is he’s asked me for lots : he can’t make a weekend so we changed it to week days, he’s dropped her off early, late…. He’s constantly changing. So me asking for one favor didn’t seem like a big deal but he definitely held that over me and I won’t do it again. It’s hard to not take it personally but you’re advice is all great and I will endeavour to ignore insults. I just don’t understand why he has to be so cruel still after so long.

Some people aren’t capable of moving on. They hang on to resentment. You may even deserve some of his anger. We all do bad things when relationships break up. However, you don’t deserve abuse. You might have to accept that you may always be the evil person and he might never get over his anger and resentment. It is sad, but you can’t let it hold you back from healing and moving on to a better life. Hopefully, his new relationship will give him some peace and he’ll get past this behaviour. I hope so for all three of you.

Thank you .. and in all honesty I think you’re right, I probably did do some things that weren’t, in hindsight, the nicest things in the world, but never did I attack him – not sleeping with him after our daughter was born – yes.
HIs new ‘wife,’ sends me nasty messages as well but I’ve blocked those.
It all sounds utterly terrible but he’s a good Dad, he’s just not a nice person to me and in order for my daughter to know some semblance of harmony between Dad and Mum I“m the one that has to let the hurt slide even though it just keeps coming!

What can I do to stop his insults affecting me?
Well, there are little details as to how the split came, if it was you or him that decided to call it quits. It seems like he either is hurting because he did not want it to end, or pissed he did not get the child. To me the best course is to ignore everything. If he sees it having no effect on you, he would be a fool to waste so much time trying to get through a brick wall with a cotton swab, so to speak. I can’t really see any other way, less resorting to violence, to make him quit. Until he gets over whatever the issue is that chapped his hide so badly, he will continue to try.

He left me, sent me an email saying he no longer wanted to be with me, I was on holiday with my daughter visiting family – he’s now marrying the woman he had an affair with.
He’s absolutely pissed that I was awarded main custody over our daughter – and he blamed me for the marriage ending as well… so yeah I guess ignore.
IT actually wasn’t completely my fault – I no longer wanted to sleep with him and we weren’t that ‘close’ as it was so that I think tore us apart and him to another woman.