Her Ex-Husband Began Secretly Seeing His Coworker, So Now She Won’t Interact With His New Partner As They Navigate Co-Parenting
This woman and her now ex-husband were married for 12 years and together for over 15 years total.
After five years of suffering through miscarriages, they had a child together in 2020.
Not long before their child turned 2-years-old, her then-husband ended the marriage out of nowhere, rejecting the idea of going to couples therapy to try to resolve their problems before considering divorce.
Even though she was stunned that he wanted to divorce what seemed completely out of the blue, their relationship wasn’t without conflict.
Her main concerns throughout their marriage related to the distribution of labor with housework, and she didn’t think her husband had a healthy balance between his job and being home with their family.
She was often irritated, stressed, and angry with the fact that her husband didn’t help her enough at home, but she never saw a divorce coming, especially since they’d spent years trying to have a baby.
Several months after the breakup, she discovered that her ex was hiding a romantic relationship he and a co-worker were engaged in.
For the last six to 9 months leading up to the divorce, she was suspicious about this co-worker in particular.
“Back then, he’d tell me I was crazy and projecting. Told me to go back on my postpartum depression meds (which I did think I was losing my mind for a while there). Until I confronted him post-separation with hard proof, he claimed to barely know this co-worker,” she said.
wavebreak3 – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
When her ex-husband realized he could no longer lie about not knowing this co-worker, he pivoted and claimed that he didn’t do anything with the woman while they were married.
According to her ex, the relationship began after they broke up.
However, she’d known her ex-husband’s co-workers for many years, so when she asked them for their perspective, their timeline of the chain of events differed drastically from her ex’s. They told her that they noticed some shady behavior between her ex and the co-worker in question.
“They moved in together quickly, in my opinion, and now my child interacts with them as a couple. I’m trying my best to move forward despite his continued denial in the face of evidence. I have a pretty big betrayal wound,” she explained.
Right now, they are a year and a half into the divorce process and still finalizing some of the details.
She has primary custody of their child, and their custody split is 80/20.
Understandably, this has been a difficult adjustment for her. She has a full-time job, so working and taking care of her child keeps her busy.
But because she went through so much to have a child in the first place, she feels incredibly appreciative of her child and is thrilled to be a mother.
Luckily, her ex-husband is happy with their custody agreement because he works a ton, so this arrangement is suitable for him.
“One recent boundary I have enforced is that unless my child wants to discuss my ex’s girlfriend with me, I absolutely refuse to communicate, discuss, or interact with my ex about his girlfriend/affair partner. I have zero issues navigating these conversations with my child when they come up, as I’ve consulted a child psychologist on how to tackle them,” she shared.
She will not allow her ex to discuss his new girlfriend in front of her while she’s doing her best to cope with the conflict related to their co-parenting.
Unfortunately, her ex-husband is furious with her about this boundary she’s setting. It seems to her like he wants her to move on from their breakup, accept that he was telling her the truth about not cheating, and accept his new girlfriend into all of their lives.
But she doesn’t want to ever meet or know anything about her ex’s girlfriend.
The only discussions she wants to have with her ex-husband are about their child. Taking her ex’s new partner out of the equation, being around her ex is uncomfortable enough as it is, so she wants to talk to him as little as possible.
What advice would you give her?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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