My ex and I (M&F 27) were together for 2 1/2 years and he was very much a dad figure to my daughter (4). He also has a daughter around the same age and they referred to themselves as sisters. My daughter’s bio dad is more involved this last year, but for a long time he wasn’t and my ex took on that role.
We broke up recently due to his anger, which became a problem about a year and a half in and kept escalating. I tried really hard to fix our relationship but I can’t live with someone who’s constantly screaming at me and I honestly don’t want to ever see him again.
It’s been a few months and he reached out saying he and his daughter miss my daughter and I don’t know how to respond. My daughter asks about them all the time and I know she’s hurting over the breakup. We tried visiting so the kids could see eachother in the beginning and it got messy fast because he kept pushing for us to get back together and he ended up blocking me up until now.
I feel horribly guilty for my daughter having to go through this and I know she wants them in her life. I know I can keep it cool with exes for the benefit of the children because I’ve done it so long with her bio dad, it can be super emotionally exhausting though. Would it be better to try and maintain their relationship and just deal with the bs that comes up? Or stay no contact and hope this wound heals?
Thank you to anyone reading please send help. The people I normally go to for advice are torn on this one. My friend told me to ask Reddit so here I am lol
TL;DR My ex was a father figure to my young child, should they stay in contact?
1 comment
So, there are two separate issues here:
The first is that your daughter wasn’t given the option of having a relationship with him or not. And his daughter is close to her. On some level, it’s cruel to separate them once they’ve bonded like that.
The second is that you absolutely MUST protect her from his anger issues.
So I would think that playdates for the girls would be okay. You and him being civil to each other around those playdates is important, even if he doesn’t stay over. You need to establish that this is a zero-tolerance situation for his anger, and that his daughter is welcome, but he is not if he so much as raises his voice – he can drop her off and the girls can spend time together, but anything more than that, anything beyond the bare minimum of contact required for the girls to spend time together – is completely dependent on him keeping his shit together.