Dear Ex-Wife, *****, (If the shoe fits, wear it) It is now approaching 2 years since I have come into the life of your son. I have stood by the sidelines and held my tongue and my reaction to disturbing events as I felt it was in the best interest of all the parties involved, especially my stepson. I consider myself an independent thinker, confident and well balanced woman. I have always tried to live my life with positive thoughts and interactions with those that are in my life. There were times in my life that I had friends or relationships which I realized were a negative force in my life and I had to learn that I had the conscious choice on who I allowed in my life. In those situations, I had to end interaction with those negative forces. (Your ***** for instance.) Unfortunately, I am unable to remove myself from interaction with you because I have fallen in love and committed myself in a partnership with your ex husband and helping to raise his son.

There is so much I want to say so, I hope I can finally find some release for my pent up frustrations and anger towards you. I struggle regularly not to allow myself to feel such anger and resentment with you and how you treat your ex husband, son and me. I strive to find compassion and empathy for you and not to succumb to my ego. Unfortunately, I am a woman that does not like or allow people to mistreat me or the ones I love. It’s hard for me to sit on the sidelines and not speak up. So here it goes:

I think you are an embarrassment to the female race. What would you expect, * kids with * different men? You are emotionally immature, consumed by anger, bitterness and jealousy and you have absolutely no idea how damaging your tactics are with your son and ex-husband. You are manipulative and emotionally retarded.

For the first couple of months, I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you were still dealing with anger and hurt and disappointment because your marriage failed, but don’t forget, you slept around, you literally screwed up. I understood that you would need time to come to terms that your life as you knew it with your ex husband was no longer to be, I felt empathy for you.

Do realize that you do not live at MY house anymore, our maid does not report to you anymore, and no we do not safe keep your personal belongings like your passport anymore, I am perplexed and annoyed of your disrespect for personal boundaries. You are such an idiot, boundaries; do you know the word or meaning?

There are so many fathers out there that have abandoned their children financially, physically, and emotionally. This is not the situation with your ex. He is the most compassionate, giving, patience man I know. He over provides for his son, continues to try and collaboratively co parent with you, and tries to focus on positive interaction and the future.

I find that whenever you are depressed, stressed, or anxious over your own finances or home life, you use him as your venting bag. It’s infuriating to see you attack him regularly. I am convinced that you have such low self esteem that you have to attack and make someone else miserable to make yourself feel better. I ask him all the time why does he allow you to talk with him like that. He says that’s why your marriage ended and he is so used to it that it’s not worth his energy to engage in it. I am often jealous of his ability to completely disengage and detach himself to your verbal abuse. It is time for you to come to terms that you are NO LONGER IN CONTROL!

The most mind boggling thing for me is I see you so angry and bitter and hateful towards him but at the same time, you will do anything to have attention from him. You create situations with your son as a pawn so he has to interact with you, and constantly disregard his requests for you to stop bothering him. What is that about?

His family and he constantly tell me that you are just mentally ill; there is just something off with you. I am not completely convinced of this yet. I find you manipulative and strategically intrusive at times. I believe that you are still living a fantasy by trying to still maintain that husband-wife relationship. You are engaged to another man, oh but sure, you are use to abusing men in general, *x*. Thank God you cannot have any more kids!

I sincerely believe you mentally figure that if you do not acknowledge my existence then I really do not exist in your mind. It’s quite sad really. Lady, I’m not going anywhere. Your ex-husband is my soul mate. I hate to break it to you but despite the turmoil you create, we very much love each other and the blended family we have created with our children. AND, the children very much love the family unit we have created. It was them that insisted we seal the knot in marriage. And how is this for a thorn in your side, your ex husband loved me before he even met you, and he always did, since our school years.

The hardest thing out of all of this for me is the repercussions I see in your son. No matter how I personally feel about you or that I do not believe you should really have the custody time or joint authority in decisions concerning your son’s school and medical issues, I do believe your son has a right to a positive and good relationship with his mother. Yeah, I am adult you know!

A few months ago, your son actually asked me if he could stay with us full time! Your son is only 13 years old. The sad part is that you have absolutely no clue how much you are pushing your son away from you.

Are you so consumed by your own emotional needs that you could not identify how much you are hurting your son?

What you do not know, is when your son called you later to apologize to you for his statements when you chased him from your home, it came from me. I told your son he has every right to feel angry or upset about the situation but I also told him that you were his mother and how he handled that situation was wrong.

Trying to verbally assault you and hurt you back in the same way that you did to him was not appropriate. Although it’s hard to do, I strive to show him to accept you for who you are but to learn by what he sees and make his own decisions on what type of person he wants to be.

I want to believe in the mother-son bond. I want to believe the deep down all mothers will protect their children and am concerned for the physical and emotional development and take the high road when needed. I no longer have such faith in you as a mother. What’s sad is that your own son has developed some of your social deficits in modeling behavior. You are selfish, lack any ability to establish healthy friendships, intrusive and disrespectful even to total strangers, lazy and you are a hypochondriac. Your own son has very little friends, we constantly work to teach him social grace and manners, and he has begun to lack a passion for his school work. Yes, we know, projects aren’t your strong point…

Your Ex and I strongly believe in a positive and collaborative co-parenting relationship. I am so tired of your constant double standards. You accuse us of not sharing information with you but you refuse to do the same and many times we have to go to the school office directly to get information. Would be nice if you could also please pay your section of the school fees by the way.

We know that you mentally do not handle social situations well and it causes anxiety. Unfortunately, because you hibernate your son from others on your time and limit his interactions with other kids, we are seeing some serious deficits developing in your son. We also know you do not know how to discipline him or handle his outbursts. We also have some knowledge of the negative comments you make about us and I can only imagine what he encounters on your custody time. Unfortunately, at this age, he still does not know how to make friends. When he is put in social situations, he struggles to share and play nice with other kids. Oh Boy, good luck with the two new boys in your life to add to that!

I do not share the common belief that most people believe that no matter what you should always maintain a relationship with your parents and family because they are “blood”. I do not share that belief because there are many parents out there that are abusive and have no business having children. Thus, it will be interesting to see in 10 years when your son has his own independence and control of his life as to whom is in his life, if he will maintain a relationship with you. After you gave away your first born to foster parents for 26 months at such a young age and your second son to his aunt, we are more than willing to take the third off your hands as well.

I would never encourage him to detach from you but I will tell you I will not support it either. I will be silent on the subject and allow him to make his own decisions. Did I make it very clear, I do not want to be his mother, you are, even if you do not want to take the responsibility.

Sometimes, to get through the weekly struggles and cycles with your son, I want to believe that he had a guarding angel in his life that brought me to him. Sometimes, I find we have a deep connection and he reminds me so much of my husband at that age-low self esteem, lack of confidence or independence.

I love him with all my heart and will persevere; I believe wholeheartedly that it comes back to you tenfold.

In the end, your interactions with us are passive-aggressive tactics that are only hurting the most important person in this situation, your son. I do believe as he gets older he is starting to figure some things out about you. Why you left in the first place, I cannot see why it have to remain such a secret, you left the home, you slept around, you moved out, you gave your other kids away….

He is starting to realize that there are always 2 sides to the story. Sometimes, it’s hard for me because I see his model your behavior in our household and it’s like living with a mini you. Resentment grows at times with that, but I vow to myself to let it go and just try to show your son mutual respect and unconditional love and hope at the end of the day he will find the right way to live his life and interact with others. And he just might have the chance at a happy, healthy life for himself.

My Best Friend of 20 years, *****, asked me the other night, why do I put up with all this constant drama? She wanted me to know that I still have choices in my life because she can’t even comprehend how I handle all this junk. I said to her that every marriage has a white elephant. Whether its addictions, or bad in-laws, infidelity, or spoiled children, or YOU. But at the end of the day, I would have never married your ex-husband until I came to terms with what my life might involve. I told her that I look at relationships like a scale; if there is better than bad then you stick it out. For all the crap that we deal with, really at the end of the day it’s only about 10% bad. Your ex-husband gives me absolute unconditional love. He is the best father I could ever have for my daughter. We have fun just playing and he influences and teach me things about myself every day. Every day, I am a better person for having him in my life. I would never trade that or any future experiences for anything in the world simply because of another woman. I would never let you take away someone good in my life-then you would win. Frankly, I deserve him. I have had my history of a bad man (only 1 fortunately) like all women have. I also told her that I listen to other’ stories sometimes when it’s really bad and I see so many women that actually deal with even worse antics with ex’s and it can always be worse. You just have to let go of your ego in the situation and love. Keep the ones that you love and that love you close as ever and just live. So dearest ex-wife, or *x* like we call you, get a life!