In today’s world, many blended families find ways to coexist without members causing too much trouble to each other. Time management, setting expectations, and other strategies help them to do so. At the same time, there are also blended families whose members struggle to figure out their roles in each other’s lives.
Like the one from today's story. On paper, they look like a perfectly functioning family – a man who shares his kids with his ex 50% of the time while living with his wife and their small child. Sadly, their reality is way more chaotic than that. In fact, the man’s current wife is thinking about leaving.
More info: Mumsnet
While some blended families find ways to coexist, unfortunately not all do
Image credits: Alena Darmel / Pexels (not the actual photo)
A man has two kids with his ex-wife of 5 years and a kid with his current wife
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
His ex is a nurse, so her schedule can be quite messy, so both he and his wife agreed to accommodate it
Image credits: Keira Burton / Pexels (not the actual photo)
The problem is that his ex never informs them about her schedule ahead of time, making chaos of their lives
Image credits: PicassoDiBablo
The chaos is so frustrating that the man's current wife is considering leaving him if he doesn't convince his ex to be more accommodating, like they have been to her
The OP’s husband shares two kids with his ex of 5 years. Around 2 years ago, said ex finished her nursing studies and she has been working in the National Health Service (NHS) ever since.
Since the exes share the kids for 50% of the time, when the woman started her job, her ex-husband agreed to accommodate her shifts. Nursing shifts are usually flexible in the sense that they can range from 4 to 16 hours. So, you might see why it might require accommodation from other people.
The OP agreed to the accommodation, and let’s just say that eventually, she came to regret this decision.
The main problem that arose was that the ex-wife never gave her schedule ahead of time. The most she has given them is a day’s notice, which isn’t much when you need to prepare for taking care of kids.
If the family asks the woman to send over her schedule, oftentimes she simply ignores this request or says she “forgot” to do it on time, which frustrates the OP even further.
All this instability causes chaos in their family and surely is not beneficial for the kids. Schedules and routines are important for children, as they can make them feel safe and comfortable, and be aware of what is coming next and what they should do. In this story, not only the kids that OP’s husband had with his ex are affected, but their 2-year-old daughter is too.
Plus, routines aren't only beneficial for kids, it’s good for the whole family too. For instance, it helps parents to be at least a little bit less overwhelmed during busy or stressful times of the day. Plus, it also helps with time management – knowing that a specific activity fits into a certain time slot can make it easier to plan other activities around it.
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
Yet, in the case of this story, it’s hard to keep up their routines when they never can be sure when the kids will be at their place. Since these kids are pretty young, 7 and 10 years old, planning for them is a necessity. The parents can’t simply, for example, leave them home alone for a couple of hours.
Meal planning is also a nightmare – the couple can never be sure whether they need to prepare food for three people or five people.
No wonder the author hates this whole accommodation – she has to base her whole life on her husband’s selfish ex, who clearly doesn’t respect their time.
To make matters worse, her husband doesn’t really want to create any waves. He wants to have an easy life and worries that if he complains too much, the ex will stop letting him see his kids.
This bugs his current wife so much that she is considering giving him an ultimatum – either he does something about it or she’s gone because she can’t live like this anymore.
Of course, she also asked the online world whether this sounded unreasonable and became today’s OP in the process. She got the answer from Mumsnet users that it doesn’t sound unreasonable at all. The way she’s living seems irritating at least – accommodating someone who basically doesn’t respect you is not a way to live.
Well, of course, it’s sad that the relationship has reached the point where an ultimatum is needed. What we can only hope is that an ultimatum will work and this insufferable situation will soon be fixed.
The woman asked the online world whether this was an overreaction to her current situation and got the answer that it wasn't – her husband's ex is being overly selfish
