I do my very best to not say anything negative about my ex-husband when my daughter is around. I don’t want to cloud her judgement of him with my personal feelings. There’s no question that I am not fond of him and his decisions on how involved to get in our child’s life, but I want her to decide for herself how invested she should be in him.
From within hours of her birth to the day he and I decided to divorce to today, my ex has shown little interest in being active in our daughter’s life; a sad yet uncomfortably common occurance around the world. As she grows older, my daughter has already formed some opinions of her dad based on what she has seen or heard – from him. Missed birthdays, forgotten promises, and sparse phone calls have seemed to form a detached relationship between the two of them. She loves to spend time with him when it’s time for visitation, but she’s content and comfortable knowing that he’s not always present.
I do my best to send my ex and his family pictures from fun events in our life, uploading them to their local drugstore or superstore website, paying for the pictures to be developed and having them delivered to their house. I make sure to carefully pack the Father’s Day and Christmas presents she’s picked out for him to travel to his house when she visits. And I make sure to let her speak to him in private on the phone when, if, they talk. I want my ex and his family to be involved in my daughter’s life. I want them to actively decide to get involved.
My dilemna actually started a few months ago. I briefly considered taking down my personal blog because I had seen a lot of visits from the area near my ex’s house. A LOT of visits. Daily. Multiple times a day. While I was excited to see my daily read count jump up, I was concerned that this was the way my ex was choosing to “get involved,” by reading my blog instead of talking one-on-one with our daughter. I finally decided that if he wanted to read my blog, fine. I’m not writing it for him, I’m writing it for me; a public diary.
It turned out that it wasn’t my ex reading my blog, it was the neighbor he uses as a babysitter for our daughter when she’s visiting him. The neighbor has a daughter the same age as mine, so it’s likely it’s their way of keeping up on my daughter’s life with me. Cool.
But a couple of weeks ago, my mom told me that my ex’s dad “friended” her on Facebook. He’d posted some pictures from my daughter’s last visit and wanted to show them to her. He friended my mom because I have both him and my ex “blocked” on Facebook. While they are a part of my daughter’s life, they’re not a part of mine; I don’t want them reading my status updates and seeing my pictures. So my daughter got to see the pictures and I’m happy she did. But now a part of me wants my mom to un-friend my ex-father-in-law. Mom posts things about my daughter a lot and that would mean my ex and his family would have 24-hour access to her life down here. Without trying. Without calling. Without asking her what’s going on in her life. There’s no doubt that social media has in some part replaced one-on-one interactions with people. But when there’s minimal interaction to begin with, should that lack be encouraged by allowing access to one’s Facebook page?
Am I wrong in wanting to make my ex’s family put some effort into getting to know my daughter better? Or am I just behaving like a scorned ex who exacts revenge in any way possible?
You can read more by Michelle at her blog Single Mom Sanctuary.
Picture by Michelle Stillson, derived from the iPhone compass app.
Am I wrong in wanting to make my ex’s family put some effort into getting to know my daughter better?
Not in the slightest. It reflects poorly on them that they don’t seem to take an active effort to be a part of her life.
I’m going to preface, by saying that I don’t agree with the way your ex-FIL is going about trying to be involved in your babys life….However, I would say that trying in any regard, it is a step. Sometimes, taking that first step, is the biggest one. If you’re really that concerned about it, I would talk to him personally and voice your opinion about how you feel. Tell them that they are either in or out and they need to be so 100%. Once you make a mistake, it’s really difficult to remedy it. So, instead of being worried about them “fb stalking,” they may have a real motive to make things right. Just a thought. I don’t know if it’s wrong or right, but it’s worth it for your daughter to have an opportunity. I love you sweetheart (and in turn your beautiful little one) and everything I say is not ever meant to be critical, but to give another perspective. I also know that she is amazing and will be no matter what.
First, I must applaud you for your maturity in handling your relationship with your ex, and in keeping your daughter’s needs in the first position. Second, your desire for your ex to make the effort at seeing his daughter and building a relationship with her reasonable. However, you (and she) are bound to be disappointed in this arena. He is not likely to change his current behavior.
As for Facebook–it does present challenging dilemmas in situations like these–I’ve struggled with a similar scenario. I wound up letting the “friendship” stay, but I altered my privacy settings a bit. You could, for example, allow your pics to be seen by friends only, not friends of friends. Even daily posts can be limited to viewing by certain people (or excluded from certain people). The reason I chose to bear with the annoyance is because it didn’t bother me enough to change it, but mostly because I didn’t want to rock the boat in a relationship that has always presented more challenges than I like–I chose to keep the waters as smooth as possible for my son’s sake.
My final thought it that (if you haven’t already) a discussion with your mom may help you in sorting this out. She may offer you a slightly different perspective that allows you to leave it be, or, conversely, you may (my sharing your prespective) give her the courage to “just say no” to the friendship. Social media certainly has put a new wrinkle in the challenges of parenting through divorce.