I am taking a lot of your advice. What do you think?

FDH,

We need to talk about this birthday situation. I woke up this morning and could not fall back to sleep because I am so upset about this. I am sick to my stomach.

I sent you a very long email two days ago talking about how you have serious boundary issues with BM and are allowing your entanglement with her to intrude into our lives and cause major issues in our relationship. This has been an ongoing issue and it never seems to get much better. I explained rather clearly to you that I was not going to tolerate being put in second position any more. I meant that. You came home and we never discussed it as if the email had never been sent. Now, as a result, we are sitting her in the exact same position with recent discussions over SD’s birthday.

I have been dreading the beginning of “birthday season” because it’s yet another opening for BM to try to cross boundaries and for you to let her. I can’t tell you how devaluing it is to sit where I do when this happens. The first year we were together, BM had all birthday celebrations at her home and I was blatantly excluded. Last year, the birthdays fell on our time with the kids and I feel we were very generous to invite her into OUR home to allow her to celebrate with her kid on the day of each birthday. Most women wouldn’t dream of allowing her man’s ex wife into her house at all. But I did to be nice.

I didn’t say much but I was incredibly uncomfortable with how those joint parties played out. Despite my specifically asking you to do otherwise, each party ended up being planned by you and your ex-wife. Instead of being asked to be a guest in our home, you allowed her to jointly run the show with you, pushing me to the background in my own home. You planned together what you would make for dinner. You jointly decided on cake. She even got up and started helping you cook in MY kitchen one time. She freely roamed our house like she had a right to go wherever she pleased in our home. (Most guests do not go in bedrooms and take strolls around your house investigating it unless invited to do so). And on one occasion, you two got so comfortable in our kitchen that you decided to have a stroll down memory lane, right in front of me. It was humiliating. I was doing my best to be accommodating. I wanted the birthdays to be nice for the kids. I wanted to get along with BM. So I allowed myself to be overrun and completely disrespected by both of you in my own home. It’s rather sickening to think about.

Of course, I was hoping that this year would be different. But it’s already started.
BM doesn’t want to spend her Saturday driving SD all over the state so she asked you to split it with her. That had nothing to do with SD and everything to do with BM’s desires. Instead of putting her in her place and drawing clear boundaries, you lied to her and told her you’d be out of town.

The boundary forming answer should have been along the lines of “BM-- that is your weekend with the children. We do not do favors for one another on our free weekends as you’ve established. It is Anne’s birthday celebration that day and I will be spending it with her. She and I will get SD a gift together and will celebrate with her on her on X date which happens to be our weekend”. End of story. That would send the following clear messages that I think you need to digest as well:
1- My role is important and my needs matter and are equal to everyone else’s and above hers.
2- She is grossly overstepping by asking you to do her a favor on her weekend. These requests will no longer be entertained for even a moment
3- She doesn’t dictate how birthdays and holidays will be celebrated
4- She doesn’t have a say in matters in our home and on our time.
5-If she needs help, she needs to call BF
6-Joint gifts now come from you and me. If she wants to do joint gifts, she needs to talk to her BF.
7-You two are no longer a couple. We are.

There should be no negotiations or discussions with her on these key points. She simply has no place trying to run our lives. Likewise, you have no business worrying about her needs (printing, boxes, lawn equipment, job advice, etc…). Those things should have ended when you decided to get divorced. This “one big happy family” crap is just that, crap. You are not one big happy family anymore. Period. If you wanted that, you should have kept your marriage together. Now, you live with me and she is in a serious relationship with another man with whom she is about to live. The kids have two separate households. They need to be co-parented but that does not mean what you two seem to think it does. It does not require emotional enmeshment, boundary crossing and certainly should never interfere with your primary love relationships with your significant others.

I am sick and tired of you allowing her to come before me. That woman has zero boundaries with you and you let her. Time and time again, you allow her to drive a wedge in our relationship. She’s doing it right now and you aren’t stopping her. I simply can’t take it anymore, FDH. It’s killing me and will end up killing our relationship altogether if this doesn’t stop in its tracks!

I was considering the idea of inviting her, BF and his kids over for dinner and a cake for SD’s birthday. But it’s quite obvious that you two wouldn’t know a boundary if it was marked with yellow warning tape, so I don’t feel comfortable with that at all now. I don’t feel like I need to open myself up for another evening of humiliation, disrespect and pain. Can’t do it. If you won’t look out for me, I will.

Perhaps, one day, when you are able to stand up to her, stop allowing her manipulation and power struggle to interfere in our lives and put our relationship ahead of her, we can discuss trying the whole “joint” event thing again. But for now, she has no place in my home.

We signed a new lease and are moving into a new home in a few short days. I would like to start that new phase of our lives without all of this BM/FDH boundary busting interfering at every step of the way. We need to start a new chapter and your EX wife must be put in her rightful place if you want to continue having a serious relationship with me. I am over this crap.

I need to know that things will change quickly and that you are actively addressing this major issue. I can honestly tell you that no amount of love and affection for you will allow me to brush this to the side and be treated like this. It has to be fixed or our lives cannot move forward together. This is serious.