BM wants to be friends on Facebook
It's a good problem to have, right? I am all for good will towards men AND women but this one has me wondering ... My earlier efforts at reaching out to her were rebuffed. She has NPD and has spent the last 20 years brainwashing skids (16, 21 and 23) to treat my DH as if he is scum. She said something nasty about my 12 year old son's looks - to his face - the very first time she laid eyes on him at SD's graduation last June. I hit the ceiling after that, and told skids we were concerned about their mother's hostility. Things have been frosty ever since. Around Xmas i discussed my previous experience of dealing with an ex ( my first husband's ex - i miss her!!! she was sane!) with the OSD and told her that good parents make every effort to get along with the other parent's new partner for the sake of the children. She responded, it would never work between my mom and you, you are too different. ( I hope so!) So the BM faded from my horizon. Now we have just had another round of tense emails back and forth with OSD about her not paying off student loans that DH took out for her ( not co-signed, took out in his own name to help her pay for an Ivy League school). She thinks i am a monster who - how horrible! -believes she needs to get a job, and pay them off, they are accruing at 8% a year. She wants to go to grad school. At one point, though, she said, we need peace ( in the family). Hmmm.... the next day the BM sends me a Friend Request on FB. There was no message accompanying it.
I am ignoring it for now. But should i make a return gesture of good will? I would love to normalize the relations with her and her brood, but they are dyed-in-the-wool narcissists! She runs a cult pretty much. My DH is still recovering, 5 years after the fact.
What would you do?
I would ignore it.
I would ignore it.
This is not a good problem -
This is not a good problem - ignore her - this is a trap!!!
^^^^ THIS!!!!
^^^^ THIS!!!!
YEP! Go with the ignore and
YEP! Go with the ignore and block!
Ignore and block. She has
Ignore and block. She has attacked your child. Done deal. Now if she can show she was under psychotrophic drugs at the time and begs your forgiveness and gifts you $10,000 for his college education in CASH I would consider it. But allowing her to troll your site and find out and communicate with your FB friends? Ew!
As for the SD, when she pays off her first loan you may consider co-signing another loan. Eventually your DH will have to pay it off because you know FULL well she won't.
Sure, you can have peace in the family. However peace does not mean SM and DH bending over and saying 'kick here'. SD needs to make an honest to goodness attempt to begin to pay off her student debt.
I echo the others- ignore and
I echo the others- ignore and block. This can lead to nothing good at all! Tell her, sorry, I like you as a person but I'm married to your exhusband. It's not a normal friendship no matter how great you might be. (if she even asks)
If you think she genuinely
If you think she genuinely has good intentions, I would reject her friend request, and I would tell her why. In my case, it would be because my facebook is private, and for only extremely close friends and family members. I literally only have about 40 friends on my facebook, and they're people who I would welcome into my home and life at any time with no notice. No acquaintances, no middle of the road friends. Just trusted friends and family. I'm a very private person when it comes to the day to day of my life, family pictures, etc.
If you think she's just trolling you, ignore her, block her, and give her NO explanation. Why? Because fuck her, that's why.
"Why? Because fuck her,
"Why? Because fuck her, that's why."
HAHAHAHAA!
Yup. Best advice on here.
Just say no.
Just say no.
IGNORE IT!
IGNORE IT!
Thank you, everyone, for your
Thank you, everyone, for your responses. I am not going to "friend" her on FB. I am not a very private person though when it comes to FB privacy and she can see a lot of my posts... i am "friends" with her daughters. I do think though that i need to respond in some way to the gesture.. to the invitation... but it was not put in words, that's the problem. She did not email me to say, how about we have a chat? I would chat... i did with my first husband's ex ( i was his second wife too): we were friendly and we would have his ex and her bf over for dinner, and they would invite us over. His kids were happy, the parents got along. It was all my doing, really, after a few years of no communication i reached out to the ex-wife. She was nice to my son, then a baby, would interact with him, hold him ,when she would come over. Whatever my misgivings about her were, she had class, that ex. I was blown away by how she condcuted herself. And she had every reason to hate me. That was about 10 years ago.
Today i am both a bio-mom to 2 teens and a SM to three young adults. Which means i am an ex and i deal with an ex. Can't say that i have a good relationship - or any relationship - with either of them. Aren't i supposed to be older and wiser? I want to make things better on both fronts. Will have to see if another opportunity presents itself.
Thank you again for your unilateral NO vote!
From what you've said there
From what you've said there is something nefarious behind her move. Ignore it.
It would seem that way,
It would seem that way, right? My DH thinks she wants to tell me off ( for telling her daughter to
go get a job, presumably).
Check your msgs too.
Check your msgs too. Sometimes when someone isn't friends w/you and they send you a msg it goes in a weird box like "other" and you don't get a notification that they emailed you. She might have sent a msg with it.
That's a great idea! Thanks
That's a great idea! Thanks you, Jennaspace! I just did, and no, there isn't one from her.
I would ignore this, it could
I would ignore this, it could be a trick, but maybe you could find something else to placate her, maybe she does need and "in", she's could be trying to give you an "olive branch", I sure that you know that you should never trust her, she sounds like a nasty bitch, do people get lower than critisizing a childs looks? No scrap that, stay away from her virtually and in real life, no good can come from this, we like to believe that people can't really be that unpleasent, but in this case I would not do anything that makes you vulnerable, she sounds the type of woman to look for anyway to get to you and DH.
Perhaps she was just stalking
Perhaps she was just stalking your page and sent the request by accident? This happened to me about a month ago. I knew there was NO WAY our BM would intentionally send me a friend request and I ignored it all together. I knew that when she looked at my page again, she would see that the button "Add Friend" had changed to "Friend Request Sent", LOL. Sure enough, a few days later, the request was deleted and disappeared from my pending friend requests. As much as I wanted to send her a message and bust her for stalking my page, sometimes no response is the best response.
That's a great point! Thank
That's a great point! Thank you for sharing. My DH also thought wshe did it by accident. I do not think so though.. i think she considers herself god's greatest gift to this earth and is about to share her gifts with me. I did not know, btw, you could withdraw the friend request. I just checked, it's still there. Now i am afraid i might accept it by accident... just by a mis-click. Have to be careful..
I agree, snickersgal, that
I agree, snickersgal, that there is no need to give her access. As for the kids' ages, i have not been around when they were young. DH and i have been together for 4 years, married since last fall. She freaked out when we said we were going to get married. Started wailing and teaching skids to say their dad was abandoning them. Up until then she probably thought he would never remarry. Did i mention she kicked him out of the house after 20 years of hellish, emotionally abusive marriage ( she is the abuser) and then 2 months later came out as gay?
She is right in that there
She is right in that there needs to be peace between the families. However, sometimes it's easiest to keep the peace by not crossing certain boundaries.
She isn't interested in peace. She's interested in "dirt". She interested in knowing all the things about you that she is not entitled to know. She is likely interested in your pictures, in seeing your contacts/friends/family connections...she wants free & clear access to read the thoughts you share with people you consider to be your family & friends.
You've made efforts to extend the olive branch & she snapped it off & whipped you with it. You do not owe her access to your page.
I extended the FB olive branch to BM & I saved the backlash messages to read through should I ever the itch to "be nice" again.
Thank you for validating my
Thank you for validating my feelings, Stormabruin. The BM has no boundaries. The skids are enmeshed and think this is how it should be. The YSD is raised as her mother's clone, no independent thinking skills at all. She will be deeply depressed in about 20 years if she ever figures out what was done to her. The OSD is going into mental health - how ironic! Her level of denial about where she is coming from is unbelievable.
So we are done with the olive branches.
But are there any other branches to consider.. may be in the future...
Ignore, block, and don't look
Ignore, block, and don't look back.