"How much DAILY contact with the ex is normal"... Daily contact is not normal in our situation. Unless there is a daily emergency (which is highly unlikely) then daily is way too much!! Just my opinion though

There should not be daily contact at all!! Unless the kids are sick or in big trouble they should be talking MAYBE a few times a week to a few times a month.

By the time my SD was the age that yours are, DH hardly spoke to BM at all.

Not only does your husband need some more boundaries with BM but he could use a lesson in cell phone etiquette, as well.

Only contact with my ex about 1-2 times a month. Same with BM. Only contact is to confirm a drop off or pick up.... Anything else at this point is excessive.

No, no, no. This may be what they consider normal but it is completely unacceptable. My husband did this exact same thing in the beginning. It was maddening. We went around and around over it and yet he would still have daily contact with his ex and interrupt our time together. It sounds like resentments are starting to build up and trust me, they will only get worse if you don't put your foot down. It took me documenting every single text and phone call in a two month period (570 texts, I forget how many calls). I mapped it out on a calendar to show him how much of his life was being consumed by this woman's inability to parent when it was her turn to parent.

We ended up blocking her from his phone because even after repeated requests to her to keep it short, kid-related, and as infrequent as possible, she still did not comply. This was a hard won battle. He felt such a need to "know what's going on in her head" so that he could put out any potential fires and prevent her blowups. The thing is, he was never able to prevent her blowups and subjecting himself to these texts and calls only served to keep him in a state of constant anxiety. He finally recognized that and admits to feeling so much lighter now that she does not have direct instant access to him 24/7. Also, it saved our marriage. I was at a breaking point and all of my resentment were coming out even when she wasn't on the phone with him. I was living in a constant state of anxiety too.

Do not allow this woman to control so much of your time.

I only talk to my ex-husband in the case of emergencies or at exchanges, or if we talk at a sports event or something of the sort, and our DD is 9. The ONLY time we had any type of significant contact was when we were trying to figure out the ins and outs of what was going to happen when DD started school. We certainly don't talk daily, or even weekly for the most part. Your DH should definitely not be taking calls from BM when you are on dates, etc...and especially not lengthy ones. If it's an emergency she can leave a message. What would these crazy BMs do before the time of cell phones and instant access?? You definitely need to have a talk with your DH about what is acceptable and what is not. At your skids ages, contact should be minimal.

ETA....90% of our contact is via email as well, so we have hardly ANY one-on-one contact besides saying hello.

The first thing that came to my mind was RUN. Run hard.....run far. This man hasn't come to grips with the fact that she is an EX. He is still emotionally connected to her. If things don't change you will always be placed after her and the skids. This was just my first impression. The other ladies have given you good advice.

In the beginning, they spoke infrequently, on the phone maybe 2x a week, SD was 8. She was so high conflict and aggressive that he pretty consistently hung up on her.

Now SD is 14 and it is email only, and no phone at all. SD better be on fire if she calls DH.

I had to put my foot down and it has been a long road. DH would say that it prevented WW3 if he just dealt with her. No, it did not. He said it made her easier to get along with, NO it didn't. It took a long time for him to understand it was her method of control. SD has been allowed to make her own decisions by BM. ok- so BM has NO SAY in anything else. PERIOD. I had a meltdown and freaked out on him that we were in a 3way marriage and that it had to stop.

I LOVE what Brie said,

:: Do not let him spin this and make it seem like you are interfering with his ability to parent his kids - bullshit - you are talking about HOW parenting is executed, not whether he should co-parent etc. And it is fair to expect him to walk and chew gum at the same time. He is a father and a husband and he is married to someone other than the child's mother. ::

seems crazy to me.
my fiance and BM never talk - everything is done through email or text. if he calls her she wont even answer her phone.

None at all. DH only talks to Bm when he has to see her at exchanges, when she insists on making him talk to her before she lets him talk to SD, & when she calls with some bullshit 'issue' which isn't real.

Those instances will be cut down drastically when SD7 is the age of ur skids - she will have her own phone probably & DH won't have to go through BM's phone to talk to SD when she is gone.

I don't talk to my exH for at least a week sometimes 2. and SO never talks to his ex only text and that's just as rare. Daily calls sounds like he's still "with" her and needs to have boundaries. Next time he answers on a date get up and leave just walk out on him say nothing. That's bullshit.

There should not be DAILY contact. I know DH will talk to BM about certain things but most of the time a phone call is for him to tell SS he misses and loves him and check on how his day went...beyond that he has no need to talk to BM other than asking if SS is busy.

They barely even text he is gone for 3 weeks at a time and I can normally scroll back to the middle of when he was home last and without clicking for additional messages.

Contact should be emergencies, or certain important situation like for ours he is instructed to say if he will fly in Wed or Thurs because it states so in the CO as it can have a slight change on the custody arrangement, they recently discussed taxes because she decided to take it out of the decree last minute without him noticing, but normally I would say with him asking for SS or her calling and asking for SS they maybe exchange words 10 minutes a month on a extreme occasions.

It's *nice* that DH and BM seem to be on friendly terms with each other, but we've seen this kind of complaint before on this site.

His primary responsibility is to his children, but his primary relationship should be WITH YOU.

That being said, no you are definetly not being unreasonable. Your husband and the BM may not be romantically involved with each other but they are definetly emotionally invested in one another and acting like their status (being the parents of SD14 and SD12) affords them the luxury of carrying on as if they were still a couple.

Daily contacts are not normal. I had put a stop to it when my husband was talking to BM. She mostly called to nose around asking about what we do and our finances. None of it was any of her business.

I had pretty much told my husband one day I would be more then happy to pack his bags and he could go straight back to her if he missed her all the much since he can't figure out who the hell he is married too.

It all came to a halt. Though she through a fit telling him "she just does not understand why they don't talk anymore because they were always good friends"

RIgggghht.

She would string it alone through the 4 years we were married. It is like some how she knew we went to an event and we did not go to many and she would be calling while we were at one and he would have to answer the phone because it could be about the kids because it was getting close for the kids to come down and she would stare up some kind of midi okra shit to ruin the day. Either he would not enjoy the rest of the event or I had put my foot down at the last event and told him I am going to quit going places with him and find someone else to hang out with because he tend to let her ruin it for everyone. just over the freaken phone.

He no longer answer his phone to her when we go out. It is sad you have to be the one to draw boundaries to what you are not going to put up with to get him to even budge to make boundaries. I think men should already know this.

You need to find some way to get your husband to understand that, that much communication is not only unnecessary but also deeply upsetting and disrespectful to you. When I first moved in with my husband there was more communication than I thought was necessary, eventually my husband worked out that to have an easy life with me he needed to limit his texts/calls to her. It is better now, not perfect but a lot better. I can't remember how I managed to get it through to him, but you know your husband best so I'm sure you can come up with something. Just make sure you are clear you don't want to stop him being a dad, you just want to receive the respect you deserve. Taking a call during dinner is disrespectful, no matter who is on the other end. If it really was an emergency BM would leave a message and/or send a text then you two can assess if it merits an immediate response.

I didn't read the other replies but I am going to go with NONE. dh and bm split when ss was 1. All these years there contact was mostly limited to every 2 weeks whenever there was a visit and exchange. Only emergencies-real emergencies or perhaps a head ups about requesting schedule change-were the only times they really communicated in between visits. I cannot imagine DAILY contact.

I remember DH treating every little text and phone call as if it were an emergency. All our dates were interrupted by text after text, and I had no clue was they were texting each other. It was annoying but then I caught on to the fact that BM would text DH to say, "I cut my lip and busted it open...there's blood everywhere....CALL ME ASAP!!" I asked DH what in the world could he do from hundreds of miles away? If it's an emergency, BM should call 911. Turns out, BM just didn't want to let go of the comfort of DEPENDENCE. Finally, I told DH that was ENOUGH BS from his EX. It was never even about the kid, it was about that dumb useless bitch ex who wanted to use DH and suck him dry at every turn.

Tell your husband that calls are to be limited to emergency notifications and it had literally be "your kid has been hit by a car" not "your kid has a toothache".

You've seen the consensus now tell him the contact falls to once or twice a month or he finds someone else. Then do it.

I'm not so sure this guy considers himself romantically tied to her so much as he's one of those people who simply MUST respond to a phone ringing. "It might be important".

It is clearly his ex's way of controlling as much of his time as possible. It is worth ending this short marriage if he cannot cut this string.

If DH took a call from BM on date night, I would leave the restaurant & he best hope i wasn't the one that drove there because I would leave him there.

Voice mail is your friend.

My SD's BM is constantly looking for any reason to contact DH. It annoys the hell out of me mentioning him in fb posts, commenting on his, ridiculous phone calls & texts. She finds a reason to make some sort of contact daily, even when SD is not with us. I hate it and DH finds her to be one of the most annoying people on earth yet he does nothing about it because he doesn't want to start trouble... Makes me soooo mad. I would love to tell her how absolutely pathetic she is but of course I can't.