I feel the main problem is the very high level of enmeshment that he currently exhibits with her. I feel from what you describe it will take much more than him simply completing the divorce process to set up good boundaries with her. He would have to demonstrate good boundaries with the ex -- which INCLUDES the divorce.

I do believe that a marriage can be good and dead long before the paperwork catches up. I have no trouble with that because my own was. But I had no ties whatsoever to my ex-husband and did not hang out with him or depend on him for dead batteries or broken water heaters etc. long before the final papers. You have a guy who has a very very very long way to go before he is in charge of his own life regardless of the status of filings. He can get his divorce but you will still be stuck with a man who thinks he has to acquiesce to the demands of the ex-wife. You have no idea until you actually marry him yourself how many ways this will invade your life and crush the very oxygen out of your lungs.

So let him get his divorce and work on cutting her puppet strings. When he's finished with all that he can look you up and find out if you're still available and not a minute sooner. Most of us on this board have men who are fully divorced legally but the puppet strings are still strangling us and most of our guys are way ahead of yours in that dept. Run!

"or she goes ballistic"

Do be careful with this, because with the bossy controlling woman, him going ahead and making decisions for his life (like filing for divorce) will cause her to go ballistic even if she doesn't want him back. It is an indication that she wants to maintain control over him, which is extremely likely in your case.

Many parents who are splitting soothe themselves about the loss by telling themselves that they still have to coparent. It gives them a way to avoid fully letting go, for whatever reason.

My BM, and yours too, probably wants to have her cake and eat it too. She wants the security of your boyfriend (he knows her well, she can guilt him into helping her, and she doesn't want to truly be a sole parent on her time) and the excitement and romance of someone new. So divorce will mean literally nothing to her, because she will feel entitled to your boyfriend still putting her first and call it "being a good father" and "coparenting". It's simple selfish entitlement and a refusal to be respectful and let go of him. Again, if you stay with him, I guarantee she'll do this.

I believe the enmeshment can be worse in dysfunctional relationships that are long over with by the time the two people split. Think about it - they're already used to living as roommates and the romance is long gone. So the idea is that nothing has to change between them, aside from new loves and new living locations, because they aren't attached romantically. Except attachment runs much deeper. Like it or not, they are used to putting one another first, and think they can continue it after the split "because kids." This means they are not available for new relationships because they're still in one. I see your boyfriend doing this, and you meekly waiting for the day when you get to be the only woman in his life.

Getting him to commit to a divorce is merely the initial step, and will not compel him to grieve his marriage and emotionally divorce her as well. That's your real challenge, and the only one who can make it happen is him. You cannot push him into it, and you also cannot be a doormat sitting around and being supportive of him at the cost of your self-respect and unmet needs. It has to come from him and in an acceptable timeframe for you.

With no custody order? Sure! Next question is do BMs like this withhold children all the time in spite of it being against the law? Sure! All the time! Read more of these forums and blogs.

But what is even more common is that she will find excuses that sound plausible such as possible fevers, school or sport events that are suddenly scheduled, and mostly she will just the kids all upset or bribed in some way to not want to go. So then dad is in the position of being the mean monster who is forcing them to miss the fun thing with their friends or the monster who makes them go to his house at all.

Good luck with this.

Of course not. She's ridiculous. But she's just acting as we thought she would. She wants to control him, keep him. The "friendliness" was never anything but a facade. You're seeing more of the true her.

Crappy for awhile? It will be crappy forever. She is behaving exactly as we said she would. She's PASing the kids, engineering dad's "failures" and you bet your sweet bippy commenting on these "failures" directly to the kids themselves. And demanding full custody because of his "inadequacy." Believe me she is now or will soon plant the idea in the kids heads that these "inadequacies" are evidence of his not caring about them. Do not think your skids are so special they will never fall for this. The power of BM is jaw-dropping.

Some practical tips: 1. Do not pack clothes. Buy clothes for dad's house. Keep them at dad's house. Wear exclusively them at dad's house. Kid should walk through the door with just her schoolwork, no suitcase. 2. Dad should deal with the school directly. Do not give bm a chance to set him up like that. 3. Set up Our Family Wizard for communications. End the sappy texts.

Now, for you, no, do not take on the burden of his emotional roller coaster with bm. You have already gotten a taste of where that gets you: you're busy solving it, doing research, emotional energy only to find he's already made up with her and now is throwing shade at your efforts and concern. How nice for you. :/

I'm not super into disengagement myself but in your case I would recommend it. At least insofar as being dh's emotional nursemaid in re bm. Tell him you have faith he can handle her exactly as he wants. You just don't want to hear it any more. Say that with a smile. Don't be angry. Just hand the whole mess back to him. Right now he is taking a bunch of s&%t from bm and tossing it over to you and you are catching it. Take off your catcher's mitt. Make him deal with the stinkpile himself. If he had been working with you as a respectful partner this step might not be necessary. But he does not get to take up all that space in your head for bm's crap then turn around and reject you for your trouble.

This is now an old post, but I'm going to say this anyway: textbook stuff, Samara.

She thinks that she and the kids are a package deal. She counts her needs as what the kids need, therefore when Dad isn't doing what she wants, she says he's being a bad father. You're right that her policing his "moods" and how he "treats her" doesn't make sense and isn't a concern, but she makes herself a package deal with the children. She thinks that he's only being a good father if he continues to prioritize her.

In other words, she doesn't know what divorce means (yes, even when there are kids) and she's bound and determined to not learn. She is going to manipulate him like hell to go back to being under her control, because she likes that feeling. That's exactly what she's doing and it's up to him to see it.

None of it makes sense, because it's not logical. She's made connections in her mind that are improper and don't belong. The question is whether your boyfriend can both see that and act on that, or if she is still able to play upon his guilt and passivity to manipulate him.

Many passive men believe that mothers, via the virtue of popping a kid out of their twat, have this infinite ~wisdom~ and that they are entirely ~unselfish~ and ~speak on behalf of the children~ and men are dumb and stupid. Your boyfriend needs to open his eyes and stop buying into BM's toxic version of the world.

Divorce means the end of the relationship. All of her complaining about how he's treating her means she's absolutely shocked that he's not placing her all important feeeeeeelings first in his life, and she is then punishing him for this infraction via the children. She is being an incredibly selfish person. A sane mother wants her children to have a good relationship with their father, no matter how he treats her. What matters is how he treats his kids, and that is 100% separate from her emotions.

This link summarizes many of the toxic things she is doing: http://shrink4men.com/2011/05/17/does-your-wife-or-ex-wife-have-a-golden...

My BM meets 13 out of the 15. This type of woman needs a passive and compliant man lacking in self-esteem to buy into her bullsh*t. Now you are dating that man. Has he worked on himself such that he will be able to see how BM manipulates him and do something about it, or will he scramble to keep the peace with her, "for the kids"? If it is the latter, run far and run fast.

You are a threat to her now. You, via his desire to place you first in his life, are a threat to what she wants, and you are now a target. This is all classic stuff, Samara. I've been through this, and it nearly destroyed me. I'm a nice person, I'm logical, and it was one of the worst times of my life.

If you haven't already left, you need to scrutinize the decisions he is making. Each and every one. And you need to place aside your people-pleasing nature, and be ready to disappoint him (and yourself) by leaving. Your backbone is what you need to prioritize, because if you don't, you will get sucked into their misery, too.

" I guess, is that when she is sending abusive and critical messages, he gets really upset and his ability to be "present" in our relationship is impacted. I spend a lot of time trying to make him feel better and offering advice on how he could handle things(i.e. I put a lot of emotional energy into it), then a day or so later he will carry on as if nothing happened and they will be back to being completely amicable again and it's like he is on a high because of the relief that she is leaving him alone. I feel like she is controlling his happiness. I also think he could be more proactive in finding a way to stop her from controlling his emotions e.g. insist that she cease sending him messages designed to upset him. Instead he just ignores them - but then in reality he is upset all day which affects the quality of our time together. Not knowing that they had "made up", I sent him a link to some tips on how to deal with "attacks" from the ex and he made a comment that relations hadn't deteriorated to that point yet (as if I was being dramatic)."

Ah, yes. The gaslighting. I've been through that, too.

I also had the man burying his head in the sand and insisting that the woman tearing him down and sending 50 abusive texts in a row calling him an awful father and with the man telling me he he had a "friendly working co-parenting relationship." Uh, where is that? Did he have kids with another woman that I don't know about? Because that one ain't amicable, it's abusive.

I saw the cycle of her abusing him, him unable to function in life, and then him allowing her to pretend nothing ever happened because it mean the abuse stopped.

He is prioritizing her. You aren't crazy, he's just feeding you lines because it is more important to him that she be kept happy than you being kept happy. The abuse is what is comfortable to him and he is scared to fully leave it behind him, because he trusts her version of reality. She gaslights him, then he gaslights you. It is all done to not upset the sick toxic system she has spent years building up.

Leaving an abusive woman for a healthy one isn't enough. He also has to make a mental and emotional switch. Until he does that, he will always prefer keeping the woman who abuses him happy. It's hard to know that because you care, and because you would never stoop to treating him the way she treats him, that you will be de-prioritized and he will make decisions that make her happy and upset you.

It means you are not first in his life, despite his words. His actions don't match his words, do they?

Have you ever seen the movie "Ghost"? Whoopie Goldberg has a line in it that says "You in danger, girl." And, allow me to be Whoopie to you and say "YOU IN DANGER, GIRL."

"they will always be connected to each other because they have children together.."

False. They legally have to interact until the child is 18, then nothing.

I don't count having to be in the same room at a wedding, funeral, or baby shower as "being connected forever." If so, me and third cousin Bertha twice-removed are positively ~soulmates.~ Yeah, seeing someone in a room a few times in multiple decades ain't a "forever connection."

This garbage about "forever connected" is just more propaganda from the "Mothers are Saints and Should be Worshiped for Merely Reproducing while Fathers are just Dirt on their Shoe" movement called parenting in the era of social media. If people want to believe that f*cking raw and having a child, like the entirety of the animal kingdom, means a soul connection, then go for it. But they believe it because they want to believe it, and because they are deathly afraid of not being special to the other parent anymore.

My parents are divorced. If I told them they were "forever connected" they'd spit out their drinks on me while laughing hysterically.

It's a ridiculous and 100% unnecessary concept.