Abuse Has No Excuse
How To Stop Your Ex-Partner From Harassing You?
How Having A Child With A Toxic Ex Doesn’t Excuse Unwanted Communication.
My good friend is a family lawyer and often she represents men in divorce and custody cases. She has seen many emotionally abusive women. She has seen:
And repeated harassment from ex-partners. When a couple separates, and children are involved too often women continue to harass and intimidate their ex-partner out of spite. Nearly every divorced/separated father, at some point during and after the court, will hear his ex-partner harassing.
Trust me, if it has not happened to you yet, it will. They will be many vicious messages about the child’s clothing, appearance when visiting her father. There will be arguments about the pickup locations.
The mother might try to completely erase you from the child life by:
- Withholding communication about the child’s school;
- Withholding information about the child’s medical issues;
- Making arrangements for the child during the father’s visitation timeslots;
- Stopping the child from communicating with the father;
- Badmouthing the father in front of the child;
- Creating false-negative memories about the child’s father.
There can be times where the people associated with the mother might be talking poorly about the father in front of the child and/or contacting the father to create further pressure on him when he and the mother are in a disagreement. There may be even a stream of phone calls and texts about what needs to happen during your parenting time, who is around during your parenting time, whether the two of you agree on vacation time, and so forth.
For some fathers, these are minor annoyances that they can deal with to keep the peace. Usually, the father would ignore unwanted messages and try to keep the communication only about the most important things hoping that the stream of messages would cease.
Unfortunately, there are many cases where the ex-partner’s behavior becomes worse, and fathers will feel harassed and intimidated. Some of this behavior includes:
- Repeated unwanted emails, calls when you have raised that these are bothering you;
- Unwanted and unannounced visits from your ex-partner;
- Aggression and threats towards you;
- Spreading lies about you and belittling you in front of the child’s teachers;
- Spying on you;
- Destroying your property (f.e destroying gifts that you provide to the child).
So, what can you do? Many fathers fear to report their ex-partner for harassment dreading that if they do so that might affect somehow their visitation rights.
Don’t excuse the abuse. Your relationship with your children will suffer more if you let your ex-partner harass you. Consider these options to stop your ex from harassing you.
“Get yourself a new court order that limits your communication with the ex.”
You can ask the judge to make an order limiting the forms of communication between you and your ex. This way you would eliminate the repeated phones calls, evening text messages, 10 unwanted emails, and a call from the wider family from your ex over the span of minutes over something irrelevant.
This is a good option to consider when your ex is in interrupting your parenting time and trying to cause havoc in your life.
“Endure, endure and endure…until you don’t have to.”
When your co-parent is bombarding you with inappropriate messages, you may feel a desire to do the same. Please don’t — it is important that you resist this urge to retaliate in this way.
If your ex is sending you spiteful messages, don’t respond just keep a record of these messages because you will be able to use them later for your attorney and for the police.
I would advise you to delete, deactivate your social media accounts for some time. Taking yourself off social media will remove the path for the harasser (and their accomplices) to potentially reach you through and learn about things that you are doing in your free time. Unfortunately, toxic ex will use and abuse every information they find about you.
Harassment between co-parents is incredibly inappropriate, no matter which way you look at it. You must focus on protecting yourself and your children from this damaging and toxic behavior.
“Speak up and stand up for yourself and your children.”
Men don’t tend to complain. Unfortunately, it is essential for men to get over their pride and speak about this abuse because it is the right thing to do.
So please, do not wait to talk to someone about what you are experiencing, especially someone who can help you to stop it in a healthy way.
Experiencing harassment is very stressful and will in time affect all areas of your life. Family and friends will help you give the strength and the support to carry the right support and strategies, that will help you protect yourself from harassment and raise your children in a loving environment.
“Just because you have a child doesn’t mean you can't report her.”
Just because you have a kid together doesn’t mean you can’t report your ex to the police. Don’t use the kid as an excuse to tolerate her behavior any more than she does to harass you.
Keep a record of all the messages, you can even re-send the messages back to your ex-partner as a warning. Make sure your behavior and how you talk to her is civil so she can’t do the same with you.
Tell her you will file harassment charges on her if she doesn’t stop. Before you do that, go to the police station and talk to the police and tell them your situation so they can give you more info on how to handle it. You must always keep the focus on your children and reporting harassment and abuse is the right thing to do even when it comes from the mother of your child.
It is vital if the behavior from your ex is unbearable and intimidating that you report matters to the Police.
The police can have the ability to issue warnings about behavior which is sometimes enough to bring it to an end. If the police find that the behavior is seriously concerning they might even arrest your ex. And if the police take no action other than to note your concerns, this is still recorded on a log and each time you report an incident to the police it will be added to that log.
This will help you in the long-term to show a pattern of inappropriate behavior and history to your situation.
You don’t want the child to grow up and either become an abuser or tolerate abuse from others.
You must set examples for your child’s benefit.
Remember, abuse has no excuse.
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