Ex partner won't speak to to me directly about teenage daughter
My ex and I separated five years ago now and my daughter is now 14 and he is still doing my head in - he will never speak directly to me which is fine when its just sorting out arrangements ...but he just won't accept that something we NEED to talk ...thank god for text but is no good for difficult conversations.
Our daughter is starting to get really peed off with having to go and visit every weekend when she would rather be with her mates ....I don't know what to do she needs to see her dad but I can see its not fair she can never see her mates on his weekends!! I wanna discuss it with him but he won't ...am trying to encourage her to talk to him about it but she doesn't want to upset him ...what's really annoying is if he has something he wants to do he reschedules ...feels bit like one rule for him and another for her. Mel
Comments
I'm thinking- what does your daughter want you to do about her visits with her dad?
She may not welcome you getting too involved if this causes conflict between you and your ex and she feels responsible for it.
On the other hand, is she telling you she is fed up with the visits because this is what she thinks you want to hear?
How about talking it through with her first and seeing if there are ways she can see of negotiating things with her dad so that she gets to see him and she gets to have time with her friends?
Have you tried speaking to your ex about how he feels only seeing her at weekends? He may be refusing to talk and holding in his feelings because he is depressed, especially if it comes across your daughter would rather see her mates than him. Talk to him adult to adult (not on the phone) and try to be understanding of his situation.
I agree with the above, it is not fair that your daughter should have to give up her whole social life. Plus your ex is being very uncooperative. If he keeps backing out of things maybe suggest a certain activity they could do together, so that he has to book in advance and can’t back out?
You need to let your ex know how important this is to you. At the moment he is brushing off the problem and refusing to speak about it, maybe because he feels uncomfortable that his relationship with your daughter isn’t as good as yours. It must be very hard to only see her on weekends. Don’t tell him your daughter would rather be with friends, that will just upset him. Couldn’t you rearrange how he sees her so maybe she could stay over on a week night, or instead of staying the whole weekend they could go on a day trip together, so she can spend time with her friends too?