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Is He Using You As His Emotional Crutch?
One day my son shared with me that his father’s girlfriend was jealous of me. I mean I get it, but I still probed a bit as to why he thinks this and how he knows this. He shared with me that she calls me names and tells his father “your wife is rude”. I was a bit shocked at this point and it turns out, his father had screenshot some of our conversations and shared them with her. The conversations in question? Conversations about access to my son. This essay isn’t about that, but for context, I’ll share the issue before I go on to the real point of this piece.
The Background
My ex-husband and I had an arrangement where my son would spend a week with each parent. He alternates homes every Friday. During one of his weekends, I reached out to speak to our son. Nothing abnormal, this is typically how each parent speaks to our child when it’s not their week. However, I did not hear back from him for several hours and when I finally did, I was told that my son was not available. This had been an ongoing issue between us with him often playing games and delaying my communciation with my child.
Long story short, I was not having it and most definitely called him out, cursed him out, and eventually spoke to my child. As it turns out, he had left my son with a friend (never shared this with me) and went out with his…