Fun Games… Or How To Love Your Better Half’s Ex In 6 “Easy” Steps – Even When She Hates You
It’s Sunday night and we only got two of our four children back tonight. Both of our littles had started vomiting on Friday, so the mother of my stepchildren suggested that she’d keep her kids and my better half kindly agreed to that. We figured that it was her way of asking to spend more time with the children after they really couldn’t enjoy the weekend too much with the 6-year-old being sick. Unfortunately, my Ex-husband wasn’t as forthcoming with any suggestions of keeping my kids for the extra night; otherwise, we would be out for a late-night drink at this point and I wouldn’t be writing this post… 😉
Where it became (a little too much) fun was last night, after James agreed to his ex’s suggestion that she would keep the kids over Sunday night. She was actually being really nice on her texts – first offering to keep the kids “so that there’s no cooties passed onto [y]our house”, then, an hour later, promising to “let [you] {us} know if anything pans out with {the 11-year-old son}”. Three hours later, around 19h30, she sent us a picture of the 6-year-old in bed, with the caption “She’s puking her guts out again.” My response: “Sorry to hear that. I hope she’s able to keep fluids down so she can stay hydrated.” I changed it from the response James had originally typed, which said, “Sorry to hear that. Make sure she stays hydrated.” As I explained to him, it makes a momma bear – however underdeveloped – furious if someone suggests that she doesn’t know how to take care of her cubs. I even added, “Do you need us to bring her anything?”, just to be nice. The ex declined politely, even said thank you. I responded that JD (my son) was sharing in the little girl’s sorrows and that he also had been puking since the night before. Another 1 1/2 hours later, she texts James another picture of her daughter lying in bed with a phone/ipad. Again, I take the bait. I write back that she might know how to pass the time between puking nicely lol. I added something about what the nurse told my Ex-husband when he had called earlier how it would take 24-72 hours with this virus and how she’s halfway done.
I guess this tipped her off. Her next text was simple: Is this J or A? For over two years, I’ve been texting this woman from James’ phone whenever he didn’t feel like playing nice. The best text conversations those two have had were actually me, some days even leading to her believing that he wanted her back – that’s how friendly my texts were! I am a writer, after all. And I’m an empath. I can tell what James is feeling and respond in a way that caters to what I can tell she is feeling through her written words. It’s a game I play with myself – How well do I know this person and how can I turn his arguments around to have everyone walk away happy and believing that they won? I know it makes no sense to have those two talk it out – there’s too much history and not enough understanding. That would be like my own mother and I trying to reason anything!
I, on the other hand, actually do love James’ ex. Bear with me here, lest you stopped reading because you think I’m just crazy. But the bible verse I chose for myself at confirmation when I was thirteen, was Matthew 5:44. Liebet eure Feinde; segnet, die euch fluchen; tut wohl denen, die euch hassen.
I know she hates me and my children, because she told her own children many times and they mentioned it to us. I once tucked in my stepdaughter and we had a conversation about dreams. I told her that I dreamt her mother and I were friends and this 6-year-old, precious little girl, started laughing and burst out, “If my mother had dreamt that, she would have said she had a nightmare, because she hates you.” I held our sweet little girl and just told her that her mother was very sad and I felt bad for her; then we tried to come up with ways that could make her mother happier. I’m pretty sure she curses me at least as much as she curses herself. So, as a non-churchgoing, but yet non-feigning, Christian, I have to love her.
Do I love that woman because she’s oh-so-sweet? Absolutely not! I don’t even try to love her as Jesus loved us, because she makes it too difficult.
Here’s how I love her:
- I tell myself that if she were a nicer person and treated James better, I would have never met him. Her behaviour, and subsequent treatment of James and the kids, made him available for me.
- I tell myself that, therefore, I should be thankful to her.
- I tell myself that she deserves happiness, because her children, whom I love dearly, deserve happiness in her house, too. And if parents aren’t happy, they cannot make their children happy, as happiness has a trickle-down effect.
- I tell myself that God must have had a reason that He placed me – the brain-injured individual who, according to medical professionals, should never be bothered so much by added stress that she’d have constant headaches and/or seizures – into James’ life, including his kids and all the other baggage that is his past.
- I tell myself how sick she must be and that I should feel bad for her (she’s bipolar by her own account, but not always medicated) and that I am not responsible for making her life better; I am, however, responsible for making her kids’ lives better.
- Sometimes, I pray for her. And then I go hug one of our kids and tell them I love them, because – really – like I could ever tell her? She’d take it as poorly as she took it when she found out that it was me who was texting her back. When she demanded that I’d text her from my phone if I wanted to text because she’d prefer to text with James. Then she blocked his number, before we could send her our response that “we have no secrets and she can choose to either text with us, or with neither of us.”
Fun games. Good times. I hope she’ll be okay someday. And I hope the little girl is okay. I do love those kids so much; I hope their mother will someday be half as happy with someone as they see their father with me when they are here. And I’d love the same for my Ex-husband. He’s a good guy and he deserves happiness; maybe even more than James’ ex, because he certainly doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. The ex-wife, however, might actually be lying awake in bed right now, thinking of how she can make our lives difficult because I was the one who texted her back 😉
Ashley@Shakenstirredandblended
Hi, I'm Ashley and I am a freelance writer and editor for one local and one national publication. In my spare time, I teach foreign languages and manage two households. Oh, and raise four children. It's a crazy life that I chose and I love every second of it :o)
