Lessons From My Ex

Thursday, Oct 11, 2023

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How much do you let the actions and words of other people disturb your peace?

I’ve had to wrestle with this question a great deal for the past few weeks.

I found out that my ex wife, who I used to hold in high regard, posts about me several times a week. She links to this blog, comments on it, and then she and her friends do deep dives into what I said. I haven’t read the posts, thankfully, but it has been described as “toxic” and “not pretty.” I also have confirmation that she routinely exaggerates the truth, twists it, or outright fabricates things that aren’t true. Someone phrased it as “embellishing” and “adding content.”

We separated at the end of 2016. It’s been almost 7 years. So my question is, why? Why bother attacking me? Why waste time attacking me on social media when I can’t even see her posts? 

I have a pretty good guess.

We have 4 kids together, so we’re going to co-parent for years to come. She needs to vent about me, and about the medical and educational professionals who dare to disagree with her. She needs to vent to people who are going to support her without question, not challenge her statements or engage in meaningful discussion. 

She also does it to control the narrative of her life. It allows her to tell the story the way she would prefer others to see it. It gives her a sense of control over her life and supports the image she prefers to cling to. It allows her to show that world that she’s never at fault. It’s always her awful ex-husband, or the teachers and principals, or the doctors who disagree with her. So maybe my not seeing her posts is part of the point. 

She has also learned that it’s lucrative. She garners sympathy from her following, which she then monetizes in the form of multiple GoFundMe campaigns. She has raised money for legal fees against me, legal fees against the school board for shutting down during COVID, for respite care, for laundry services, and most recently to raise money for our son to go to a private school. She’s gathered a minimum of $70K from supportive friends, family, and strangers online.

I suspect my ex made posts like this for years. I have avoided defending myself for seven years, because I felt like it was unnecessary. Everyone who knew us was entitled to their opinion. It wasn’t my place to force them to pick sides. I believed the facts would speak for themselves. I believed that the people who knew me would ask if the version they were being told matched the person they believed me to be. People would take both sides with a grain of salt, because we were both hurting at the end of a 14 year marriage.

For the first several years after separation I did my best not to say anything bad about her. I asked my friends to do the same. I believed she was acting similarly, and it breaks my heart that I was wrong.

Anything I did online was being used to track me or was weaponized against me. Her friends even snooped around my LinkedIn profile. I pared down my online presence until I only followed one or two people and was followed by similar numbers. I’ve greatly censored my content, afraid that if I post anything more than a cat pic it would be used against me.

To be fair, I also have a tendency to push everyone away when I’m hurt, and for the past 8 years there has been a lot of hurt. I isolated myself and I shut down several times. Struggling with that is part of what this blog is for, to break the maladaptive habit of hiding when I’ve been hurt.

Between the rules I set for myself, my ex wife’s attacks on me, and my difficulty with my depression, I came to a place where I never defended myself in public. Most of our mutual friends never heard my side of the story. I thought they would ask, but they never did. I let them go, thinking it was the right thing to do. Focus on myself, focus on the kids, and let the facts speak for themselves. Let people make up their own minds.

Well, that was a bit idealistic and naive of me. And it’s hard for others to judge whether or not her side of the story rings true if I never give them something to compare it against.

This blog, which I thought was anonymous (oops! It’s not), is pretty much the only place I’m active, and now I’ve learned that it’s being harvested for hate fuel by my ex wife. 

Meanwhile, I wonder whether my ex ever admits to her own failings. Does she mention when she violates the parenting agreement? Does she tell the world when she makes unilateral decisions, like changing doctors or canceling nursing services? Does she let her friends know when she tells medical professionals not to talk to me when our order requires us both to have access? Does she laugh it off online when family members give money to her for the kids birthday and Christmas, but when the kids ask for their money it’s “not available?”

Talking about her is hard. It’s one reason I normally don’t online. Our history is long and complicated and disagreements are going to be just as thorny. I thought keeping our conflict private was the sensible thing to do. It’s a shame that she makes them so public, and one sided. She has a strongly reinforced echo-chamber and she uses it often.

Well, what am I going to do about it? I’m not sure, but I’ll tell you what I won’t do.

I’m not going to ask her to stop. I have, and she calls trash talking someone with her friends when they can’t defend themselves “emotional support.” She wouldn’t listen. She has no incentive to.

I’m not going to try to convince her followers to see my side of things. I don’t need them to believe me. If they’ve believed her for this long without asking for my perspective, I don’t see why they would care now. If they did, they could have commented on a post, or reached out to me.

I’ve let off a little steam here. I broke one of my main rules when I complained about my ex wife. On the other hand, I had seven years of pent up frustration, watching her aggressive bid to win in the court of public opinion through disinformation. Either way, I don’t want to make a habit of it.

I’m not sure what the right thing to do here is, at least not for me. For seven years I refused to fight. That hasn’t exactly worked out. I’ll have to think about what makes the most sense for everyone, especially the kids.

My ex has taught me an important lesson. I let her bad behavior determine what I am allowed to say and do. Whether she did it intentionally or not, she used fear to draw a noose around me, controlling me. But now I see my fear reaction for the pointless waste that it is. She will always publicly criticize me. I don’t see the value in letting that control me anymore.

No more hiding. No more censoring myself - although having good social media etiquette is never a bad thing. And no more worrying what she and her friends are doing with my posts. I found out by accident, and it’s as bad as I could have imagined. It’s also beyond my control, and not worth my time.

It’s important to remember that I can only speak from my perspective, which is understandably negative because of the contentious relationship I have with my ex. I can only guess at her motivations, although I think I’m pretty close.

I don’t blame her for not liking me. There are good reasons on both sides for our marriage to have ended - reasons that I have apologized to her for after she left. I don’t hate her. That would be pointless. I don’t I don’t wish her ill. On the contrary, I want her to be happy and healthy. I want her to find a new partner and thrive. It will be better for my kids if she thrives, so it would be foolish to wish otherwise.

I don’t blame her for her feelings, but I do blame her for her actions. That is one lesson I’ve learned. Everyone is entitled to their feelings. What they choose to do in response to them is up to them.

She is responsible for her side of the story, just as I am responsible for mine. And in the end, I am only ever able to control myself.

So:

I will continue to learn how to process emotion, let go, and, if possible, forgive.

I will continue to recognize and learn from my mistakes.

I will continue to acknowledge that other people can learn from their mistakes.

I will continue to accept responsibility for where I am in life and how I got here.

That’s what this blog is for. To go on that journey, make those changes, and do my best. I just hope my ex can do the same.

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Life before death

Strength before weakness

Journey before destination