
Recently YourTango blogger Sloane Bradshaw went through a situation where her husband started sleeping with someone else and then moved out with the other cheater. The divorce is still pending, but technically Bradshaw is still married, and she had some “sage” words of wisdom for “the other woman.” The entire rant is pretty hilarious, especially that ending, but we’ll save it for you to read yourself. What we’d really like to focus on is the child issue.
“Don’t push to be part of his children’s lives, and for God’s sake, don’t make his kids share their precious visitation time with you,” Bradshaw writes. On the surface, this may seem bitter — heck, she even admits to being bitter — but there is a lot of wisdom in it if you ARE the other person. If you want to be an accepted part of your new mate’s life, then the best thing to do is to realize what you did was wrong and not walk around with a sense of entitlement in the new relationship.
As Bradshaw notes, “You slept with my husband and broke up my family. The odds of me ever respecting you are slim to none, especially if you’ve done anything on this list. You are more than welcome to try to earn my respect.”
But how can this be done, and why would you want to?
We’ll tackle the second question first. You want to earn the respect of your SO’s ex because it makes things less awkward and tense when you have to be around each other. It also makes it easier to become an accepted part of your SO’s life — and the lives of his/her children. No matter how hard you try or how much you want it, “his” kids will never be “your” kids. They have another parent to fill that spot.
So, to wrap up, the best way to EARN respect is to not insert yourself into situations that involve your SO and his ex; to not force your parenting techniques onto the children; to not try and act like their parent when they have two separate but equal parents calling the shots; and to be respectful whenever the opportunity presents itself rather than continuing to look at the ex as some kind of rival.
For the full “advice” from Bradshaw, click here. And if you need any info on which divorce method you should be using to make a clean break from your marriage, check out some of our online divorce reviews.
[Image via Flickr Creative Commons]