Why is your DH allowing all of this? Why are you?

What do you mean, you have to stay inside when she picks up the kids? She is not the boss of you, if you want to go outside of your own house, you can.

I'm sure your DH has all kinds of excuses about why he lets her run his life like this, but he needs to put an end to it and I would tell him that. She is using their son to stay ever present in your DH's life and to manipulate him and his time.

If my DH ever cut our anniversary short because of BM/SD, there had better be a hospital ER involved.

Simple. Next time you are going out for an anniversary dinner. He has to hand over his phone before you go out with him. Period. Since he cannot be trusted YOU take his phone and hand it back to him the next morning.

If he refuses then you have a much bigger problem on your hands. You might want to question the whole relationship.

Oh yes. BM texted dh ON OUR WEDDING NIGHT, waking us up at 1 a.m., to remind him that he still owes her alimony. DH was pissed, I almost thought it was funny...almost.

Go buy a pair of these:

http://www.yournutz.com/ (fake balls)

Hand them to your DH the next time he bows down to BM and maybe he can "nut up".

Yes this use to happen all the time until I made DH life hell at home,now he would rather deal with BM wrath via phone than my wrath at home

Unless there is blood, and lots of it, there is no need for him to talk to her right away.

The next time he takes a call from BM at an inopportune time - leave. Leave the restaurant, your house, wherever you are, just leave. When he gets home, don't be there. Stay away for hours or days - whatever it takes to get his attention. What he is doing is inexcusable.

Yes, they do this on purpose! The day after we got married, BM dropped SD on our door step for a week, because she just all of a sudden "wanted to see her daddy!" I battled this crap, him jumping when she called for 3 yrs and almost left him till I found steptalk!

First off do not tell the kids your plans and forbid him from doing so! Then if you are at dinner and he starts to answer his phone, inform him he will lose a hand if he does. If he does anyway, get up and walk out on him.

He will not demand his ex or kids respect you and your time together, until you demand he does!

I remember "not being allowed" to dare say anything to bm when she rung my home and spoke to me like I was shit under her shoe or when she came to my front door, or if she even heard my voice in the background while ringing my house phone (cue threats towards me, calling me that c*nt...) and having dh constantly capitulate to *her* ever changing demands (always poor veiled as "for ss"...yeah cos waking us up at 7am while we were on honeymoon wasnt on purpose and crossing boundaries, or 6am on valentines day, or sending dh harassing texts because we were going on holiday..)

Thing is, it was on ME to put a stop to it. Yeah, I didnt want to make things worse for dh or ss - as already bm was pasing the hell out of ss and being emotionally abusive to everyone involved while being obstructive when it suited her - but the thing was allowing dh and bm to get away with disrespecting me was not helping dh or ss. It was only providing bm pleasure and permitting dh to think his selfish behaviour towards me was healthy and acceptable.

I tried asking nicely, pleading, getting angry, teary. Nothing changed long term and my resentment grew along with my misery. I will tell you what worked...everyone is mentioning how dh needs to extract his balls from bms talons but how about YOU do the same and put your big girl panties on and stop being the victim. No one stops you from not being involved, you may get told to butt out but you have a choice whether you cooperate or not.

Tell dh he either does x or else hes not going to like YOUR reaction. Meaning, no more Mrs nice girl. Bm wants cosy chats outside with dh, insert yourself into the conversation, refuse to be dropped home, refuse to leave your date night. Get some courage and keep your cool. Dh doesnt like it? Then he knows what to do ...stop running like a lapdog to bm and ruining his current marriage, cos believe you me it will get old. He wants to cut date night short? Then no more dates, no more sex, no more wifey acting like his wife...so no more advantages of having a wife. You down tools and start making a life excluding dh - isnt that what he is doing? Picking you up when it suits? Using his
kids as a convenient excuse to go brown nosing bms arse would not wash with me, he can use them therefore as his guilt trip card to pretty much exclude any shitty behaviour towards you..."oh sorry, did I ruin your birthday? Its ok, its for the kids....oh dear did I interrupt our romantic moment and ensure your ovaries shrivelled in disgust ? Oh , its not my fault its for the kids..." yawn...

Actions will communicate your feelings on the matter absolutely 100%. So your birthdays coming? Make plans with family/friends without conferring with dh, when he demonstrates shock over this, please remind him you refuse to allow any more of *your* special moments to be hijacked by him and his ex. That while your happiness, your relationship may not feature particularly high on his priorities vs his exes transparent attempts at interferring in your marriage (which dh is colluding with), it IS important to you. Suggest he make a date now with bm, seeing as he likes to spend all of these couple moments with her and save you the bother and disappointment - as such you are cutting this off before it happens and going to have some fun with people who WANT to be with you. Dont wait around for this guy, hes used to doing that as you currently have been doing exactly that. Make him work for you, miss you and do NOT reward his inattentativeness.

It's so precious when BM thinks she has all the control....until your DH is making SURE she does!

I used to drive to the exchanges before they were done at an exchange facility. BM had an issue with this (well, everything about me, in fact). So, how did she try to control the situation?

1st Demand: DH has to come to the door to get skids. Then she would try to get him to come inside. Never worked. Finally, he got sick of this and said the kids were old enough to walk 10 feet to the car by themselves.

2nd Demand: SHE (misSTEP) can't park in MY driveway. Okay, fine. I parked on the street. Skids had to walk an extra 5 feet.

3rd Demand: SHE cannot park in front of my house. That one made me laugh. I told DH to tell her to call the cops! It's a public street and they will laugh at her.

4th Demand: DH has to drive. So, we swapped drivers a block before BM's house and a block after. Now, I would KNOW better than to pander to BM as much as we did!!

I know BM used to do this to us. Now, even when we don't share our plans with the skids or anyone else, she still seems from time to time to manage to efff things up with her poor planning and inconsiderate behavior. DH and I may have been together almost 4 years, but we still date and play like the early days--we love our alone time together. I think she is jealous because we get days with no kids in house, while she doesn't due to having 4 kids, 3 baby daddys, and she has to have someone watch the youngest 3 if she is going to have a date night (unless of course it's our night with the skids, then she only has her youngest to get someone to watch).

Early in our relationship BM drove 8 hours to a game final, for SS, in another town. She brought SD with her and sent SD to ask DH to pay for a room for her and BM. DH did it because he didn't know what else to do. If he said no SD would have no place to stay, we were already sharing a room with another coach.

After the game, BM asked DH if she could talk to him. Turns out she had no money to for gas to get home. He came back to our room looking for keys so he could drive to a bank. We'd had a few celebratory drinks with the other parents and I said No way are you driving anywhere! He was frantic. He thought that SD would be stuck there, I said nope she rides with us. He said (and he was right) that SD would never leave her mother there alone. I had $40 in my wallet and was going to take it up to her myself but he convinced me that would be a very bad thing (again years later, I know he was right). I was so angry that he would jump for her and so quickly. We had a major fight and I didn't talk to him for the entire 8 hour ride home. I didn't see or speak to him for a week after that.

I spent that week asking myself if I really wanted to be in a relationship with him. Turns out I did, so then I had to set up boundaries and be sure that I could live with them and leave if they were crossed. Granted we were only 8 - 10 months into this relationship so it was easy.

I went to his place and we had a long, long heart to heart. There were tears from both of us. I told him I couldn't be with a man who was still so affected by his ex. He said he was afraid that his kids wouldn't love him, that she'd turn them against him. I said then I need to leave because if your kids would stop loving you because you don't do everything your ex says you should, then those aren't people that I want in my life. He said no, they are great kids, it's all Her. Well, then the only way for them to not be pushed around by her is to see that you aren't allowing it either. What type of message are you sending them? His kids were 16 and 18 at the time, so not children and that makes a big difference too.
It didn't happen all at once, we did have to have the same type of talk on more than one occasion but he got it. It was her or me. He choose me.

There have also been times, that I've let things slid. You need to know what's important and what isn't.

I've since found out that over the years she's called or texted or tried to ruin many things for us but I never knew at the time. That's because DH still chooses me over her, he makes sure I never know that she's trying to butt into our relationship.

I doubt this will help you to be honest. I am very very lucky to have DH and I know it!
However, a heart to heart may help.

BM emailed/texted DH on our wedding night. I was beyond pissed that DH was reading and responding to it. To be fair, I don't know that she knew our exact wedding day since DH is notoriously secretive, but I still didn't enjoy sharing our day with her.

BM doesn't have much opportunity to do that to us since SD24 is now grown, but it seems that anytime we have another baby, BM decides to mail DH pics of SD and them as a family. I think of it as her "don't forget about your other family!" plea. SMH