Boy oh boy. I hope others comment on this too as I have had no experience with a guy like this. Bottom line, your guy is scared of BM. Why? Who knows? He might think she will withhold his child. He may think she will try to make his life hell anyway she can. Both valid fears. But cowering to her does nothing but emboldens her!

But anyway. The FB thing. This is the biggest BS I have heard today. Tell him in no uncertain terms to take the pictures of him and her OFF Facebook and, if he REALLY wants to save them for his daughter when she gets older, there are plenty of places he can do that. It doesn't HAVE to be on FB where he is "friends" with BM. If he is too chickenshit to defriend her completely, he can set his security settings so that she doesn't see what he posts and he doesn't have to see what she posts. Problem solved.

Secondly, he needs to go low/no contact with this person. She is verbally abusive even in front of their own child. Since he sounds like he doesn't yet have a court order ( :jawdrop: ), that would be the perfect time to address that. A lot of high-conflict parents use a website like Our Family Wizard to minimize communication. Of course, it would still be up to him to shut down any OTHER forms of communication. Definitely do exchanges in a public place or somewhere she will keep her yap SHUT. It is damaging to his daughter in more ways than one.

You will have to confront him about this stuff. Have a big discussion because he seems to blow you off or minimize your concerns. Tell him he needs to worry more about pissing off his WIFE than his EX. Tell him he needs to get his balls from the ex because she must have got them in the divorce. Tell him how unsexy it is for you to see him cowering to another woman like that. Tell him that it is harmful in many ways for his daughter to be subjected to that kind of atmosphere and him not standing up for himself is like telling her that kind of behavior is acceptable. Go to counseling if necessary.

My DH tried to tell me that things would go smoothly even though I knew better once I saw BM's craziness for myself. Finally, she got so out of control that he did go to get his rights outlined in a court order. In that order was a No Contact Order. She was not allowed to call or text him unless it was an emergency to do with the skids or to do with visitation schedule. We also used a third-party exchange facility. This way we didn't even have to SEE BM for years and years, except court. It might make the relationship between your DH and BM more contentious but it's not like it's all wonderful right now!

Yeah, I dealt with this. I got the "it's easiest to just do what she wants" from him. He "didn't care about her", her insults "didn't bother him", he "didn't want her in his life." I asked him why he didn't have boundaries with her and he looked at me like I'd spoken Swahili to him. Yep, he had no idea what a boundary was.

He was scared of her brand of hysteria, was used to her emotional abuse, and was still emotionally enmeshed with her. The enmeshment wasn't romantic, it was dependent. He'd been trained that he was to keep her happy if he wanted to avoid feeling guilty, and he felt he could move on romantically and keep everyone happy. He was mistaken.

I remember being out to breakfast with him a few dates in, and him telling me that she was a great mother and that they had a great co-parenting arrangement. I kind of rolled my eyes, because I'd seen for myself the rapid fire abusive text manifestos she'd send him. I hadn't met her yet, but I'd seen a picture of her and saw a set of Crazy Eyes like no other. I already knew that woman wasn't quite right, but he was totally blind to it.

If I'd known better, I would have left then. The Stockholm Syndrome was strong with him.

It got so bad we had to go to counseling. Hearing from a professional that what he was doing wasn't okay seemed to finally click with him. (Historically, he wouldn't listen to me that BM was a fruit loop, preferring to tell himself that I was just insecure, and didn't understand co-parenting.) Our counselor told him that BM was showing signs of having Borderline Personality Disorder, that how she treated him wasn't normal, that she walked right in his home (despite being told not to) was not normal, the way she treated him was abusive and was not normal, and the fact that she wasn't moving on and able to respect that he was in a relationship with someone other than her wasn't normal. He listened when a professional told him these things.

He listened when the professional told him I had zero problems with actual co-parenting, it was all the extra garbage that they'd latched on to co-parenting that I had a big problem with. And she agreed with me that it had to stop. He listened to the counselor when she told him that his kids and me were his family now, and BMs wants and needs were no longer a factor. He listened that he cannot try to ride the fence and keep two women happy and he had to choose.

Out of therapy, we had an agreement that I had two solid boundaries that I would trust him to uphold:

- BM is never to walk into his home, or it would never be my home
- He is to check with me before he agrees to any schedule changes, because it is not fair to make me feel powerless in my own life

Other than that, I trusted his decisions with her.

Unfortunately, the damage had been done. I felt resentful because he could say no to me, the woman he supposedly loves and who should be at the top of his priority list, but couldn't seem to say that word to her. I treated him well, and I got punished for it. It was easiest to make me mad because I didn't treat him the way she treated him.

I had lost respect for him watching all of this happen over and over. He was supposed to be my manly man but then he acts like a big p*ssy just because she's the loudest voice in the room? And I'd slowly learned that treating him the way she treated him got results, so he soon had another resentful and angry woman on his hands. All of this because he was too scared to stop meeting his ex's needs and forcibly remove her tentacles.

He had an eye opener when she threw a fit because she couldn't get him to take down boundaries. She screwed over the kids to get back at him. Yeah, what a great mother she is. He saw with his own eyes that she hated him more than she loved their kids. She could not regain any sort of Mother of the Year image after that.

He and I loved one another a lot. It sounds corny, but we both never knew what love could be until we'd met one another. And, still, it wasn't enough.

He'd gone to therapy before he met me, and had been told that his relationship with BM was him trying to date his crazy mother and resolve his issues with his mother, and that BMs drama was comfortably familiar to him. Even with seeing that, he still let her have power over him because that's what felt familiar.

We separated for awhile, and once I wasn't around to blame for problems, he understood the damage he'd let his ex-wife do to our relationship. We both worked on ourselves, and I can say that things are infinitely better now. While we were split, he told me he talked to his friends, saying "I hadn't realized how enmeshed I was with my ex-wife and how much damage that did." When I heard those words when we reunited, it was possibly the sexiest thing he could have said to me.

Things are much better now. He has boundaries because he wants them with her. He shows me when he gets a nasty text and we laugh about it. He ignores everything "extra" from her, but she still isn't letting go. I respect him. I know I'm the top woman in his life. He's willing to say "no" to her, and he sees that, now that he's got boundaries and no enmeshment, I am much more flexible in schedule changes, etc.

So, you've got some decisions to make. You could try counseling, but it's really possible that extensive damage has already been incurred. If you've picked up some of nastyBM's habits in how you communicate with him (because it works!) then I think you're in real trouble. Respect is incredibly hard to regain if it's been lost, and I am a big believer that not being able to love AND respect your man is a recipe for disaster.

I believe you're the lucky recipient of a passive man who just wants to sit back and keep everyone happy. He doesn't realize that nastyBM has trained him over time to respond to her needs, and that he has neural pathways built up that actually respond to her abuse. He is a trained dog to her. Crazy needed a passive guy to put up with her BS, and that was the foundation of their relationship. Does he realize other men without his issues would have run screaming from her, and their complimentary dysfunction was why they stayed together? Does he realize that, yes, she's crazy, but he's got some of his own dysfunction that leads him to think tolerating her is an okay thing? Other men would not make the same choices he is making, but, at the same time, they would also have never stayed with a crazy woman or had kids with her.

How does he expect you, the woman who loves him, to respect him watching this happen over and over? Is he still a participant in codependent enmeshment with the BM? If so, he's got no business in a new relationship, because she's clearly still his #1 gal. That can be the case even if he doesn't like her. He still thinks he has to put up with whatever garbage she wants to spew, and he still thinks that keeping her happy is part of coparenting with her. He is sorely mistaken, and he will have another failed marriage if he doesn't realize that he has been mistaken.

He has to see that if he wants to move on with his life, he's got to leave BM and her antics in the dust, and be clear on which woman's needs he's supposed to be meeting. He has to see that BM and his kid(s) aren't a package deal as she's led him to believe, and he's got to be clear he does not need a relationship with her - let alone a relationship where she's kept happy - to be a good father to his kids. He has to put up boundaries with her, because she's not going to do it for him. He has to see that there are bits of their old partnership twisted up into what they've called co-parenting, and he has to forcibly remove those, because she's not going to let go.

The Facebook thing is ridiculous. BM is not a friend, because friends don't talk to one another the way she talks to him. She is less than a friend, and should not be on his friends list. That's ridiculous. And I have no doubt his excuse for keeping up pictures of her (there are other places to store those if it's really about his daughter - you're not dumb, and that is clearly the feeblest of feeble excuses) is because he's scared of her reaction if he were to take them down. Crazy BMs like her don't like being downgraded. She wants herself and her golden uterus to be worshiped by him for eternity. Any relationship he goes on to have should never be prioritized over her, or he is abusing her. Seriously, that's how she thinks. There's no reasoning with crazy.

I wish I could help you more than that, but he has to want to change. You can't do it for him. In his denial, you can't push him to do it without turning into a nasty BM clone, because that poor behavior is the only way to get him to listen to you. If you push him, he'll only resent you for it.

As for you, you've got some decisions to make. Hopefully my experience will be helpful for you in sorting out how you feel. I have to say, I got so lost in trying to understand the other dysfunctional relationships that I forgot about the one reason to be in a relationship: "Are my basic needs being met by this man?" Back then, the answer was "no." Now it is "yes." Strip away everything else going on and ask yourself that question and be honest with yourself.

Also, I'll mention that I read a great book recently that I'd wished I'd had when all the stuff was going down for us. It's called "Say Goodbye to Crazy" by Dr. Tara Palmatier. It's fantastic. There's a chapter specifically for men like your guy, where it starts off something like "The woman in your life has just handed you this book to read. Here's what's been going on to get her to this place where she's giving you this book."

If I were you, I'd buy the book yesterday. Your relationship can't take much more before it will be irreparably broken.

I just want to say thank you, Cadence. You just summed up my situation with my hubby too to a degree. Very helpful.