Ex bf and bbd
Hey guys, me and my ex have been talking for a little over a month. I love him very much. I’ve been put in a situation where my baby daddy wants me to chose my ex or my kid. But there’s a way we can still be together and make it work. I’m just so stuck. I am happy to explain in more detail but right now I just don’t know where to go. Idk what I’m going to do.
@Marilynam
It sounds like you have an ex who is different from the father of your child, and you feel like you could be in communication with your ex, while your child's father wants you to only be in communication with him (and your child), and he's now saying that if you choose your ex, you will be choosing against your child because he will not allow you to be in communication with your child if you don't stop communicating with your ex.
Is that correct?
Can you imagine that you are a parent who has some particular emotional needs in order to be able to co-parent successfully with your child's other parent, but the other parent seems to only be caring about needs they have and not about needs that the child has or that you have? I'm thinking that must be the perspective your child's father is having. It might not be 100% accurate to think that way, but imagine that it's valid to feel that way.
Now imagine that in order to be a parent of a child where you would be emotionally able to parent that child successfully with the child's other parent, you will need that other parent to provide some things for you emotionally--otherwise you'll be feeling like you need to go elsewhere to get those needs met. That might be partly what you're feeling--that if your child's father thinks you need to be only talking to him and not to an ex, then he better be providing some things for you that you have currently been getting from your interactions with an ex.
Since each of you can feel that you have needs and respect that you both can't go forward in life without getting your needs met, it could be important to have a conversation with each other about the needs you have and how you will each go about helping the other get their needs met--if your child's father doesn't want to or can't provide what you need that you've been trying to get from going to an ex instead, then he will need to figure out how else you can get your needs met if it's not with an ex; and if he needs to have his child's other parent not going to exes to get their needs met, or else he can't let that parent see the child, then if that other parent wants to see the child, they will need to figure out what they will and won't do to make sure seeing the child happens.
The Gottmans' book The Love Prescription could be helpful for some scripts of conversations to have to figure this stuff out.
