It’s certainly possible to have an amicable divorce. But in some cases, the breakup is so bad that it continues to haunt you and your love life for years to come. This is especially true if your ex-partner decides to turn your children against you and your new spouse. If you don’t enforce any boundaries, it can seriously damage some of your closest relationships with your new family.
Redditor u/CopyNo5921 asked the AITAH community whether he was wrong to intentionally pick his wedding date so that his brother-in-law’s toxic ex-wife and their nightmare kids wouldn’t be able to attend the big day. Scroll down to find out just how bad the situation was for him to make such a decision, and to read the internet’s reactions. Bored Panda has reached out to the author for comment, and we’ll update the post as soon as we hear back from him.
Your wedding is meant to be one of the happiest days of your entire life! But what do you do if you know for a fact that some of your guests might ruin it?
Image credits: Sonyachny (Not the actual photo)
A groom-to-be shared how he purposefully chose a wedding date so that his brother-in-law’s kids and nightmare ex-wife wouldn’t be there. This sparked a ton of drama
Image credits: loskyt7 (Not the actual photo)
Image credits: CopyNo5921
Divorce and breakups can be done in a healthy way. However, something’s deeply wrong if you feel like you have to walk on eggshells around your ex
Though a healthy relationship with an ex-partner of yours is certainly possible, it’s not a guarantee. It requires a lot of hard work. On both sides!
According to Jamie Cannon, MS, LPC, some of the main signs that you have a toxic relationship with an ex-partner include you feeling:
- Guilty about moving on
- Responsible for your ex’s feelings
- As though your ex refuses to give you space
- Like your relationship with your ex is imbalanced
“One of the first signs that things are not where they need to be with an ex is a sense of guilt when you feel ready to move forward and date someone new,” Cannon explains in a post on Psychology Today.
“If you feel worried, stressed, or that you need to hide your feelings for someone new from your ex, you may want to revisit the relationship,” she said.
Meanwhile, she stresses the fact that it’s a red flag if you believe yourself to be responsible for your ex-partner’s emotions.
“If you find yourself walking on eggshells long after the end of a romantic relationship, or making important decisions in your life based on your worry about how an ex will react, that relationship could be entering an unhealthy stage. When people part ways after a breakup, each person should be able to move forward and live their life independently,” she notes.
Image credits: Timur Weber (Not the actual photo)
Toxic ex-partners intentionally sabotage your relationships, manipulate you, and turn your children against you
Furthermore, it’s seriously problematic if even after breaking up, exes can’t give each other physical and emotional space. “A breakup should allow each individual the chance to create a new future, without the influence, judgment, or control of their ex. Worrying that you have to look over your shoulder or dealing with an ex who wants to stay involved in every detail of your life is unhealthy,” Cannon points out, adding that firm boundaries are essential in order to move forward.
In a similar vein, Family Mediation and Mentoring explains that toxic ex-spouses tend to:
- Make you feel inadequate
- Make you question your abilities as a parent
- Sabotage your relationships and interfere in your love life
- Use the courts to stay connected to you even after the divorce
- Manipulate you by using guilt and blame
- Interfere with your communication with your children
- Say negative things about you to your children to turn them against you
What are your thoughts, Pandas? Do you think the man was right to choose a wedding date that purposefully excluded folks who had a track record of ruining family gatherings, or do you think he should have done something else? Have you ever had to live with a toxic partner? How would you enforce healthy boundaries if your ex-partner kept barging into your life, causing a scene? Let us know in the comments below.
Image credits: RDNE Stock project (Not the actual photo)
The man interacted with some of the readers, answering their questions and sharing more context
The vast majority of netizens took the groom-to-be’s side. They thought he was perfectly within his rights to protect his wedding
