Dear Bio Mother

I don’t know why you still have all this hate and bile towards my partner, even though it’s coming up to 6 years since you left him. Yes, YOU, left HIM, to start a relationship with the woman next door. So why did you have to smash up his home and punish him by withholding his daughter from him? All of a sudden, once you separated, you decided you were going to be supermum, after not really giving two hoots about your little girl when you were together and letting him and your mother do most of the work while you skipped off to go get drunk or stoned with your mates.

When he took you to court for custody, you were outraged, and instead of deciding to be a better mother to your little girl, you decided to slander him and make sure the courts thought he was worse than you, just so you’d get custody and keep your benefits. She is a cash cow to you, as long as she lives full time with you, you don’t have to go out to work. You can sit home on your ass all day drinking your cans and rolling joints, in your filthy menagerie of ill-kept animals. You can drink into the night and sleep in and take your daughter to school late, school doesn’t matter, right, because she’s going to grow up to be just like you and know how to fiddle the ridiculously lenient benefit system in the UK. You can do everything in your power to try and sabotage her relationship with her daddy, and with me, whilst never, ever looking at your own behaviour.

Can’t you just accept that she needs you both? Why do you continually have to put both my partner and me down to your daughter, make her feel guilty that she loves her dad and likes me, and guilt trip her if she says she wants to see more of her dad, saying that it means she doesn’t love you? I don’t know why you insist on telling anyone who will listen what a crap father my partner is. How he doesn’t see his daughter and he doesn’t do anything for her. Um, that would be, because you don’t let him! If he asks to see her extra, you say no. You sabotage the relatively small amount of time he has by trying to plan activities for her on his weekends and then complain he doesn’t see her. How on earth does that work? You don’t tell him when she’s sick, and then tell everyone that he never even rang her, while hiding her mobile phone charger and keeping her phone off. You’re the sick one.

Now he’s happy in a relationship with me, and I get on pretty well with your daughter. She’s a lovely little person, despite what you are trying to do to her, and she’s much more open minded towards me than you think. And she must be pretty strong, to still love her daddy as much as she does, despite all the poison you fill her mind with, not to mention smart and brave, to come to us and question the things you say (ye-es, we do get to find out, kids are just not that discreet). She’s still young and she still thinks her parents are fabulous, but I wonder, will she always think you are so fabulous when one day you crash your car drink driving on the school run? When she’s a teenager and she’s embarrassed by you making drunken scenes at her school? When she has homework and you can’t help her because you didn’t bother with your own education? When she needs to get to school on time for an exam and you don’t get up to drive her?

You have such a gift in your little girl. I long for a child of my own, with my partner, but it’s not going to happen because as a result of what you put him through, he went and had a vasectomy so he wouldn’t have to go through it ever again. Oh, and he’s also so disillusioned with marriage as a result of what happened with you that I probably won’t get a wedding day either, and even if we wanted to, we couldn’t afford it because of the debt you left him with. I know you won’t understand or care why it hurts me to see you squander that precious gift of a child you have, and that you would laugh at my misfortune if you read this (not that you are literate enough to get past the first sentence).

I am not a bad person. I actually do care for and want the best for your child, and I would really really prefer it if she had two decent parents who could work together, because all this animosity isn’t good for anyone – least of all your daughter. I know my partner has his faults, but he doesn’t badmouth you to little one, and he always has her best interests at heart. I don’t want to “take over” your role or replace you as Mummy, for God’s sake, how many times do I have to make that clear? If you would just spend less time being petty, jealous and selfish and more time focusing on your daughter’s needs than your own, maybe you’d need to be less worried about it.

Yours

Your awful ex and daughter’s deadbeat dad’s partner.

~ by Stepfamily Letter Project on July 22, 2009.