This belief is a mental trap, especially at the beginning of the separation phase, when we are particularly keen to do everything right and prove that we are cooperative and definitely do not fit the cliché of the child-depriving witch.

Let me first break this down into its component parts

1) His accusations: Many toxic ex-partners use emails to make untrue accusations and to really let rip about all the things that bother them about their ex-partner

It’s not about the child.

It’s primarily about emotionally pressuring the mother and putting her under maximum stress so that she is always and exclusively occupied with him.

After all, the negative energy has to flow – he absolutely needs it!

2) …so he’ll back off: Sorry, but I’ll spell it out for you, sweetheart – he’ll never back off. If you have a toxic ex-partner, he won’t calm down if you keep interacting with him.

Toxic narcissists will only calm down when the energy source dries up.

So as long as YOU keep it flowing, everything will go swimmingly for your ex.

Your Ex writes you an email with the most outrageous allegations – you reply nicely and in great detail, 100% correct – bingo! He thinks: She has been dealing with me for at least three hours now! I’ll write another email first thing tomorrow!

The more emotions and explanations and justifications you pack into your response, the more he can enjoy. So why should he stop?

Then he would be pretty stupid.

Your day, on the other hand, is ruined.

Your energy reserves are at an all-time low, all your energy is completely absorbed by the email with your justifications and is now sitting in his inbox.

To put it simply: you are at your weakest – he is at his strongest.

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When I think of how much time I wasted earlier on my answers!

Did I not write anything to further enrage him?

Is it really true what I wrote myself? So was it really the right email at 10:51 a.m. in which I asked him to pick me up from the daycare?

If it was about old stuff from the relationship, I corrected them all.

Sometimes I brooded over an email for a good day. I thought about it back and forth, slept on it, edited it again the next day and only then sent it. Whereupon I promptly received the next email.

And even when I wasn’t sitting at the computer working on the email response, I was constantly thinking about what I wanted to say. While brushing my teeth, driving, cooking, in a meeting at work. I was mentally completely absent and only with him and his brazen claims.

His lies were one thing. His verbal kicks to my soul and his humiliations were another. They often haunted me for days.

So I know how you feel when you’re going through something like that!

So much wasted time!

I have clients who receive at least 3 emails from their Ex every (!) day. Some of them are several pages long. It makes you wonder if these guys don’t have a job.

The funny thing is that it doesn’t matter what you say or what facts you provide to debunk the lies – he will repeat them in his next email as if you had never written anything about them.

And again and again and again.

Meanwhile, he himself believes so firmly in his invented stories and lies – he has written them down again and again and thus anchored them in his brain – that he can react with downright outrage if you still claim the opposite in year X after the breakup. And he will be just as vehement in court.

You just shake your head in disbelief.

To sum up

So, you now know that if you reply immediately and constantly, you will keep the email fire burning.

However, you can’t just not reply – it’s enough to set yourself a weekly deadline and answer non-time-critical but custody-related questions from him briefly and objectively.

Brevity is the soul of wit!

If he repeats a claim over and over again, you simply copy your old answer again (“As already explained with my answer from… at… [copy text]”)

Some clients keep an Excel spreadsheet: claim – date – their answer – date.

Save time, dear! Become effective! After all, it’s YOUR time.

It goes without saying that you don’t even go into the things that have nothing to do with the child.

Also, get rid of the idea that you have to explain the context to everyone in the world with every email response.

The world will never look at your relationship fairly. Let go of that.

Better stay factual and precise and focus on the facts that affect your child.

Your new belief, which I am offering you today, is:

“I don’t have to respond to every piece of shit.”

With this belief, I conclude my mini-series of beliefs that we mothers with a toxic ex keep falling back on our feet.

Did this perspective help you, sweetheart? Was I able to elicit at least a tiny smile from you? Leave your comment below, I’m glad!