Breaking the cycle of arguing and silence

I''ll try to keep this post as neutral as possible. Almost all communication I have with my ex is via email.

My ex and I are stuck in a never ending cycle of arguing and silence. It generally starts with her telling me to do something I cannot or don''t think I should have to do. Anxious to avoid a conflict I reply in the negative, as briefly as possible.

My ex will then fire back an angry and insulting response, accusing me of not showing interest in our children and threatening repercussions if I don''t do this or that. This causes me to withdraw even more and then my ex gets even more angry at my lack of engagement and sends even nastier emails ...etc ...etc

Any advice on how to break this cycle would be much appreciated!

My husband has an similar relationship with his ex. If she wants something and he doesn''t agree he gets loads of abusive text messages. After 6 years he just ignore her rants, she usually backs down.

I was in your situation shortly after my separation as in contact via email full of rants backwards and forwards.

Time after time I was given the advice no contact - this really does help. It takes a while to sink in, but you need to try and be the better person.

Do you explain to your ex why you cannot do the things you are being asked to do? Whether or not she will listen is another thing.

Could you both be struggling to take control over each other? May I suggest any response that is required tries to be a positive one, not necessarily agreeing to what is asked of you, but worded in a way that an angry response is not received back from her.

Please try and put your children at the forefront of your decision. Are you saying no to your ex because you want to spite her? Please do not take this as I am suggesting you are. On the other hand, could it be that your ex is saying things to you to spite you? It works both ways.

Practice trying to be the better person - pick out what you are being asked by way of response and don''t retaliate to anything else. It''s hard, damn hard, but you will get there in the end. After all practice makes near perfect.

Good Luck

In the beginning I tried explaining my reasons but no matter how clear they are she would always argue back. Now I take the view that no matter what I say or do she will always take the opposing position and thus the dis-engagement I described in my earlier post.

The typical things we are fighting about is that my ex will ask me to mind one of our children on a specific day, or perhaps on a specific evening to collect one from nursery and drop them at her house. In order to meet her request I would have to take a day off work or ask my manager for permission to leave early and this is not something I can keep doing without risking my job.

When I tell this she just says she that if I really cared about my kids I would find a way.

Why does she want you to take and collect children? if its because of her work commitments it might not be unreasonable for you to have to take leave to support her. If you had still been married then these responsibilities would have been shared.

This is how I did it.

I may have got a message which was part ok and part not ok. I would reply to the part ok bit and leave the not ok with no reply. If the whole message was ok. I replied to all of it. Same with the not ok. I replied to none of it.

Pretty soon they learn without having to tell them that if they want some cooperation then they have to be decent with comms.

There will be times when you don''t have to do what someone tells you to. That could be related to how your asked. It could be related to what your asked to do. What I say is consider the task ahead and ask yourself some questions. Is this task going to benefit me? Will this task move along the divorce? Does this task impact my kids or my relationship with them? And then take appropriate action.

There are a number of issues with divorce. One of them is the taking apart of something that was never meant to be taken apart. And here we have the problem. This action causes a lot of friction and anger. So take yourself out of the anger cycle and stop going back at her with another message. Just leave the parts that are inflammatory and things will start to calm down. Cos at the end of the day, no one needs stress. Marshy.