Your Family Time Comes First
Every time Alex’s phone rings my head immediately turns to look at him. We lock eyes. He knows exactly what I am thinking:
Is it her?
He will answer my question without me ever asking. Sometimes, “It’s just work” and other time it’s “boys come talk to your mother.”
I cannot tell you how extremely frustrating it is to spend hours cooking dinner for your family, and then as soon as we all sit down to eat, the phone rings.
It seemed to be that as soon as we were settled into family time the boys’ mother would call. I am not sure if I could ever admit to there being a ‘convenient’ time for her to call, but I know for sure that dinner time is not it.
You want to know what we used to do whenever she called during dinner? Answer.
Our custody order says that she is allowed to call every day and we have to either answer or “promptly” respond. So it was either just get it over with, or spend your whole dinner thinking about the fact that you have to call her back as soon as you’re done.
So we would choose to get it over with.
The phone call would never last long but, unfortunately, we would let it consume so much of our night. Alex and I would talk about our frustration about her undermining us on the phone, or how the boys immediately start acting differently after talking to her, or how annoyed we get just hearing her.
Like I said, stepmom emotions can be a little crazy.
I hated interrupting what I felt was “our time” for the boys to spend less than two minutes talking to their mother.
There is never a perfect time to deal with these phone calls, but there are better times.
We came up with some guidelines that have helped us focus more on our family and less on answering phone calls:
- Set a good time to call every day: We didn’t set an exact time for her to call, but we told her the best time was between 4:30-5:30. This was before dinner, it was right when Alex got home, and it kept us from having to worry about when the phone would ring.
- Do not answer phone calls after 6:30pm. Our kids bedtime is 7pm. At 6:30 we are finishing up bedtime, getting baths done, reading stories, and tucking kids into bed. That is family time. There were several times she tried to call after 6:30 and ya know what? We didn’t answer.
- If the boys are in the middle of something, have them call back when they are done. I think back to all the times I made the boys come in from outside to answer their mother, or pause school work, or even stop in the middle of Kings Dominion to answer her. We were seriously pausing memories just to answer a phone call. Stop doing it.
We have been sticking to these guidelines for the past several months and it has made a world of difference. Just today Alex was sitting next to me on the couch asking me if I realize that we haven’t fought since these things changed, and he’s right!
Having another woman in your life causes so much added stress that can seem impossible to manage. Unfortunately, this constant reminder of another woman can cause some tension between you and your man and it is just so not worth it.
I am not sure they’ll ever be a day where I don’t flinch every time Alex’s phone rings, but I do know that putting our family time above answering a phone call has made us all happier and helped us build so many more memories.
