Relax the Rules of My House, My Ex-Wife Demanded I Be Stricter or Face a Custody Battle, Leaving Me Questioning My Parenting. I, 43 Male, Have a Daughter…
When my ex-wife demanded I be stricter with our 16-year-old daughter or face a custody battle, I started questioning whether giving my daughter more freedom had actually made me a bad parent.
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When my ex-wife demanded I be stricter, it forced me to question the completely different ways we were raising our 16-year-old daughter. I’m a 43-year-old father with joint custody, while my ex-wife is 39. We divorced when our daughter was still a baby, and the court awarded us 50-50 custody. I’ll admit that being a doctor has affected how present I’ve been over the years. My career comes with demanding responsibilities, and I haven’t always been around as much as I wish I could have been. But when my daughter reached 13, she increasingly began telling me about her mother’s household rules and asking why she had to follow them.
At first, the complaints seemed small. She couldn’t eat in the living room at her mother’s house. When she asked whether that rule applied at mine, I told her no. As she got older, however, she started asking for more privileges. Her mother wouldn’t let her hang out with friends during the week. I thought that was unnecessary, so as long as she had transportation there and back, I allowed it.
Then came clothing. Her mother wanted her dressed modestly even around the house, while I was far less concerned about what she wore at home. My daughter also wanted a lock on her bedroom door, and I offered to have one installed. Her mother wouldn’t let her drink soda; I was perfectly willing to add soda to our grocery order. You get the idea. I wouldn’t call myself a doormat, but I’m nowhere near as strict because I see my home as my daughter’s home too.
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That difference in parenting styles eventually stopped being a minor disagreement.
My ex-wife began accusing me of letting our daughter get away with everything. According to her, my lack of discipline was encouraging our daughter to break rules when she returned to her mother’s house.
I disagreed.
Our daughter was almost an adult, and I felt she shouldn’t be treated like a toddler.
That conversation went badly.
My ex-wife became furious with me over the phone and also confronted our daughter, calling her undisciplined. Then she threatened to take me back to court over custody if I didn’t change the way I parented.
Suddenly, I was wondering whether I’d actually gone too far.
As I continued talking with both of them, however, I began learning more about what life was like at my ex-wife’s house.
There was no boyfriend, husband, other child, or other permanent resident living there. My ex-wife did host an adult book club once a month, but otherwise it was just her and our daughter.
The bedroom-door issue particularly caught my attention.
According to my ex-wife, our daughter couldn’t have a lock because she didn’t want to give her the ability to hide drugs or boys she might be sleeping with.
Her rules around friends were similarly strict.
Our daughter couldn’t see friends during the week because her mother considered them distractions from school—even though her report card showed she was doing perfectly well academically.
Then I learned the restrictions went beyond those things.
My ex-wife controlled makeup, clothing, certain media, food and drinks. My daughter also told me about comments her mother had allegedly made about her body. My ex-wife denied one particularly troubling comment, but my daughter said the way her mother treated her body was making her uncomfortable.
I wanted facts before deciding what to believe.
I asked my daughter whether she’d mind if I searched her room.
She said she had nothing to hide.
I looked.
No drugs. No vapes. Nothing alarming—just the room of an ordinary 16-year-old girl.
I also asked whether she’d object to me putting Life360 on her phone so I could see where she went.
Again, she handed me her phone without resistance.
She admitted she’d been acting out at her mother’s house and agreed she needed to respect reasonable rules there.
But she had one request for me.
She wanted me to talk to her mother about the comments being made about her body.
And when my ex-wife demanded I be stricter, I hadn’t yet understood just how deeply the disagreement between them had already grown.
