A 35-year-old divorced woman recently talked about a scary event that happened between her young daughter and her ex-husband’s new girlfriend. The woman’s daughter kept in touch with her father and his partner. Things were going well until the mother said something concerning about how they interacted.

Vanessa and her husband broke up a year ago.

Vanessa, 35, recently wrote to our editorial team to ask for help with her daughter’s difficult and emotional situation. She thinks it’s okay for her to be upset about what happened.

Vanessa’s first sentence in her letter was, “My husband Josh and I broke up a year ago.” Our divorce was so easy and respectful that some people might want to get one like it. We were only staying together for the sake of our little daughter Miranda; we no longer cared about each other. But soon, we both wanted to start dating other people, and we thought it was time for us to end our marriage.

Vanessa went on, “We both worked very hard to make sure that our daughter Miranda would be okay after we got divorced.” We’ve been very involved in her life, going to all of her events and making her the center of our attention, just like before. The little girl Miranda is very smart, and she knew that something was up between us. Still, she didn’t mind about the whole thing as long as we treated her the same way every time.

After their breakup, both people moved on and started dating other people.

Vanessa continues her story by saying, “I’m seeing a guy named Frank right now, but I haven’t told Miranda about him yet.” I chose to wait a little while longer to make sure our relationship is real before bringing her in.

“My ex-husband also has a girlfriend named Kylie. They’ve been together for five months,” she says. I haven’t met Miranda in person, but she often visits them, and I’ve never had a problem with how they got along. In fact, I liked how well they got along. Miranda really likes Kylie and often tells her nice things.

To be even more clear, Vanessa said, “I was truly happy that my daughter has another wonderful woman in her life.” Another thing I wanted to do was meet Kylie in person and thank her for being such a nice person and for how she treated our daughter. I’m not jealous that this woman is in the lives of my ex-spouse and my daughter. But there was one thing that made me mad and sad.

Vanessa learned something bad about the girlfriend.

Vanessa writes, “Miranda loves spending time with her dad and Kylie, and she does it all the time.” Three or more times a week, her dad picks her up. I always know where they’ve been and what they’ve done with each other. My ex-husband knows this, so he tells me about their plans, and Miranda adds her own little details as well.

Vanessa says, “I knew Kylie sometimes did things for Miranda like run her errands or buy her new clothes.” That was fine with me. But Miranda looked upset when she came back from their place last week, and I knew something was wrong. It was a gentle question, but I asked Miranda what was making her so sad. I heard her say she was upset that she lost her rubber ducky. I asked her why she brought her rubber duck off to her dad’s house when she only used it at home for baths and showers. It was something she always did.

She tells me, “That’s when Miranda told me Kylie had been bathing her.” Several times before, this happened, and this time they lost the duckling in Kylie’s bathroom. It made me very angry to hear this.

Vanessa chose to deal with the problem directly.

Vanessa decided to talk to her ex-husband and his girlfriend about what happened with Miranda. “I had to gather all my courage to confront Josh and Kylie about what happened with Miranda,” she said. Josh looked surprised and Kylie looked shocked when I told them what was going on. But they listened as I talked about Miranda’s sadness over losing her rubber ducky and what happened.

Kylie started to explain right away that she didn’t mean to cross any lines. Josh agreed with her and said they were just trying to look out for Miranda and didn’t think it would be a problem.

As the conversation went on, tempers rose, but we were able to come to an agreement. Josh and Kylie told me they were sorry for the mistake and that it wouldn’t happen again without my permission. It was very clear to me that Miranda’s safety and comfort were important.

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