What is going on between you and your ex is a completely separate issue from your r with your daughter. Your daughter just needs one of you to be the bigger person; to be the adult in the room.

One-upping our ex spouses is not the way to do this. (Parental alienation is something to discuss with the therapist, but again, is a separate issue from your r with your daughter). She just needs someone to be the adult in the room, be her parent. This means not saying ANYTHING negative to her against her mother. You need to work on being the safe place where she can express all her feelings about all that went wrong in her life. That means listening. It’s hard to do. But that is the start to building a r with her. Scoring points against your ex will have d running the other way to the adult who is the bigger person in the room.

You and your ex both have very very messy lawns. To be honest, from an outsider looking in, I think your lawn is messier as you have introduced the gf and the baby all so fast that d has expressed this is all being crammed down her throat. She wants space from it all.

If you can’t listen to her I would back off in trying to see her, for a bit. Each interaction we have with people either makes things a little better or a little worse. Do you think your interaction with your d made things better or worse from her vantage point?

Me 41, H 47, M 15 yrs, S11, S13
BD 1: 11/4/14 we work on it; really I pretzel myself
BD 2: 3/31/15 H goes down to "dorm room"
8/15: H back to MBR
10/15: H back in dorm room
1/18: H files, now divorced