What to Do When Your Ex Keeps Bringing New Partners Around the Kids

What happens when your ex keeps introducing new girlfriends to your children? This episode explores one of the most common and emotionally triggering co-parenting challenges: protecting your kids’ emotional safety when you can’t control your ex’s choices. Michelle Dempsey-Multack shares practical, child-centered strategies to help parents manage their own emotions, create stability at home, and provide the safe harbor children need to thrive. What You’ll Learn: Why you cannot control your ex’s decisions—but you can control your response How to process “ragey” feelings without placing that weight on your children The impact of a revolving door of partners on a child’s nervous system Simple scripts for responding when kids share their experiences with new partners The Safe Harbor Parenting™ framework for creating consistency, boundaries, and emotional resilience Episode Highlights: 00:42 – Why you can’t control your ex’s dating choices, and what to do instead 02:10 – Managing your own feelings without overwhelming your children 03:45 – How to ask open-ended questions that validate kids’ experiences 05:05 – Why overreaction teaches kids to hide their feelings 06:00 – Final reminder: your role as the safe harbor parent Tools, Frameworks, or Strategies Mentioned Safe Harbor Parenting™ – a branded framework emphasizing emotional safety, consistency, boundaries, and resilience building Serenity Prayer Reframe – a mindset reminder for focusing energy only where you have influence Closing Insight: “Your job is not to control your ex. Your job is to be the safe harbor where your children can always return.” – Michelle Dempsey-Multack By modeling calm, consistent, child-centered co-parenting, you create the environment your kids won’t have to recover from, even if the other parent makes choices you cannot control. Learn from Michelle how to navigate divorce & co-parenting: https://bit.ly/MDMPodStore Get one-on-one coaching from Michelle: http://stan.store/themichelledempsey/p/book-a-11-zoom-with-me-wt46q75a Get Michelle's courses on navigating divorce and co-parenting: https://bit.ly/MDMPodStore Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMichelleDempsey Website - https://michelledempsey.com/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/michelle645 TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@themichelledempsey1 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mldempsey/ LINK TO TRANSCRIPT: https://transcripts/moving-on-method-ep261-ex-bringing-new-girlfriends-around-kids Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices