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

The Moving On Method® Podcast

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

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