My partner just divulged some of his past to me 3 weeks before we marry

I think you are being very harsh. You don't know the ins and outs. He regrets it. It isn't your place to have a judgement. It seems unreasonable for you to judge his behaviour. His adult daughter has obviously decided she wants a relationship with her father and she really is the only person to judge this situation. If you intend to marry you needvto be the person your partner can trust and rely on. You don't seem to be that person.

So i may have misunderstood, but my impression is that his ex wife moved back to her own country that your DP wasn’t a citizen of. Would he have even had a right to move there to be with his DD anyway?

I would say you are being a bit too harsh op. I was being abused at home when I was a teenager and no one else could see what was going on. Not my teachers or GPs or anyone. So it is highly possible your DP didn’t fully understand. Because I was also young, I didn’t fully understand the seriousness of what was happening, you tend to accept it as your life.

I also had someone close to me take their own life later on and i spent years trying to help him. It didn’t work and they have to be proactive in helping themselves.

I’m very read this story before. I knew it would end with “and the DD confided she’d had a terrible upbringing”.

I think this man and his daughter have had more than enough to deal with in their lives, much of it messy and intractable. Last thing they need is a self-righteous judgy person picking over where they went wrong in their lives. For their sakes, don't marry him.

I would feel the same way as you, OP. But could it be your DP has been harbouring a lot of guilt over this and would probably do things very differently if he could go back in time? Can you postpone the wedding until you have processed things?

PPs also don’t seem to have much comprehension how much trauma and damage the alternative could have caused.

Imagine a preteen daughter being taken away from her mother, not understanding why, being in the centre of a conflict between two parents, worried about her mother and wanting to protect her too. People here don’t seem to understand that the child probably loved her mother, would have not wanted to leave and would have hated her father for doing so. They would in all likelihood still have had a relationship to repair in adulthood. Divorce is not easy on children even when it’s amicable and people here are making it sound like the OPs husband to be did nothing, maybe he did the best he can.

I know my own husband has lot of regrets about his children and his divorce. But it’s not exactly the easiest of times to be the best version of yourself and to walk a perfect path. To all the people here who are sounding sanctimonious and judging, I really hope you get gold star awards for being perfect parents and partners and do not have any regrets for your past behaviors.

I think maybe you need to speak to some people with experience of having an alcoholic partner/ex-partner, such as those from al-anon.
You sound very judgy to me - and children (especially teens) can be very good at hiding how bad things are.

Didn't say she wasn't allowed her own feelings on it. I personally just don't believe they trump the feelings of the daughter.

I can totally see why he would not be sharing it. I wouldnt either.
Also are you suggesting he was somehow responsible for it?

OP is allowed her own feelings on this as his partner and potentially future wife, independent of the feelings of his daughter towards him.

I’d be concerned that, as it’s taken this long to tell you, that there’s more to it.

If he's now adult daughter holds no resentment towards him and she lived it, I don't think you have any right to judge him on how he managed this, OP. She clearly doesn't feel he abandoned her in the midst of her mum's issues.

Is this the first time you've been told of how she died?.

I would think less of him as a father too.

What it boils down to is that he let his daughter be taken away by someone who he had doubts about and then didn’t follow up. Choosing to live in another country and visit infrequently. He knew things weren’t as they should be but chose to offer his daughter age inappropriate choices to salve his conscience instead of ensuring she was safe and well cared for.

These are not the actions of a good parent. They’re pretty selfish really.

But the question is, OP, what does this mean for your marriage?

Have you seen him sacrifice for others he should care for in other circumstances, or does he always choose the route that lets him off the hook? Will you be able to rely on him if things go wrong for you at some point?

You are making some huge assumptions, I think. You are assuming that you know how the relationship between mother and DD played out. DD had a relationship with her DM which , although difficult, was important to her. You know nothing about the dynamic between them. The mother may not have been passed out every single day of their lives. It sounds like he did everything he could for his daughter. If she had wanted to leave no doubt he would have made that happen. He did his best. At least that is how it sounds to me. You are almost saying that he deceived you in some way. It doesn’t sound like that to me. Is he perfect? No.

You feel what you feel. Maybe postpone the wedding and take some time to process all this, perhaps see a therapist for a neutral sounding board. Do you have a relationship with his daughter where you would see her on your own? Would it reassure you to spend a bit of time with her and make sure that she is really ok (assuming she is)? Obviously all this will have had an effect on her, but what?

Having lost my husband to suicide, and having been blamed for that death by a particular person, I would feel very strongly that he is not responsible either for his ex-wife’s tragic death or for her alcoholism. And there are plenty of people here and in RL who take a long time to understand that their partner is an alcoholic. I have good friends, many of whom are good parents, who have problems with alcohol but who I wouldn’t have hesitated to allow to look after my own ds.

Fundamentally, don’t marry someone you are not sure about. But I wonder if this is throwing up some things from your own life, and your own child’s upbringing in some way?

He knew. He couldn't be bothered to raise his child. My grandfather was an alcoholic and the thing about alcoholics is a lot of people enable them and then lie. I'm betting most of the people who are calling you unreasonable either have no experience of this, are themselves enabler s. They don't have to live with him though. Trust your gut. @Dreamingfever

I agree with all if this. My DM was a functioning alcoholic. We knew, most people didn't realise as she masked well.
Children feel incredible loyalty to their parents in most cases, even if they don't deserve it.
You weren't there, you didn't live it...his DD did and she said she hid a lot of things so that she wasn't removed from her mother.
The DD can judge him...I don't think you have the right.
If you don't want to get married, don't.

I would feel how you do OP and this wouldn’t sit right with me at all. I would also be suspicious of why he has left it right up until weeks before your marriage to him to tell you. Is it so that you feel you have no choice but to go ahead with the marriage? Is he telling you everything or is there more to it and this is him telling you part of the story so he can say he told you before marriage, but actually there is more to the story, he knew a lot more than he’s letting on but wants to ease his guilt? Maybe, maybe not.

I would want more than 3 weeks to think this over, discuss it more and see what else comes out before I made a decision to marry him. He must be able to see that this may change things.

Hindsight is always so easy isn't it?

Maybe he did take the easy way out, maybe he could have done more, but it sounds like he and his daughter have a good relationship now, so I'd be taking that into account.

It's natural to reflect after a death, maybe regret and guilt are part of that. I think they're a natural part of life.

My kids are grown up and while I think I was a pretty good parent and they've all turned out well, I still feel guilt about things that maybe I could have done better, even though I did what I had the capacity to do at the time.

I think what you've found is that the 'perfect man' has a flawed and human side to him. I've got no idea why this would seemingly change everything, unless there's some other reason why you've suddenly got cold feet.

He failed his teenage DD and I think she will likely grow more aware of how badly he did so when she gets older and has her own children.

That's up to him. Since you aren't going to have kids with him, maybe it doesn't matter.

As to the manner of exW's death, that isn't really something I'd lightly talk about and I disagree with those saying he should have told you before. My DH and I each lost someone important to suicide when we were young and it's not something we have ever really directly talked about beyond the odd sentence. Just when we handle the death certificates of those involved as we do from time to time Some things just cut deep and aren't subjects for chit-chat. DH's loss was especially terrible and I wouldn't hurt him by raising the subject.

Personally. It would make me doubt if he would be taking care of OP should she need it, given how easily he abandoned his own daughter in an unsafe situation for a child for his own convenience.

They were divorced and living in different countries, and the mother had custody. What do you think he could have done?

France is signed up to the Hague Convention, which means that in the case of international divorce, one parent can only take the children out of the country where they normally live if the other parent agrees.

In other words, the OP's partner gave his permission to take the daughter to France to live. Many would say no, and they'd all have had to stay in Spain until the daughter was 18. When the partner said yes, he was saying yes to a life far away from his kid, where he couldn't protect her from anything. In his shoes, I would never have said yes.

The US is signed up the Hague Convention too, which is why Angelina Jolie couldn't take the kids to live abroad. In the US, you can't even take them out of the state without the other parent's permission. I'm not sure if there are area boundaries within Spain when it comes to the Hague Convention, but it's the most likely that they all would have stayed roughly in the same area if he had said no.

Someone upthread said they were not having kids together so it didn't matter if the marriage was the wrong choice. Well, I beg to differ. My exH and I also didn't have kids, and the marriage was so awful it almost destroyed me.

FWIW, I couldn't be with someone who had let their minor kid move countries without them. I need someone warmer than that.

OP, if you're having doubts, for heaven's sake postpone the wedding. Who cares that it's close.

Completely agree with all the above!