To keep him away from kids’ events?

[Brightspark3]

Inspired by another thread. My ex boyfriend started seeing someone just after we finished. We have 2 kids together and he won’t go anywhere without his now wife. So he doesn’t come to school plays, religious events or anything. He wanted to see my son on the first day of school 2 years later but I said no because I knew he would rock up with her. Aibu to just not tell him when anything is so that he can’t bring her too? He showed up once at a sports event and brought her. I couldn’t cope seeing her and I never want to see her again.

Everyone else isn't wrong

You need to grow up - you children may not resent you now, but they will.

How would you feel in years to come if your son has a relationship that results in children and then for whatever reason he decides its not working and leaves his partner. Would you be OK with the partner stopping his relationship with kids just because their relationship ends?
You stopped loving each other. That doesn't mean he stopped loving his kids. Your attitude is going to stop you moving on. Focus on enjoying your kids you don't need to invite him or prevent him attending just move on it will be healthier for all. He doesn't actually need your permission anyway if he decides to turn up at events. You however will need his permission if you want to be petty and change your kids names...

Come on, you're being completely ridiculous. Of course he spends a lot of time with his wife and kids, they're his wife and kids. Surely you shouldn't expect anything less. When you find the person you want to settle down with you usually love spending time together and want to do it. You just sound bitter and twisted tbh.

Your children sound relatively young. They probably wouldn't notice/remember how you've been treated unless you're reminding them/pointing it out. Honestly please don't do this to your poor children.

Let their dad come to the events, let your children be happy and try and encourage them to build a relationship with this woman and the children. You need to put your children's welfare before your own feelings which is what good parents do.

You have an ex partner problem here, not an ex partner's wife problem. And a you problem, because based on how you're coming across here, I can imagine how much of your own feelings have been projected on to your kids. They don't want her there because they know you don't want her there.

If he's genuinely not a good parent to his children, then that's an entirely separate issue to him bringing his wife to school events.

It's also pretty difficult to be an involved parent when your ex/co-parent makes things difficult, kicks off about stupid things and puts the children in a loyalty bind, as you seem to be doing here.

I don't think most of these responses are kind. You are entitled to your feelings and it will take some time for you to feel able to cope with changes you didn't seek and have left you at a disadvantage. Try and be the bigger person and encourage the contact as your children will seek their father out later anyway if there is no contact now. Also, they will then feel guilty to be hurting you and going against your express wishes. Try for some counseling if you want to talk to someone about the situation. Good luck. You deserve it.

God I'm not surprised he left you tbh you sound like a nightmare

You've got a hard time here, lots of pick mes falling over themselves to show how cool and non jealous they'd be in your shoes.
So a man can create two children, then decide to just up and leave his family for another woman, make more children with her and his first family are supposed to play happy families with the new wife and kids and be totally cool with the set up?

For all of those saying "put your kids first", this isn't the sort of example I'd want for my kids and it's not the kind of treatment I'd want to teach them to accept, especially girls, who will grow up to think being treated like this by a man is normal.

I think your reactions are entirely normal and human. Actions have consequences, he chose to leave his family, he can't have his cake and eat it. It's not even like he isn't allowed to see the kids or have a relationship with them. He sees them every other week and he can go to their events, just not with the wife. She isn't related to them so there's no reason for her to be there, I'm not even sure why she'd want to go if she knows she isn't wanted. Very strange.

Eh perhaps because her children are their siblings?🤦‍♀️

Why does he need to bring his wife? Your kids together and he should respect that x

Half siblings, that the OP and her children didn't ask for. The dad can take them, surely, if they want to go and if the OP's children want them there.

But why is she the enemy? I don’t know this woman, obviously- but what if she actually just cares about and is invested in the kid? I mean, imagine.

The OP won't be back. She came, hoping for sympathy and validation - she had already decided how she was going to proceed as evidence by her latest post - she has already attempted to start the process of changing the kids' names to her's and doesn't want the ex or his wife to have a role in their lives.

Everyone handwringing about her "feelings" has missed the fact that the OP is literally using her "feelings" to deny the children their relationship with their father because she is jealous and bitter that he has settled down, gotten married, and is different in his current relationship than he was in theirs.

From the way she talks about him, the ex wasn't happy or ready to be in a relationship with the OP. According to her, he told her he would never marry her, didn't want kids, was never home - despite this, the OP went on to have more than one child with him, and now seems surprised that he has left her. Just because she wasn't the relationship for him, doesn't mean that he doesn't love his kids, and that he can't have changed and settled into a relationship with his wife, whom it would appear he is happy with.

The OP sounds nasty and manipulative, and if she is how she comes across, it's really no surprise that the ex wants his wife with him whenever he has to be in the same place as her, and is refusing to bow down to her demands. I just hope he's strong enough to seek legal representation and not allow the OP to destroy his relationship with his children, and yes, possibly go for a higher percentage of custody. It might stop his children being brainwashed and manipulated any further, or at least lessen it.

@SleeplessInWherever She may do, and I'm not saying she's a bad person or anything, I don't know her either obviously. But the OP doesn't want to see her and it sounds like her children don't want her at the events either, surely she should respect that and give them space to be with their dad? That's what I'd do anyway, I can't imagine going somewhere where I'm not wanted.

@LetsDefrostMariahCarey It takes two to have children though. If he wasn't happy or ready for a relationship or want the kids then why did he have them with the OP?

I’d usually agree - I said in an earlier post that in the early stages of my relationship I very much stayed away until my partners ex was comfortable. IMO a child’s mother will always be their mother, and I had to respect that and not overstep the mark.

But that was the early stages, I wouldn’t feel the need to do that now, there was an assumption she’d get used to someone else being in my stepsons life, and she did.

We’ve all worked hard on building a relationship that worked for everyone, without the animosity of their marriage and me being younger and any other nonsense impacting on that. Because it’s not about any of that, it’s about him.

It just doesn’t sound to me like the same opportunity is available here, you can’t coparent with this level of spite.

Do the children not want her there? Do we know if that's true, or if it is, given that the OP has admitted that she is actively trying to alienate them from their father, is that because of what the kids are hearing from her?

What young children will "see treatment that their dad's wife is getting that the OP didn't"?

So surely the same can be said of the OP. She knew he didn't want children, by her own words, so why did she go on and then have children with him? We have no idea whether the ex thought the OP was on the pill or not, whether he just didn't actively try to prevent pregnancy or whether he thought these pregnancies were "accidents".

What we do know is that by the OP's own admission, the ex was a crap partner and reluctant father. Doesn't mean that the children's rights to a relationship with their dad should be denied just because he has met and married someone who he does love and want to be in a family with.

Regardless of your feelings, putting your children first is the absolute bare minimum requirement of a mother, and that includes fostering their RIGHTS to have a relationship with their father, and his family, i.e, his wife and children.

Leaving your children's other parent is not grounds for having your relationship with your own children denied. It's life, it happens. It might not be pleasant, but our job as parents is to ensure our children's happiness and stability despite a broken relationship.

The OP is punishing her children because of her inability to deal with her own jealousy and bitterness, and that's not good parenting.

Ah OP you sound very bitter. It’s a shame you won’t take people’s comments on board, we can’t all be wrong.
as for saying your kids don’t want her there, is that because you’ve planted that seed in their head. If you want your kids to grow up messed up and resenting you, you are going the right way about it.
you really need to move on for your children’s sake.

I think people are really getting nasty to OP. In my experience children don’t always want to get closer to a father who has essentially abandoned them. He didn’t just leave OP. He left them. Give her a break she has been treated badly. My children chose to see little if their natural father after our marriage broke up because he behaved irresponsibly to to us all. He always had other women to look after him. Then Their stepfather left when they were adults and though my son saw him regularly my daughter chose not to.

As the OP said her children are not keen. Trust her you are all being unrealistically righteous about this. I know others too whose children have had relationships with their fathers who had left to then marry another, and they too never had a relationship with new wife because they too felt abandoned and their loyalty was with their mother. And these children including mine have grown up happy successful and good parents.
There is a lot of idealising selfish men here. It is a lot easier for men to get into new relationships and harder for abandoned women with children. A bit of female loyalty wouldn’t go amiss.

@LetsDefrostMariahCarey We can only go on what the OP has written, no way to know what's true for sure.
Nowadays there's this idea that contact with a parent must be facilitated at all costs, but is this really always what's best for children? Even if the parent didn't want the children, didn't spend time with them or parent them, then left them and now prefers his new family and puts them first? What effect will that be having on the children?
My own father didn't put me first and wasn't a good parent for various reasons. It made me miserable. Then my mum and I moved abroad and I only saw him for a week once a year, and spoke on the phone briefly a couple of times a month. I thrived without him in my life and don't feel I've missed out by not having more of a relationship with him. And he didn't even re-marry, if he had, I'd have hugely resented playing second fiddle to a new family on top of everything else.
Anyway, the OP's ex does have contact with the kids, even if she doesn't want him to have a role she can't actually cut him off completely, no court would allow that.

@SleeplessInWherever Ideally things would settle down eventually like they have in your situation, but I guess sometimes there's too much water under the bridge. It very much depends on how the break up happened. If the father left for someone else and the mum didn't want the break up, then she and the kids might never accept the new woman, even if she's perfectly pleasant.

@Noononoo Exactly, the children have been betrayed too. And they're now seeing their dad lavishing attention on his new family, which he never gave them when he lived with them. If I were the child in this situation, I'd feel so gaslit if I were being told that everything's hunky dory and to go and play happy families with the new wife and kids.

If he's on their birth certificates you can't change their names without his permission.....

It's actually illegal to use your child as a weapon and stop them seeing their Dad because of your own bitterness. It sounds very 'chav-like'. He could get full custody/take you to court for doing this.

You need to grow up and think about your children seeing their Dad. This is not about you.