Crazy religious ex husband

[Lavenderfarmcottage]

To give context - I am a single Mum & currently have as hashimotos & an infection. I’m exhausted and tired and have a DS 8 turning 9. My Dad has died, my Mum is fragile & erratic after loss of my sister and our family has always been fractured and small. I feel very unsupported and alone. The other mums are nice but everyone has busy lives and are at maximum capacity.

My DS aged 8 turning 9 refused to visit his Dad lately. My ex husband is increasingly religious, this has always been the case. I was raised Catholic but he has taken it to new levels. He insists on only going to Latin mass as this is traditional which means driving 30 minutes each way to church. He observes holy Friday’s as per an apparition which said to go to mass each Friday. This means he wishes or tried to take my son out of school.

This evening I agreed to go to football training with my ex husband and son, mainly because my child would get anxious if it was just my ex husband at pick up if he hadn’t planned. Football training went over time and we all agreed to drive to DS 8 favourite dinner place spontaneously and at his request. It’s a 20 minute drive and ex husband asked for all pray the rosary for 20 minutes agreeing I didn’t have to join in. I was happy to pray but requested that we do 10 minutes as DS is 8. I politely requested this as I said 20 after school is a bit much for a little kid. Ex husband said find you don’t have to sulking but insisted son remain praying. He then continued praying without me in a high pitch semi crying sulking voice.

Trying to build their relationship and encourage a balanced and middle ground as I really need the support.

would appreciate advice,

As a pp said, he doesn't get a say. You can divorce him whether he likes it or not, That's how civil divorce works. If you were married in a Catholic church, then the fact that he would subsequently regard himself as still married to you is his issue, not yours. It doesn't sound as if he has any grounds whatsoever for an annulment (which would involve proving that according to canon law there was never a marriage because one of you was coerced into marriage, one of you was not able to give consent because of MH problems or being under age, or there was a prior marriage), but again, that's his issue, not yours.

Unless you had a mad desire to remarry in church, and I'm assuming you are highly unlikely to, there are no restrictions whatsoever on you once you divorce him.

As others have said, you need to visit a solicitor and find out what your options are to protect your child. And yourself tbf. The obsession with religion (to the levels he is) is concerning but coupled with his previous violence and misogyny (his belief that as the man he gets to make all decisions) he’s a ticking fucking time bomb. I definitely wouldn’t allow him to have unsupervised contact with my kids. Your son sounds like at best he finds it intense but at worst he’s frightened of his father.

Does he suffer with mental health issues? Has this increased dramatically recently? It kind of sounds like religious pyschosis

.y mum had a pyschosis episode a few yrs back and it was traumatising for my children(we are NC now). It wasn't religious, but this does sound like it's heading towards that. Id limit contact and trust your DC opinion on visiting for now and maybe suggest (but if it IS pyschosis he won't want to) a Dr appointment. You can call the crisis team too if it ever gets too concerning (not always the best service though)

OP look how many times you contradict yourself about who your ex is and how he behaves. Hes violent and controlling but not a monster??? You defend him so much.

Honestly I've no idea how you're allowing your son anywhere near this man, dad or not, he sounds dangerous. You need to protect your son, he is the priority and this all sounds crazy quite frankly. I'm sorry and it's hard being a single parent but you've just got to get on with it.

Let's leave religion out of this for the moment.

You left him because he has been violent to you in the past. The man is mentally unstable and is doing some very unusual ritualistic things, and your child very wisely does not want to spend time with him.

Violent, unstable, manipulative people who have any kind of obsession or are following any kind of cult can be very dangerous people indeed.

You will be putting your child (and yourself come to that) at serious risk of harm if you continue to allow any contact.

Write it all out.

Why you left him.

All abusive behaviours - verbal, emotional, physical etc.

His change in personality.

His attempting to manipulate your child, removing him from school, imposing prayer regimes that your child is finding too much.

His odd behaviours - everything you noticed from the shutting down and inability to communicate to the weird high pitched voice.

Let the school know you are concerned for your child's safety (because I think we are) and that he must not be allowed to take without your permission.

I'm assuming you're in the UK? Get some solicitor advice re your rights around divorce. Many do a free session. He doesn't get to keep you against your will.

So would I.
He’s deranged with a history of violence. Your child isn’t safe.
OP don’t use “work stress” to excuse violence. I’ve had some very stressful jobs and I’ve never hit anyone.

I'm worried that you are minimising this situation OP.

Your ex was sometimes violent but its somehow your fault for not leaving earlier, and it's not really his fault as he was stressed and may be neurodiverse. None of this on you. Whether he was stressed or ND or not, its never OK to be violent or aggressive in a relationship. Under any circumstances.

If he was otherwise an OK father and your son enjoyed seeing him, then carefully building a limited relationship may be beneficial for your son. But at the moment it appears that your son is sometimes in the care of an increasingly unstable, misogynistic religious fanatic with a history of violence and a pattern of emotional manipulationtowards your son, who doesnt seem to enjoy their time together. And I can't how this can ever be a good thing.

Thankyou. My son visits with grandparents there. I don’t feel my ex husband would ever be violent toward son - he never has been and if anything is anxious and very over protective of son. I think his anger is toward me as he’s very critical of me & blames me.

I think you all raise good points and that I need to take a big step back though and protect my son more than I have.

Yes, I agree.

And this: "He then continued praying without me in a high pitch semi crying sulking voice" - is not prayer

I’d say be led by your son- he doesn’t want to see his dad and it suggests he isn’t comfortable

@LavenderfarmcottageCatholic here (not practicing but comes from a family who does) and this is not normal at all. I am concerned you are minimising this and the violence and his misogynistic and cult like behaviour. My advice to you would be to seek advice from a priest in a common and garden Catholic Church although I’m not sure how helpful they would be. You also need to get some legal advice and I’d point you to Women’s Aid.

Further, he may not agree to divorce but you can and should divorce him. I’d be very wary of subjecting your son to any more of this behaviour because he will try and indoctrinate him. I’m not saying people shouldn’t have a faith, that’s an entirely personal choice but this is batshit, frankly.

You're going to get a lot of sympathy here as mumsnet hates religion.

The thing is that 20 minutes is a fairly quick whip through of the Rosary. It takes me 45 mins when I swim and pray (though I do get distracted).

I suggest a different tack:

"Ex we are both Catholic and I'm happy to raise ds in the faith but you run the risk of putting him off if you force too extreme and too much church and praying on ds. It's really important to help him find his own relationship with God. I know you've got your ideas and I absolutely want you to pray and worship as you want but I've got some suggestions for how you could make the faith more accessible for ds:"

Suggestions could include getting a child's book on the Rosary and talking ds through the mysteries. Getting him his own beads. I like the prayer bracelet kind which is 10 beads for the HM plus beads for the AF and the GB.

Suggest he takes ds to mass in English and finds a ni ce church community to give DS a taste of why Catholicismcan be a great blessing. Does ds go to Catholic school? Could ex take DS to church where he might see some school friends and where they have tea and biccies after.

Suggest he keeps holy Friday for himself and not take DS. He absolutely needs his own time to pray and connect with God. Could he go to Latin mass on a Friday to get that benefit then if he values traditional liturgy. Otherwise if Latin mass has to be on a Sunday then maybe do it without DS but Fridays should be for him. His ds doesn't need to go.

Try and gently get him to ease off in tge guise of "you want ds to embrace the faith don't you? In which case you can't force too much religiosity on him.hes only young now but one day he will have to walk in faith alone and 40 minutes of Rosary at the weekend, an hour driving to and from Sunday mass, attending a mass he can't understand and his dad being too strict about everything will put him off.

Good luck. I hope your ex calms down.

Thanks this is extremely helpful. I have tried that and he is very stuck on what is best for his son and that he is the best and only person who can decide and most people have it wrong etc.

You said that you pray and swim (how nice) but to be clear, but said 20 minutes is a quick rosary. Do you think this even for an 8 year old.

My expectation would the rosary beads/5 decades once a week & a nightly prayer at the absolute most, for an 8 year old & one mass a week.

Yes he insisted we go on our holiday once. How did you know this ?

If I am being honest I didn’t enjoy the experience & I tried to gain something from it and couldn’t.

The difference is that Muslims who observe daily prayer rituals a) do not remove their children from school to do it, b) do not try to force the people around them to do it and c) do not do it because they saw ‘an apparition’. They simply observe it in the same way that practising Catholics observe, eg, Communion. There is a big difference between Islamic daily prayers and what the OP’s ex is doing.

Also, when a Muslim starts to become more and more extreme and obsessive, people absolutely do assume either mental breakdown or, in fact, radicalisation. That can see them reported to the police.

If a Muslim father suddenly started behaving towards his child like this, claiming he’d seen apparitions and removing him from school, I can assure you that it would absolutely be considered a concern by people around him, including most other Muslims.

I guessed because I work with a lot of people who have been to Medjugorje. They've all come back really fervent, even if they weren't before, praying the Rosary multiple times a day, going to extra Masses and so on and so forth. Their way is the right way etc.

It's a cult. All the "Medjugorje people" I know would disagree with me but they go about trying to convert people (ie. ordinary Catholics) to their version of Catholicism. The rest of us are just "play-acting" at Catholicism (I've been told). We need to repent and turn back to God, pray the Rosary, go to confession, pray to the Archangel Michael to protect us from Satan etc.

I'm surprised he's gone to TLM after a Medjugorje "conversion" (which is what they call it) as normally they'd continue to go to mainstream Catholic churches while trying to persuade others to get on board with the Medjugorje thing.

You can find quite a lot of information about it online.

Erm… they actually expect their children to be exhausted while fasting through school. Or sleep randomly at school. That sounds pretty disruptive. Girls are made to wear head covers for religious reasons they aren’t old enough to sign up for. Not to mention how Christian kids here are expected to happily celebrate and participate in other religious holidays while other religions refuse their kids to join in. There is definitely a double standard between Christians and if someone is more obviously religious as a Christian people scream crazy but with other religions they rush to defend and not offend. I just find it weird.

and the idea Muslims don’t try to force people around them to join in or alter their behaviour is utterly laughable.

Why would you gain anything from it? It’s a particularly clear case of some poor children at a difficult time in their country’s history, when fractures were emerging along ethnic and hence religious lines after Tito’s death, got a huge amount of attention and power from claiming to have received Marian apparitions and messages, and Medjugorje became a symbol of Croat nationalism and resistance to Yugoslav Communist state power.

And, all these years later, those ‘visionaries’ are still benefiting from the ‘visions’ through benefiting from religious tourism they attract. For an otherwise undistinguished village, it gets more overnight tourist stays than anywhere else in Bosnia Herzegovina.

It’s not that there’s some spiritual essence you failed to grasp there, OP. Even now that the Vatican has ‘authorised’ pilgrimages there, it has specifically said that it is in no way authenticating the supposed visions.

Excellent explanation

Medugorje is a massive scam. Unlike Lourdes and Fatima, where the visionaries didn’t gain anything and died young. The ones at Medjugorje are raking it in. (Disclaimer, I go to Lourdes every year)

I accidentally ended up at Lourdes a few years ago, when on holiday in the Gers, and as an atheist cradle Catholic, found it surprisingly touching how the town centred the needs of ill and disabled visitors. Though what I really wanted to do was poke around the Bureau des Constatations Medicales, which investigates ‘miracle’ cures.

That’s how he gets around the communion issue - by pretending he’s still married in his head.

Are you actually divorced or just separated?

Our local church had a splinter group based on Opus Dei but the new priest got shot of them.

Agree. However to quote my mum and her mates, it’s cheaper and the wine is better so on that basis it beats Fatima. The craic is good at Knock if you know where to look, apparently.

We have been seperated since 2019. Our assets were seperate at that time as we were inbetween buying & selling houses. I just haven’t gotten around to the paperwork because I’ve felt too mentally worn out. There hasn’t been a financial need to & I don’t think it would make a difference. Perhaps I just haven’t wanted to rock the boat as I know he’d be upset.

I am speaking to a family lawyer sooN. I feel as though there’s no way of having a happy balance with him, if you give an inch he’ll take a mile. Last night was just a way of facilitating a casual way for him to get involved and it turned into a drama.

Thankyou all so much for your advice.