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

[Dreamingfever]

First of all, I’m going to be mentioning suicide so please don’t read if that will upset you in anyway.
My partner and I have been together for 4 years, we are both in our 50s so won’t have any children together. I have a DS from my first marriage, he has a DD from his first marriage, both now early 20s.

DPs first wife passed away 6 years ago, they’d been split for about 7 years before that and I’ve never pried as to the details of his first wife’s death, not my place nor business.
He didn’t live in the UK for most of his adult life, he’s a dual national so spent most of his life in Spain, his mother is Spanish. His first wife was French.
He had told me that once they split his first wife took his daughter to France, he spent most of the holidays with his daughter (who was 12 by the time they split), would take weekends to visit her. I’ve always thought I couldn’t have lived in a different country to my DS but I wasn’t there, I don’t know what the relationship between him and his first wife was like etc. He seems to have a very positive relationship with his daughter, she lives abroad still (different country from either she was raised in) but he calls her often, visits often and we just flew out to spend Christmas with her.

Tonight he seemed upset, I asked why and he told me it was the anniversary of his first wife’s death. I asked if he wanted to talk about it and he said actually he’d like to tell me about it before we marry.

He told me that his first wife was amazing for many years but when her own parents passed she struggled with her mental health, when they split she asked to take her daughter to her parents home she’d recently inherited and raise her there. He admitted he had been hesitant about her abilities to raise their daughter but he worked long hours, and felt a daughter needed her mother, so agreed.
He then told me that over the years he knew her mother was unwell, an alcoholic he claimed was what he knew. He thought about asking to have his daughter back, reporting it to someone, but feared it would only make things worse. He said he told his daughter she could move home anytime but she never wanted to.
His daughter then moved to a different city for university. Then 6 years ago her mother, his first wife, took her own life, overdose alcohol and prescription drugs.
He arranged everything as his first wife had no living family she was close to, any only child, both parents passed, and her daughter just 19.
He also sold the property and sorted out everything inheritance related for his daughter.

He then said during a deep chat over some wine with his daughter he learned his first wife had been an alcoholic for many years, she never told him as she was scared she’d be separated from her mother. She was honest about her teen years being difficult, often coming home to her mum passed out, making her own meals, taking the metro to school and back unsure of her mothers well being etc.

He admitted he has felt immense guilt since and always finds the anniversary a hard day.

Now I’m conflicted, I feel awful for him. But I worked with young adults and teens for many years and I often felt the excuse of “no one else knew” was a weak one, I’ve always felt it shouldn’t be a child’s responsibility to know when an adult needs help or they need help but someone should be looking out for them, I feel he failed to do this, he knew she was an alcoholic and failed to both protect his daughter and get help for her mother.

This clouds my judgement of him, I feel I can no longer see him as a the devoted father, kind man, and loving partner I believed he was.

AIBU to feel like this? Is it the past, something to be moved on from? Or an indicator that he may not be the kind of man I’ve been made to believe he is?

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.

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 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?

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

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 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.

If he’d decided to take his daughter away from her mother there’s a high chance she’d have committed suicide earlier and I guarantee his DD would blame him.

This isn’t for you to judge and I’ve now idea why this changes things for you.

You are not unreasonable to feel how you feel, but I can also see what a difficult situation it was for him and his daughter.

I’d feel a bit manipulated by DP levelling with me so late in the day - my instinct would be to wonder what else he hasn’t been totally honest about and I’d postpone the wedding until I’ve had time to process. It feels like a lie by omission and I hate being lied to.

You need time to process this. The bit that stands out for me is that he tells you three weeks before your wedding. The timing is poor as it feels like he tells you at a point it is very difficult for you to back out of the relationship. I would feel ambushed if i were you and i that is the bit i would resent. I would delay the wedding. There is no rush. Take your time.

This.

He and his daughter have been through so much. Calling off the wedding is going to be another blow to a man who has done what he thought was his best. He visited his daughter every weekend in another country. He was checking in to ensure that she was ok. That does not sound like a neglectful or irresponsible father.

This does not sound to me like it was a situation with a black and white, right and wrong, answer. It sounds like a messy and challenging situation with lots of variables and someone doing the best he could to navigate a horribly difficult time.

if I had opened up to my fiancé about my feelings on that later only to be judged I would feel desperately sad.

If he knew he should have done all he could to protect his daughter.
Getting help for her mother was not his responsibility, even if he had still been with her. No one can help an addict but themselves.

All he had to do was say no to his ex and their kid moving to France. (They could not go without his permission, thanks to the Hague Convention.) Then the three of them would have stayed in Spain, probably with shared custody, and he’d have actually been around. There was never any need to take the daughter from her mother.

I would say that if you have ANY doubts about getting married then please don't get married. Divorce is such a nightmare and so expensive. You have so much to lose.
It should never be entered with doubt.

He did what was easiest—he knew that being a full time single dad whilst XW was abroad would be WORK, so he let XW take DD.

I can’t tell you whether to marry him—it is up to you. I don’t know the rest of the details re: your relationship and his moral compass otherwise. If you need some breathing space to digest, you can always postpone.

So easy isn’t it? Until one parent has Mh issues, isn’t so happy about the idea that the other parent is blocking their move, convinces the child that the father is a demon, mother commits suicide anyway, daughter blames father.

Sounds better doesn’t it?

I think your take on alcoholism is a little simplistic. I work in a similar environment & am similarly passionate about the rights of a child and the damage from adults not doing what they should. But I also have close up experience of alcoholism and adults negotiating that with being a parent.

Given the detailed information it would have been better to have taken over. However his daughter was codependent - she will have covered for her mother. And tbh even if people tell you that they are drinking too much, no-one really understands what non-functioning alcoholism looks like unless they see it. He may still not really understand what not being able to get out of bed due to drink for days on end looked like. I find that when people are confronted with the reality of that - they thought they knew all about drinking, then they see it.

And presumably this was not constant. He mum could pull herself together sufficiently for him not to see how bad it was. Presumably she could function many days. I’ve seen paramedics conned into thinking the people trying to seek support are being controlling because of an ability to pull oneself together.

It was a difficult situation - and I doubt he realised how bad it was. He probably still doesn’t. He also may have been unclear how he could navigate providing for her while working and being there for her too. Moving her between countries regularly in teen years can be damaging as well. Her situation was not ideal and maybe there was a better solution - but there wasn’t an ideal simple answer. She sounds as if she has grown up to be a lovely young woman despite the trauma. My younger two kids went through significant trauma as children / teens. My attempts to remove them from the situation made it worse for my youngest tbh - luckily we only had to do that for a short while. Despite the trauma they have grown into lovely, fully functioning, mentally robust, caring adults. We could rake over what could have been done differently - and have had those discussions - but both have said the situation was complicated and they are aware there was no magic solution.

She was loved, presumably by both parents. And she has a close relationship with her father so she isn’t seeing him as having done anything wrong. Even if you think he did, her understanding of the situation is more important. And that close relationship is protective for her. She doesn’t need to know her father failed her if she doesn’t believe he did.

I think in professional roles we have to be careful in imagining things to have simple neutral solutions. I work as a professional in an area where I am also a mother and am appalled at some of the judgment I see dished out by people I know wouldn’t cope 5 minutes in the situation they are judging.

in this case removing her would have removed her from her mum (that was what made the situation worse for ds3 - he found it very difficult worrying about the person who was the ‘cause’ of the trauma - he’s still clear about that now) - and would have removed her from her teen friends and the school system she was embedded in. Maybe if would have been better for her. Maybe if wouldn’t have. Ideally her father would have uprooted and moved himself there, but the need to earn a living would have maybe made that difficult - and he probably my has no idea of the extent of drinking.

He told her because he couldn’t hide his emotions in the moment and was trying to explain where they come from.

My close friend committed suicide. For years I would get very emotional on the anniversary of his death. Mostly I was able to keep it to myself but on some occasions I was compelled to reveal what I was going through because I was around other people and it was obvious that I wasn’t my usual cheery self.

Op, it sounds to me that you have found a decent man. You could build a nice life together. A clue to his decency is his ongoing relationship with his daughter who seems to be doing well.

As another daughter of an alcoholic, I entirely agree with this.

Btw my kids trauma was nothing to do with alcohol. Have learned about that & experienced that after they were all grown up. So dispassionate observer to this story rather than someone over identifying.

Obviously he carries a lot of guilt that he didn’t do more at the time to protect his daughter from the situation, but it sounds like he wasn’t truly aware of
how bad the situation was & we can only deal
with what’s in front of us at the time. Hindsight is wonderful.

Can I ask OP, what would you have preferred him to do in the circumstances he describes? How should he have responded to this situation in your eyes?

Life is not black and white, and every action has a reaction. Sometimes the reality is crap, but the alternative is also crap.
For example: he visits his daughter monthly and becomes concerned about her mother, so he suggests the daughter returns to his country to live with him… the daughter presumably was settled in school & friendship groups and a life there, she may have been very distressed about leaving that, and also about leaving a mother who was not in a good place. Would she be made to chose between her mum and her dad ? This situation could have also caused huge friction between the parents, maybe even lengthy court battles and more… and still resulted in the death of his ex by overdose when her DD was “taken” away from her. Would he have felt less guilt then? Would his daughter have lived a happier life ?
Obviously I’m just speculating here, as no one knows what the alternate reality would be - but I think it’s safe to say it may not have been any better and would likely still have been extremely traumatic and upsetting for his DD because of the situation with the alcoholism.

For what it’s worth, I think he sounds like he has
tries to do the best by his daughter, been openly supportive and tried not to add more upheaval to her life. Many dads don’t regularly see their kids when they live half an hour up the road after a divorce / split. He has maintained a good relationship when his child was moved to a foreign country & it sounds as though they now have a good relationship and he’s been a huge support in the awful situation his DD has experienced.

And it’s entirely possible OP that the reason you haven’t been told this story before is because your DH to be was afraid of being judged by you… Which evidently he has been.

Is it possible that he is actually a good man? Is it possible that you are judgy and sanctimonious and it would have made it hard for him to confide in you?

Sometimes it’s helpful to self reflect as he is doing on his relationship with his DD and what he could have done better. This is good human behaviour.