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?

You’re wrong about the UK actually:

1. There is no one universal “UK” legal system; Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales each have their own distinct legal systems with different laws and regulations (although they overlap)
2. In all jurisdictions of the UK, a court order can override parental consent therefore it would NOT be illegal to take a child abroad without the other parent’s consent as long as you have a court order; this is not abduction. It’s this same premise which allows children to be taken into care etc.
3. Yes Spanish law is the same and all 4 legal systems will heavily weight the opinion of the child in question once they’re considered old enough

Yup. Poor man.

Maybe she didn’t enquire further bc he made it clear it was out of bounds. We don’t know, op hasn’t said.

But it doesn’t suggest a healthy dynamic where two people are open with one another to me. Which should absolutely be the case if they’re getting married.

I don’t think this is a “you need to ltb” situation at all - but the OP would be wise to listen to her gut here and take some time.

She isn’t a bad person for having second thoughts about him knowing this information and posters telling her off for being judgey are just plain wrong to tell her to minimise her feelings.

Which is why given the judgey tone of the OPs post I’m inclined to believe that the OPs partner has given up this information before they get married because he too believes that this is something he should get off his chest beforehand. Maybe he can’t believe he is getting married to someone who hasn’t asked or doesn’t know about these very pertinent details of his life…

All round a very strange dynamic.

He didn't choose that, though, did he. It was his wife who took the child to another country. It really isn't that easy just to follow - what if you need a visa, what if you can't get a job or somewhere to live, what if you have other obligations in your own country?

OP said he knew about his exes addiction and MH issues - and told her he knew about it 🤷‍♀️

@Nevermind17 you make an important point. It also made me think his DD would be devastated if she thought her DF's relationship broke down because of how she was parented. It might make her feel guilty.

I think this is a question worth asking yourself.

He was in a difficult position. An ex wife with fragile mental health and grieving who feels life would improve if she moved home. To block that and fight it may have damaged her - and then his daughter - in other equally harmful ways. If she was suicidal at that point, his daughter would have forever seen it as his fault (even if he was right).

And then do you drag her away from her friends and a critical stage in her schooling? To try and pick that up in another country?

The bond with a mother is very important. To remove that, and leave her alone, is also likely to have ended badly for all of them.

The fact that they have a good relationship and that she did go to university and achieve despite it all feels like perhaps it was the best of a horrible lot of decisions. Sometimes there just aren't perfect choices in life, especially when not in full possession of the facts..

Basically his DD has accepted/forgiven him for his decisions.

Sorry but how can you speak for his DD?

OP has said he and his DD appear to have a close, good relationship. But you have absolutely no idea what his DD's views on her father were at the time. Whether she felt there was anything wrong with his behaviour or felt there was anything to forgive.

Child Abduction Act 1984, s 1 is your friend 😊 read it

1. There is no one universal “UK” legal system; Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales each have their own distinct legal systems with different laws and regulations (although they overlap)

yes, thanks, I’m a lawyer but very informative. I was referring to child abduction specifically which does refer to the entire UK. I don’t think I used the term “UK legal system”.

1. In all jurisdictions of the UK, a court order can override parental consent therefore it would NOT be illegal to take a child abroad without the other parent’s consent as long as you have a court order; this not not abduction. It’s this same premise which allows children to be taken into care etc

Well yes I’d have thought that was implied as i said it could be seen as controlling to try to prevent your ex from moving abroad (by refusing permission). Of course you can move with court permission which wouldn’t be abduction. Or with parental permission which is what happened here.

Thanks for the info about the Spanish system 😊

This deeply traumatic and scarring experience isn’t something that just ‘happened’ to him. He chose to not ask too many questions, despite knowing there were issues, resulting in his daughter dealing with a situation at a young age that was something a child shouldn’t have to deal with. He was part of the problem and should have been a much better parent. Stop framing him as a victim. He had a child and didn’t protect her.

OP doesn’t have to be ok with this. Her feelings are valid despite what her partner or daughter feel about this. She gets to decide if she wants to be with someone who didn’t do the best he could for his child. She is contemplating marrying this man, she has feelings on this matter. That isn’t making it all about her, it’s being sensible about a decision that will impact her future.

The minimising here by some people is shocking.

OP says she has a DS. Why on earth would she want to tie her assets to any man, let alone one she has any doubts at all about?

Quite. It’s easy to say as a third party that we would have done things better or differently but until your actually in the situation where your ex and their alcoholism is becoming a problem and you just don’t know what to do, words are cheap and OPs reaction is exactly why there is so much stigma attached to addiction and people just don’t talk about it. It’s incredibly unfair to judge him over a situation in the past where he clearly just didn’t know what to do about it and was just as much a victim of his exes alcoholism as his daughter but as usual the unrealistic expectations on men dictate that he’s in the wrong by default of having a penis.

I think you are being harsh here OP. What might seem obvious from an outside angle is never as black and white as it seems. Her mother sounds like she was a functioning alcoholic. I don’t think you can judge unless you were directly involved in the situation at the time. What would matter to me would be the relationship he has with his daughter now, how he managed the aftermath of his ex wife’s death and the respect that he still gives his ex wife now, despite her faults. This tells you the kind of man he is.

Another daughter of an alcoholic (father) here, in a very similar situation. My mum died when I was young & all the family knew he was an alcoholic/would pass out leaving me to fend for myself, but didn’t do anything.

Alcoholism is complicated, usually shrouded in secrecy and shame. Family members (we were a tight-knit family) still claim that it was my mum’s death that made my dad the alcoholic, rather than that he was drunk, violent & abusive before as well.

Edited to add that I’m from a similar culture, and also I didn’t have the vocabulary or emotional maturity to explain or understand what was going on. I think none of us did, other family members included.

I don’t think you should judge. He may have had a limited emotional toolbox to deal with this, and if the daughter has made peace with the situation, it sounds like much processing has been made.

I would question why you didn’t ask him before. Were you not curious to know? Maybe some people aren’t.

Good luck, OP. Hope you can forgive.

He had doubts about her ability to parent, knew his ex was unwell and knew she was an alocoholic!

I think this underlies most of the posts deriding this guy. People on Mumsnet universally are opposed to second marriages where there are children from first marriages and nobody can ever see any point in marrying if you’ve been married before.

I don’t need to read it thanks, I was a lawyer too albeit in an adjacent area.

If you’re talking about child abduction specifically then I have no idea why you questioned or replied to my original post which was specifically talking about court orders; the only person to mention abduction was you hence the confusion.

He has his actions or lack thereof to own and a fair amount of guilt to go with it. That is his burden and it seems like he has tried to make amends by for example arranging his Ex's affairs. I won't judge or draw any conclusions

However my point is that the OP is deplorable

I would be wondering why, after 4 years of being together and 3 weeks away from your wedding, has your partner now decided to tell you? I do find it odd that you haven't asked how his first wife died, regardless of the fact it was 7 years after they split. I find it odd that he hasn't had this conversation with you before now. He loves you, presumably trusts you, so therefore why not tell you? I wonder if he's told you because he's concerned someone within your wedding party may mention something to you in passing, even something vague, because they've assumed you know.

If your partner and his daughter lived in two different countries after the divorce, I can't see how he could have possibly known how bad it was. My only thought would be that he knew his ex had MH issues and he knew she had an issue with alcohol, but still agreed to allow his daughter to live with her Mum. By his own admission, he knew he couldn't care for his daughter full-time due to his job, so he turned a blind eye to his ex wife's issues, and allowed his daughter to move countries. That was purely because it was better for him, and in hindsight he now knows he should have prioritised his daughter, not his job.

His daughter wanted to stay with her Mum, because she knew her Mum had no one else. If she'd had lived with her Dad, then she feared what would happen to her Mum. She thought by staying with her Mum, she could keep an eye on her, the best she could. I'm sure deep down, she'd rather have lived with Dad, but knowing her Mum's difficulties and knowing she had no one else, kept her staying there. However, as I said, you partner didn't know how bad the situation had become, because his daughter hid it from him.

I wouldn't end a relationship over the situation. Your partner made mistakes, he knows he made mistakes and I'm sure if he could go back, he'd make different decisions. He can't do that, so he has to make peace with them instead, and stop beating himself up over it.

You do need a conversation with him about why he's now told you, 3 weeks before the wedding, as opposed to a year or 2 years ago.

How could he stop her?? Would his Daughter have been better off without her mother, the mother taking her life would deeply affect DD even more than it does now, feeling like she was there for her mother protecting her probably helped.
Not all alcoholic with depression are nasty. My DM became a drinker later in life. She was always really kind and loving no matter what, she was sad, with depression masking it with gin.
He was must tired carrying this on his mind.

Can you expand on what you think his lack of actions were, given that his DD wanted to stay with her mum and he wasn’t fully aware of the situation until she told him years later ? He visited regularly and maintained contact, and they have a good relationship - so clearly found a way to navigate the situation without him going through the courts to have his DD removed from her mum, which would likely have cause irreparable trauma damage.

His DD is an adult, by my reckoning according to OP’s timeline of events she’s now 25 and their relationship reflects that she’s fine with his actions. What do you think would change that now ?

And OP indicated very clearly that she always thought the circumstances of his wife’s death were none of her business, so it was never discussed. Do you not think it relevant that the first time OP actually asked him to talk about it, it all came pouring out ? To me that suggests the reluctance to discuss it came from OP. I think it’s quite a stretch to blame OP’s fiancé for not telling her if she has never shown any interest until now.

IMHO you’re being too judgmental.

What do you think he should’ve done? Fought an unwell and mentally fragile woman for custody of her last remaining relative, when his teenage daughter had made it clear she wanted to stay with her mother?

If he’d won custody (unlikely given courts tend to take teenagers’ preferences into account, unless his argument was she was suffering neglect from her mother, which would’ve been even more toxic and devastating to prove) and the mother then took her own life, alone and without even her daughter, how would his daughter have felt about him?

If they now have a very close and loving relationship, that’s great. And that’s what you should accept.

Lots of lone parents struggle with their health or disabilities and lots of teenagers are young carers to parents and siblings. It’s not the easiest young adulthood, but as long as they feel loved by their parents, and supported by the wider community (teachers, social workers, friends), they should be able to choose what they’d prefer.

But the point is it applies to the entire UK and specifically references the UK rather than England and Wales/Scotland/NI 😊 Which was something you picked up in my post.
Anyway, on re reading your post I can see you were talking about the situation where the mother had a court order (but to get that court order obviously the father would have had the opportunity to refuse consent and the court would then have the power to overrule him). I think the point others made was that people can’t just take their kids across borders without the other parent’s consent. They would need to get a court order which would mean the court would hear the reasons the remaining parent doesn’t want them to go.

Have a good day.

Now imagine how his relationship might have been with his daughter if hed taken custody and then the ex had died.
The daughter likely would have blamed herself for not being there to stop it, and him for taking her away.
He did what he thought was best in the circumstances, without knowing all the information until after.