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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

AIBU to want distance from my controlling baby's father?

428 replies

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 17/04/2026 17:50

This is already embarrassing for me, so I'd be grateful if you didn't pass judgment.

Five months back, I gave birth to my first child, but his father and I aren't a couple. We were never really a couple, it began as just some casual fun while my ex was in prison and he was having issues with his wife.

I've liked him forever, so the true feelings have always been there, and he's the guy I've wanted to be with all this time.

We'd been hooking up regularly and behaving like a couple, but we both knew it was wrong and had to end.

But then I fell pregnant, I let him know straight off, expecting a panic and a push for abortion, but that never happened. He said it was totally up to me what I decided.

I was planning to have an abortion, but things changed because my ex wasn’t getting out of prison any time soon, and we’d been trying to have a baby for over two years without any luck.

Throughout my pregnancy, my baby's dad was amazing, he made sure we had everything and was right there at the birth too.

I let him pick the baby's name, even though I really don't like it, but I figured I'd let him have his way. The baby also carries his last name.

He made me get our baby circumcised, not for any religious reason, but just because his mum decided that for him when he was a baby. The procedure went well, but I still feel guilty about it every day.

Only a month in, he started getting really controlling and still is.

He doesn’t want baby on social media.

He’s always trying to control what I wear. I video called him, to show the baby, and his first reaction was about my outfit, he told me to change it up because now that I'm a mother, I should dress differently.

He keeps moaning and wants to control every little thing, and I seriously can't put up with it anymore.

I just wanna take my baby and move away; he's already got his wife and three kids.

OP posts:
lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 26/04/2026 16:07

BudgetBuster · 26/04/2026 15:57

I've never been so attracted to someone I've blatantly had an affair, had their kid, ruined multiple lives, continued to have an affair after realising how stupid I've been, allowed my sons privates to be snipped, doing everything a conniving deceitful man is telling me to do and then crying to the internet whilst simultaneously still sleeping with him.

No.

But I truly try to out my children first.

You sound like a good mother.

OP posts:
BudgetBuster · 26/04/2026 16:11

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 26/04/2026 16:07

You sound like a good mother.

It's called prioritising... everyone could be better but it's very easy not to fall onto the penis of a horrible MARRIED man 🙄

WhiteWidowWithAttitude · 26/04/2026 16:12

I very rarely get involved in these far fetched shark jumping posts on Mumsnet, and I am vehemently against troll hunting, so I won’t, however, you allowed yourself to selfishly have a sexual relationship with a man whom you knew to be married with three young children, because “you’d always been attracted to him”. You chose to have unprotected sex which, SURPRISE, resulted in a pregnancy, which you allowed him to dictate whether you kept or not. You then allowed this absolute PRINCE to dictate your son’s not only ridiculous first name, but also to take his “father’s” last name, because he belongs to him!? 🤨 - no mention of the fact that you grew him of your body, fed him of your body, nurtured and cared for him of yourself whilst he was cosying up to his poor long suffering wife and deceived children. But to make it worse, you allowed this absolute dreg of a man insist on having your beautiful baby boys anatomy unnecessarily mutilated, causing him
potential sexual and physiological problems later in life under the guise of it being “cleaner” (spoiler alert, it’s not). An irreversible surgical mutilation that your son could resent you for for the rest of your life, under this “man’s” say so.

You continue to allow this man unfettered access to you and your sons life, under the guise that your son deserves to have his fathers influence. I’d argue, that your son absolutely does not deserve to be forced to be influenced by such an immoral, deceitful man, as this will only instil on him that this is how men should behave and treat the women and children in his life.

You have said that this man has indirectly threatened you by comparing what your prison ex would do to you if you behave how this man doesn’t want you to, and is pretty much telling you that you are LUCKY that he’s not like that. Yeah, yet.

You claim to care for his wife and their children, but at the same time you open your legs for him the moment they are out of town. Is the care for his wife and kids in the room with us?

You’ve allowed him to monitor your comings and goings and let you feel that taking your child to your mother’s house may not be clean. When you know that not to be true.

Your babies father absolutely is a danger to him, purely by virtue of being threatening and controlling towards you (and let’s not pretend, you almost welcoming him to do that), and by giving your son and absolutely abhorrent example of what a father should be. I hope you have a good savings pot for the inevitable therapy your son will require when he finds out about his origins and his hidden siblings and step mum, who may very well not want anything to do with him, and who may very well actually hate him as his fathers secret bastard who they may blame for the eventual break up of their “happy” home.

All this is forgetting the fact that you CHOSE to tell your dangerous con ex partner about the baby, quite needlessly, when the government had already made provisions for you to be removed safely from that situation for your (and your son’s) protection.

I see nothing in this set up that has actually been orchestrated with your baby’s best interests at heart. You wanted to know and hurt your ex-crim with the knowledge of your baby, you want your baby’s sperm donor in his life as his father, although this only seems to be to facilitate the attention and sex you can have with him, despite how much you faux complain about him “controlling” you. If I were to give you even the tiniest benefit of the doubt, I would think that you were truly hopeful that he would see the light of his ways, and make YOU and your son his main family, and leave his wife and kids behind, but I don’t think you can allow yourself to believe that because deep in your heart you know it will never be, so you just need to keep deceiving yourself that all you want from him is to be an involved father - and fuck his original family in the process. Why else would you allow someone to be on the BC, choose not only his first, but last name, if you weren’t looking to make this something permanent eventually.

Make it make sense OP. You’ve been given so much good advice on here, but it comes to a point that people will stop offering practical or compassionate advice, because it’s not what you want to hear.

The last thing I want to say, is please be quite distant at your mothers groups, because the minute any of those new mothers get wind of the fact that you’re a cheating homewrecker, they will instantly distrust and hold you at arms length, fearful in their new postpartum haze, that their husbands might be the next target of your predatory actions. It might seem unfair to you, but I guarantee, to them, it will just be protecting their peace and family from an amoral woman who will happily shag someone who she “has a great attraction to”, without thought or feeling for them or their child(ren). This could all be a very lonely time for you coming up OP, and I just hope that it’s not your poor little baby who suffers for your terrible reprehensible actions.

Maybe consider some time alone, sans ex con, sans slutty baby daddy. Just you and your boy, to form a happy stable life without all this sordid drama.

ItTook9Years · 26/04/2026 16:13

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 26/04/2026 15:53

Because I wanted to, and that’s me being honest. I never thought that something like this would happen.

Like I said before, I have known him for a long while, he would always make comments, and I would say to him, I will find your girl/wife and tell her.

It was only when my ex partner went to prison, I took my chance.

I don’t know if anyone here has been in the same situation, where your so sexuality attracted to a person, every time you see them you are undressing them with your eyes, and you basically just want a piece of them.

Please stop. I’m running out of buckets.

You weren’t helpless. You can’t say you were attracted to how dedicated he is to his family whilst simultaneously preparing to blow it into smithereens.

RampantIvy · 26/04/2026 16:22

Has anyone checked with MNHQ whether the OP is genuine?

Surely no-one is this stupid?

WhiteWidowWithAttitude · 26/04/2026 16:36

Also, having read the entire thread, your thread title is entirely disingenuous. You don’t want to distance yourself from your “controlling” baby’s father, or you would absolutely have done so. Beginning with NOT having him on the BC, NOT allowing him to dictate your baby’s first or last name, NOT ALLOWING him unfettered access to the baby, or for that matter your ring doorbell, and certainly NOT sleeping with him the second his wife and children went out of town for a day or two.

im not sure what you want from this thread, whether it’s just attention, whether it’s validation, but it’s certainly NOT advice on how to distance yourself from this utter excrement of a human being. Your son deserves better, certainly than his “father” and maybe even than his “mother” who appears to have zero interest in protecting his peace and stability. You certainly didn’t protect him from having his genjtals mutilated and the potential sexual dis function and urinary issues that may bring on him in his future. Merely on the say so of his so called “father”.

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 26/04/2026 17:20

WhiteWidowWithAttitude · 26/04/2026 16:12

I very rarely get involved in these far fetched shark jumping posts on Mumsnet, and I am vehemently against troll hunting, so I won’t, however, you allowed yourself to selfishly have a sexual relationship with a man whom you knew to be married with three young children, because “you’d always been attracted to him”. You chose to have unprotected sex which, SURPRISE, resulted in a pregnancy, which you allowed him to dictate whether you kept or not. You then allowed this absolute PRINCE to dictate your son’s not only ridiculous first name, but also to take his “father’s” last name, because he belongs to him!? 🤨 - no mention of the fact that you grew him of your body, fed him of your body, nurtured and cared for him of yourself whilst he was cosying up to his poor long suffering wife and deceived children. But to make it worse, you allowed this absolute dreg of a man insist on having your beautiful baby boys anatomy unnecessarily mutilated, causing him
potential sexual and physiological problems later in life under the guise of it being “cleaner” (spoiler alert, it’s not). An irreversible surgical mutilation that your son could resent you for for the rest of your life, under this “man’s” say so.

You continue to allow this man unfettered access to you and your sons life, under the guise that your son deserves to have his fathers influence. I’d argue, that your son absolutely does not deserve to be forced to be influenced by such an immoral, deceitful man, as this will only instil on him that this is how men should behave and treat the women and children in his life.

You have said that this man has indirectly threatened you by comparing what your prison ex would do to you if you behave how this man doesn’t want you to, and is pretty much telling you that you are LUCKY that he’s not like that. Yeah, yet.

You claim to care for his wife and their children, but at the same time you open your legs for him the moment they are out of town. Is the care for his wife and kids in the room with us?

You’ve allowed him to monitor your comings and goings and let you feel that taking your child to your mother’s house may not be clean. When you know that not to be true.

Your babies father absolutely is a danger to him, purely by virtue of being threatening and controlling towards you (and let’s not pretend, you almost welcoming him to do that), and by giving your son and absolutely abhorrent example of what a father should be. I hope you have a good savings pot for the inevitable therapy your son will require when he finds out about his origins and his hidden siblings and step mum, who may very well not want anything to do with him, and who may very well actually hate him as his fathers secret bastard who they may blame for the eventual break up of their “happy” home.

All this is forgetting the fact that you CHOSE to tell your dangerous con ex partner about the baby, quite needlessly, when the government had already made provisions for you to be removed safely from that situation for your (and your son’s) protection.

I see nothing in this set up that has actually been orchestrated with your baby’s best interests at heart. You wanted to know and hurt your ex-crim with the knowledge of your baby, you want your baby’s sperm donor in his life as his father, although this only seems to be to facilitate the attention and sex you can have with him, despite how much you faux complain about him “controlling” you. If I were to give you even the tiniest benefit of the doubt, I would think that you were truly hopeful that he would see the light of his ways, and make YOU and your son his main family, and leave his wife and kids behind, but I don’t think you can allow yourself to believe that because deep in your heart you know it will never be, so you just need to keep deceiving yourself that all you want from him is to be an involved father - and fuck his original family in the process. Why else would you allow someone to be on the BC, choose not only his first, but last name, if you weren’t looking to make this something permanent eventually.

Make it make sense OP. You’ve been given so much good advice on here, but it comes to a point that people will stop offering practical or compassionate advice, because it’s not what you want to hear.

The last thing I want to say, is please be quite distant at your mothers groups, because the minute any of those new mothers get wind of the fact that you’re a cheating homewrecker, they will instantly distrust and hold you at arms length, fearful in their new postpartum haze, that their husbands might be the next target of your predatory actions. It might seem unfair to you, but I guarantee, to them, it will just be protecting their peace and family from an amoral woman who will happily shag someone who she “has a great attraction to”, without thought or feeling for them or their child(ren). This could all be a very lonely time for you coming up OP, and I just hope that it’s not your poor little baby who suffers for your terrible reprehensible actions.

Maybe consider some time alone, sans ex con, sans slutty baby daddy. Just you and your boy, to form a happy stable life without all this sordid drama.

Thank you, and thank you for not accusing me of being a troll.

I have a plan in place now.

OP posts:
TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 26/04/2026 17:42

Also, having read the entire thread, your thread title is entirely disingenuous

It's also grammatically incorrect.

The adjective "controlling" modifies the word "baby" - so it sounds like the baby is the one who is controlling.

ItTook9Years · 26/04/2026 17:55

And also mathematically, given it was circa minus 6 inches last night.

SunnyRedSnail · 26/04/2026 18:25

@lifesbeenfeelingheavylately well done for realising that this man is manipulating and controlling you.

It's not easy to see that you are being manipulated when someone is saying all the right things to you.

Not only does he know exactly what to say, as you want him to like you so much, you just believe exactly what he is saying. It's a game to him. You're his play thing. He doesn't respect you at all.

If he had any intention of having a proper relationship with you, he would have told his wife and left her for you.

The fact that he clearly didn't like it when you stood up to him speaks volumes.

I would also suggest that when you allow him to see his child once a week, that this is done in public, and NOT at your house.

RampantIvy · 26/04/2026 18:28

I would also suggest that when you allow him to see his child once a week, that this is done in public, and NOT at your house.

I agree with this. Maybe the knickers will stay on.

BudgetBuster · 26/04/2026 18:32

I would also suggest that when you allow him to see his child once a week, that this is done in public, and NOT at your house.

The only sensible bit of advice, but the OP will have a stupid retort like he's not harmful to the child and she's not going to do that. But really she's only thinking of her own kicks.

BlueMum16 · 26/04/2026 18:59

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 26/04/2026 13:16

I know that I have done wrong, but the way you are speaking to me isn’t nice.

I do not need this right now; you know that I’m going through it.

What should I do?

Stop having sex with this man.

He is no good for you.

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 26/04/2026 19:36

TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 26/04/2026 17:42

Also, having read the entire thread, your thread title is entirely disingenuous

It's also grammatically incorrect.

The adjective "controlling" modifies the word "baby" - so it sounds like the baby is the one who is controlling.

Mumsnet chose the title for me.

OP posts:
lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 26/04/2026 19:41

SunnyRedSnail · 26/04/2026 18:25

@lifesbeenfeelingheavylately well done for realising that this man is manipulating and controlling you.

It's not easy to see that you are being manipulated when someone is saying all the right things to you.

Not only does he know exactly what to say, as you want him to like you so much, you just believe exactly what he is saying. It's a game to him. You're his play thing. He doesn't respect you at all.

If he had any intention of having a proper relationship with you, he would have told his wife and left her for you.

The fact that he clearly didn't like it when you stood up to him speaks volumes.

I would also suggest that when you allow him to see his child once a week, that this is done in public, and NOT at your house.

Thank you, I am really trying.

We have been speaking through text for the past hour, I have told him how I feel, and how he is too controlling.

He knows I have been speaking to someone, and accused me of “talking our business to your ugly childless friends” I told him not to speak about them in such a rude way, and that I haven’t spoken to them because I’m no ashamed and embarrassed, he then went on to say that I can’t be trusted.

I have blocked him on everything.

OP posts:
RampantIvy · 26/04/2026 19:48

I have blocked him on everything.

Good.

Keep him blocked.

TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 26/04/2026 20:10

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 26/04/2026 19:36

Mumsnet chose the title for me.

You don't have to accept the title they suggest.

TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 26/04/2026 20:11

Wonder how long you'll keep him blocked.

ItTook9Years · 26/04/2026 20:49

I am really trying.
We have been speaking through text for the past hour,

You’re as bad as each other. What could possibly have taken an hour?

SunnyRedSnail · 26/04/2026 21:43

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 26/04/2026 19:41

Thank you, I am really trying.

We have been speaking through text for the past hour, I have told him how I feel, and how he is too controlling.

He knows I have been speaking to someone, and accused me of “talking our business to your ugly childless friends” I told him not to speak about them in such a rude way, and that I haven’t spoken to them because I’m no ashamed and embarrassed, he then went on to say that I can’t be trusted.

I have blocked him on everything.

That was a good decision to block him.

It would seem now you're not being compliant and meeting his demands he is starting to loose the charm and show his true colours.

I think a few weeks not seeing or chatting to him might be wise.

Ugly childless friends?!??! Wow! What an awful person.

Well done for making these tough decisions. Sending you support! You deserve SO much better!

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 27/04/2026 07:53

SunnyRedSnail · 26/04/2026 21:43

That was a good decision to block him.

It would seem now you're not being compliant and meeting his demands he is starting to loose the charm and show his true colours.

I think a few weeks not seeing or chatting to him might be wise.

Ugly childless friends?!??! Wow! What an awful person.

Well done for making these tough decisions. Sending you support! You deserve SO much better!

Yep

I will not allow him to speak about my friends like that, I wasn’t aware of how nasty he actually is.

OP posts:
BookArt55 · 27/04/2026 08:43

Move. Start again.
Contact CMS-take the money situation out of his control.
Stop all communication. With both your exs. But with the child's father jeep it child focused and short.
Document his behaviours.
Don't date for a long time- you need to focus on you and your child.
Therapy is needed after an abusive relationship, and you've had two. GP will help and usually fast tracked given post partum.

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 27/04/2026 10:39

Following me blocking him on everything, he has been here this morning.

If has said if I carry on upsetting him and is just going to start to hate me.

OP posts:
TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 27/04/2026 10:46

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 27/04/2026 10:39

Following me blocking him on everything, he has been here this morning.

If has said if I carry on upsetting him and is just going to start to hate me.

I'd get a Clare's Law disclosure on him @lifesbeenfeelingheavylately

He's started stalking you.

Endofyear · 27/04/2026 11:02

lifesbeenfeelingheavylately · 27/04/2026 10:39

Following me blocking him on everything, he has been here this morning.

If has said if I carry on upsetting him and is just going to start to hate me.

Don't answer the door and keep him blocked. If he becomes aggressive or threatening, call the police.

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