To think I should be able to take my daughter on holiday

[jj3457]

Hi everyone. I know some people may not like this, but I am a dad posting, just looking for some advice.

I told my ex I would like to take our daughter (3) on holiday to spain for 5 days with me and my mum.

Now this is where I messed up, and I will hold my hands up. I was dishonest when I told her I would be going with my mum. We will actually be going with my partner who my ex hasn’t met. I know this was a stupid lie but I was just worried my ex wouldn’t give consent for the holiday if she knew who was actually going.

To make matter worse, my ex has now found out that my mum is actually going to Florida for 2 weeks at the time I said she was coming to Spain with us.

My ex has messaged to say that she will not be handing over the passport until I give explicit details about the travel. I know that once I tell her I’m going with my partner she will refuse to consent. The holiday is booked and paid for.

I know I’m in the wrong for being dishonest but I am on the birth certificate and have as much right as she does to take her on the holiday. My ex has taken her abroad several times before and this is my first time.

what can I do if my ex refuses to give consent?

thanks

If they took you to court you would have no choice. The courts don’t stop people taking their own children on holiday for the type of reasons you’ve given. Morally I agree with you.

And no actually caring parent wants to take a tiny 3 year old child to a foreign country with a stranger (having lied about it because he knew it was an unpalatable demand) and make her sleep in the same room as a totally unrelated woman.

He could very easily indeed have had a holiday with his daughter, but he wanted his current shag to go along.

He's the type to just keep up the entitled demanding, so I daresay the poor wee thing will be subjected to his selfish choices throughout her life. But hopefully this time he won't get his way.

Of course the mother is more important than the father - she has the little girl 12/14 nights and has been single parenting for (I imagine) as far back as the child can remember.

Dude left the family and moved an hour away - he has made choices to absent himself from her life.

I know some mothers can be a nightmare but it is a reach to assume this one is when she has consented to the holiday despite the dude's duplicity.

Anyone else thinking he came on here hoping to get a load of support from women to browbeat his ex with?

Would you really be happy about your ex lying to you about the identity of the person accompanying your 3 year old on holiday and sleeping in the same accommodation? Any not only that, your ex refusing to tell you the true identity of the person?

Really? You'd think an unknown man sharing your toddlers bedroom unproblematic (a "little" lie) and not a huge 🚩 ?

This thread is a prime example of how some people's dislike of men/dads can lead to a thread snowballing. Many people are making assumptions which are baseless. I have no sympathy for the man being caught out lying, but much of the rest of this thread is ridiculous.

• we do not know whether the parents were ever in a relationship, and if they were, when they split.
• we don't know who initiated the split, assuming there was one.
• we do not know who moved away from who and why.
• we don't know how long the OP has been with the GF, merely that he introduced the girlfriend about 18m ago
• we don't know if the child's mum has a boyfriend
• we don't know why the OP hasn't gone for a greater number of nights. But I do know that when a man does seek 50-50 on here he is often criticised for that as well (there's a thread running about this at the moment).

The man may well be a rubbish dad who dumped the mum when their daughter was tiny, moved away and is avoiding his responsibilities.

Equally he may be an ok dad who was never in a relationship with the mum, who moved where she is for family support, and who is building up the number of overnights slowly as the child grows.

It wouldn't be unusual for a mum to go in holiday with a toddler and a boyfriend of 2+ years - and you bet she wouldn't allow that boyfriend to be vetted by her ex. It's up to her who they spend time with on her time, and the same with the dad.

The problem is, the dishonesty, and his attitude aren't helping.

OP doesn't really do EOW - from his posts he averages 2 nights a month - but "sometimes" does a 2 or 3 night weekend

Where do you get that from? He said he has them 2 nights every other weekend, and a day at the weekend in between. Sometimes 3 nights if a bank holiday. So it's about 4 nights a month.

Still not many, but why are people making stuff up?

He posted a couple of days ago that he "sometimes" has her Friday to Sunday" which is 2 nights and Bank Holidays Friday to Monday - 3 nights

--------------
jj3457 · 21/07/2026 23:18
I don’t see my daughter more often because of where I live. I live about an hour away from my daughter, who attends a school nursery 5 days a week. I work full time and often don’t finish until 6/6.30. So seeing her in the week is just completely unrealistic since she goes to bed at 7, so by the time I get there, she would be asleep. Sometimes I have her from Friday evening to Sunday evening. On bank holiday weekends, I have her from Friday to Monday.
-----------------

You’ve actually bent over backwards to paint yourself in a positive life while trying to make your ex look like a villain-when actually she seems very reasonable. There are two sides of every story and I imaging hers would sound very different to yours!!

Nope, we dislike lying manipulative men. And we know, with almost 100% certainty that he deserted his baby and her mother for a newer shag and moved an hour away,

How do we know this? He has not told us otherwise. He would absolutely, definitively have told us otherwise.

He's been with the woman he's teeing up to be the nanny with a fanny since before January 2025, which means he ditched his child and her mother when she was a tiny infant. Yep, he left them - we know this because it is nearly always the case and because he would have definitely, inarguably, told us if it was the other way round.

He'd also have had plenty to say about his ex if there was anything worth saying. The worst he managed to dredge up was that she called him a fucking bastard - and that was his second last comment in a long string of comments after he became angry at being told repeatedly we could see right through him.

None of us are stupid, nobody needs to reinvent the wheel, there is a reason for pattern recognition - it's so we don't have the wool pulled over eyes by deceitful, selfish twats, like the OP is.

All that and he admits he flatly lied so he could take his current squeeze with him and have her sleeping in the same room as his very young child. But oh wait, he "held his hands up" to it, after he got caught. No big deal, putting an unrelated adult in the same sleeping quarters as your tiny child, good of him to say "oopsie my bad" after he was caught.

So, no, we don't dislike men or dads. I like decent ones, like my husband, son, brothers and various male rellos and friends.

But I don't feel the need to pretend that up is down or that the OP isn't what he clearly is, a manipulative, selfish twat. I hope he doesn't get away with taking the kid abroad with the nanny with the fanny in training this time. His child will have to put up with his manipulations and shenanigans her whole life, hopefully this time he won't get his way.

C'mon on now, not with this holier than though schtick.

Nothing wrong at all as a co-parent in wanting to take your own child away on holiday with you and your long term partner. If that was the whole question, I'd be massively on board with this.

I have been the partner of a guy with a toddler from a former relationship.

Your cock up was in The Lie.

That is where you lost your audience here.

I do not think at all that you're controlling or abusive. It sounds like your child's mum is challenging to communicate with.

I still don't know what on earth you expected to happen WHEN she found out that your girlfriend rather than your mum was going with you.

I'm glad that it's all out in the open and it's very sensible that you're (finally) shared details of the holiday.

Yes, mumsnet posters can be very harsh, can jump to conclusions, and I've seen some very unkind responses snowball after people have come here genuinely asking for help and advice.

You have let yourself down here in the chat with The Lie. It taints everything. It makes you seem distrustful and daft.

Why did your ex say that? There is no need to swear but what was the context?

You see my ex was abusive and controlling. He would label me difficult to co-parent with. Lying and hiding things would be his MO too. I’ve managed not to loose it with him but he is pushing me and pushing me and goading and antagonistic. Messes me about. He wants me to react like your ex has so that he can say similar things about me that you are saying about your ex.

So, is she abusive? Or is she reacting? You have hidden something significant. You have lied about the care of your daughter for a week. You are trying to create a problem around her perfectly reasonable request to talk to the woman who will be spending a week with her very young child.

I strongly suspect that you are the difficult one here.

You have let yourself down here in the chat with The Lie. It taints everything. It makes you seem distrustful and daft.

It makes him actually distrustful and daft.

The small child is going to be sleeping in the same room as the girlfriend, @ForMerryMauveDreamer - we know this for sure. If anything happens to @jj3457 - he gets food poisoning, or heatstroke, or hurts himself, or he’s hung over - and he can’t take care of his child, she is the back up carer. His ex is entirely reasonable to want some basic contact info, and a brief chat with the woman who will be sharing a room with her young child.

And what did you do to provoke her into such language?

Why didn’t you start with her abusive manner. It’s a drip

drip Feeds are often as the replies aren’t going the way the op wants

OP had an affair while his ex was pregnant or had their young baby, and the gf is the AP. Wouldn't YOU have some harsh language in her shoes?

OP, your attitude on here is leading me to make lots of wild assumptions. I hope for your daughter’s sake, I am wrong. Your secrecy and dishonesty is making everything 100% worse than it needs to be. Handled correctly, nearly everyone would agree that you should be able to take your daughter on holiday. You are not the victim here, your daughter is.

You have the chance to make this work but your last post suggests you won’t take it. I wonder if you do really want your daughter to come on your holiday with your girlfriend at all?

Here we go, my assumption are:

• you have been caught out in a massive lie that demonstrates a complete lack of respect towards your ex. It would be unusual for this lack of respect to suddenly emerge, so I am assuming you’ve disrespected her plenty previously and are probably difficult to co-parent with.
• you are young, inexperienced and almost certainly always want things your way. You accept you have used lies and deception to try and get it. When it goes wrong, as it has here, you blame everyone else.
• you live with your mum. Nothing wrong with this, but I expect she helps you a lot with caring for your daughter, hence reassuring your ex that mum was coming on holiday with you. You don’t want to tell us this as you think it could make you seem a less capable father. This continued secrecy is disturbing.
• the difficulties you have experienced with your ex have not been entirely one sided. The example you give of her texting you last week, calling you a fucking bastard is probably around the time she found out that you were, indeed, a fucking bastard. Remember, you didn’t ’hold your hands up’ and come clean. She found you out.
• TBH, your ex doesn’t sound that unreasonable if contact has taken place EOW since birth/separation? and you’ve never had to go to court for an order. You will have no doubt fallen out on occasions, maybe insulted each other, but contact has continued, as it should. Unless you’re now going to tell us otherwise?
• You have chosen your partner over your daughter. Nothing else to say here. We all see it.
• If you apply for an Order, the Court will ask for details of contact/holiday arrangements, who is present/sleeping arrangements etc and this is why you have not applied. The court will be interested in what’s best for your daughter, not you. They won’t heed your need for privacy.
• There is something well dodgy about your girlfriend that if the Court or your ex found out, she’d be successful in stopping holiday and maybe even other contact arrangements.
• You haven’t considered altering your working pattern to play a more active role in your daughter’s life. I would be pleased to hear of what changes you have made or propose to make to rectify this. This could potentially help your ex out too.
• Your girlfriend was introduced 18months ago and you haven’t had the decency to share this info with the mother of your child. My assumption is that if there was another man in your daughter’s life, playing her father’s role for the 24-26 days a month that you are not, you would expect to know about him. He reads to her, cooks her dinners, cleans her grazed knees, wipe her tears, pushes her stroller/swing, baths her, dresses her, tells her jokes, and in later life, helps her with homework, gives her pocket money, vets her boyfriends, picks her up from parties etc. If my assumption is wrong, then you’d have absolutely no interest in this guy and whether he is a good man? Wow! I suppose your ex should just cross her fingers ‘cause she can trust you to make the right choices for your daughter… oh hang on, she can’t trust you at all!

You will be an incredibly lucky man if your ex allows you to take your daughter out of the country in the next few days. I hope my assumptions are wrong and you are the doting dad you claim to be. Your daughter will benefit massively from having two happy, open and truthful parents who co-parent her for the next 15 years and beyond. She is far more likely to achieve this if you stop being a lying, weirdly secretive and deceitful ex partner.

Couldn’t agree more.

You can’t split from the mother of your child when she’s 1 (or 2 at the most) then expect to be at the all you can eat buffet in Corfu with a new piece of skirt by the time the poor little mite is 3. She’s a baby.

He knows this. It’s why he lied.

He’s not just a Dad who wants a holiday with his daughter. He’s a Dad who wants a holiday with his new girlfriend and is oblivious to the confusion he’s causing to the child and the hurt he’s causing to the mother of his child.

If she has asked for her contact details and to have a chat, just let them speak? It will put her mind at ease and if you want your relationship to last then they will have to meet at some point, now seems a good time to introduce them.
I actually think she is being really fair allowing her daughter to go with you after you have lied. I imagine you would want to meet/at least speak to any man that went away with your daughter and ex in the future. Enjoy your trip :)

Verbally abusive - If the exes language was in response to discovering the bombshell of a lie she'd been told then I think any reasonable person would find it hard to bite their tongue and say - ok, go on then take our 3yr old abroad with a woman I knew nothing about.

I doubt he's told her much about the girlfriend, let alone how long they've been together.

There is no indication the ex is controlling or wants to vet the girlfriend.

The Ops response about taking her to court rather than communicating openly and honestly with the primary carer of his child is a long way from reasonable.

I wouldn’t let my daughter go away with an adult I hadn’t met- is there time for this to happen before the holiday is booked? I think holding your hands up and getting them together so your ex can judge whether your DD will be safe in both yours and her care is the only way forward.

So you're not going to try for this holiday then? What did your girlfriend think about your ex wanting to talk to her? Was she against it and that's why you're not trying or was she ok with the idea but you still don't want to try?

Big NO. Sorry. But you cannot seriously expect Mum to agree to let the little one travel with a stranger.

She can withhold her consent.
You would then make an application to the Court.

The Court will ask you for details. Unless you have good reason for not providing these e.g. you ex has convictions/orders for violence/harassment against previous girlfriends, it could be viewed as being obstructive. Your privacy alone is not likely to be sufficient justification.

if you don’t provide details, the Court may decide that it is not in your daughters best interests to leave the country with an adult unknown to the Court. It could be a costly strategy. The court are likely to be curious/suspicious about your level of secrecy.

(retired Family Law solicitor)