Trouble with ex wife and partners family.

[MCDL]

Hi, new this site.
I am with my partner 5 years, we have a 3.6 year old daughter and living together. My partner left his wife and family home soon after we met when it was apparant that both of us wanted to be together. We come from a same small town and have known each other since we were kids. He is 48, i am 39. He moved in with me into my home soon after we met. He has two other children 18 and 22.

Presently we have moved out of my home to the country to get away from the stuff that continues. His family and his children for years have dis owned both him and our daughter. Over past year or since moving out of town 6 months ago, things have improved he visits his brothers and his mother from time to time with our daughter. His children who are both away now continu to want to have nothing to do with our daughter. Also his two sisters continue the same. His ex wife who is an alcholic continues to badger us both. Texts and fone calls, she is unable to let go and move on.

A legal seperation had started but a stop has been put on this as solicitors looking for large amounts of money to continue. Barristers etc. His ex wife refuses to give him a legal separation. He simply cant afford it. We are both working, I am part time and just getting by.

This weekend there was a family get together my parter was invited and asked his children would it be ok to take our daughter. His eldest daughter does not want to see her. I encouraged him to go after a lot difficult thoughts on it, he had a nice day with his family and children who he had been estranged from him for some time now, so I was happy with that.

For the next time there is a family gathering have you any suggestions as to what we could do. I feel it is wrong that we live together as a family and our daughter is treated in this manner. This mess is 5 years plus, improving slightly but still on going...

Sorry so long.. Any suggestions ...

Yup just walk away, start your new life, protect your new family, and ignore all the hurt you caused the children left behind
How very selfish and sad
Its funny how many justifications, cheating partners/OW have to justify walking away from the children they hurt!

The OP asked for advice because she thought it was so very unfair on HER DD, she has throughout showed a remarkable lack of concern for the older DC, other than to dismiss their feelings and hurt because "they are adults", and "its 5 years ago"...

I once had a very very heated discussion with an OW on here (hi there prettyfly), in the end we both saw the other viewpoint, we both had insight and understanding and some decent human empathy!
The OP showed and continues to show an outstanding lack of insight into the feelings of the older children, tracking out excuse after excuse, and showing her and her P in increasing bad light, moving away, not bothering at xmas, slagging off the XW....

I'm off now, she doesnt want to see their point of view because she cannot accept her part in their hurt!

at nasty mumsnetters.

MCDL Don't continually flog yourself for things you really can't put right now. Send a heartfelt apology to all concerned. Offer help and support (practical and financial to the ex wife) and tell those adult daughters that the door is wide open should they ever stray from the path of righteousness and come to understand that being human is not at all simple. And persist with that message.
Good luck.

Hmm didnt see any flogging, she has never actually admitted that what happened may not have been the nicest or kindest thing??

swedington - I don't believe I have been nasty at all. I have stated how it felt to be a grown up child of a broken marriage and how the only way for a parent who has walked away to rebuild relationships is to put in extra effort, I mean a whole pile of effort.

You obviously have no conception of how deeply it hurts to have a parent walk away (in your eyes) and start again with a new (better?) family. Saying that they are being "righteous" is so dismissive of their pain and I somehow suspect that they've worked out that human being are far from simple by now .

Passively saying "my door is always open" isn't even at the foothills of effort that he needs to make (she should stay out of it) if he truly wants a relationship back with them.

I have no idea if my father had an affair before he left my mum and frankly I don't really much care now either. What I do care about is that he is really isn't prepared to do anything to see me that really takes any significant effort on his part or causes him to face up to what a shit he was. He'd rather have an easy life, I was previously under the illusion that he loved me but he has proven by his actions that he doesn't or at least not enough.

These girls have done nothing wrong - their behaviour is entirely driven by his hurt and perhaps by the need/desire to be loyal to their mother. They weren't behaving badly to him before (I assume) - their reaction is entirely because of the situation he put them in.

Children get hurt every day by their parents whether it is emotionally abusing them, physically abusing them, ignoring them or neglecting them yet the children still stay in that environment with those two parents.

Because a marriage comes to an end does not mean that those two people are not fit parents - it just means that THEY can no longer be together. It is sad but true. You don't stop loving your children because you are no longer living with their mother. So what if he had an affair? So what? He has to live with that. It takes two to make a marriage and two to break it. That has been established so why not add something more meaningful to the discussion instead of the constant "you're to blame attitude."

The marriage is not there because of the children, it exists because of the adults. If it comes to an end then all that can be done is as much support as possible for all concerned. Throwing the guilt/blame stick around is for people who cannot emotionally move on and has no place in trying to forge new, positive relationships between parents and siblings.

macdoodle - I'm very sorry if you, or someone close to you, was hurt in the past by an affair or by divorce. But really. Do you really think people should stay with their spouses/partners no matter what?

Of course that new daughter should be part of her wider family. Though why she would want to enter a fold of pig ignorant bigots is beyond me.

People should stop perpetuating this stupid lie that men and women have a baby and live happily ever after. Because very very often they don't.

Most misery for children is caused by the stupidity of the parents, and very ofen it's the one who plays victim and ooooh so destroyed and injured. So much so that the children have to become parents and choose sides.

Macdoogle

"We were selfish, we know we hurt you, we're sorry" What would u suggest we do ...

so you think that young teenagers who have been left by their father with an alcoholic mother (who was apparently too out of control to stay married to but OK to leave his children with ), then virtually immediately move in with someone else and start another family, should just put up and shut up and the two parents in question shouldn't be doing everything possible to rebuild their relationship with their children?

This isn't about marriage, its about your responsibility to your children.

The marriage is not there because of the children, it exists because of the adults. If it comes to an end then all that can be done is as much support as possible for all concerned. Throwing the guilt/blame stick around is for people who cannot emotionally move on and has no place in trying to forge new, positive relationships between parents and siblings.

My point exactly - take the marriage out of the equation and you have to build positive relations between the children and parents.

Kew. Hmm. I am exceptionally fond of you as a poster. And you are right, I don't have first hand experience of being left by a parent. Is your father not just another flawed human being. A bit like you and me?
I'm really not sure whether he has rejected you are you are rejecting him. I don't go with the whole pile of effort thing - at least not beyond childhood. Of course people shy away from having sand kicked in their faces continually. It's a healthy emotional response.

Flawed is being disorganised, being late, untidy, grumpy, pessimistic etc.

Flawed is not betraying your spouse, your kids, breaking your marriage vows.

I see a lot of What should he have done, stayed in a miserable marriage? No-one is saying that, merely have the bollocks to finish things properly first and not cheat.

An affair is not a mistake. It's a total disregard for a family, for the promises made to another person. And that's before you get to the subject of children being affected.

How many threads have we seen recently where the OP says I'm not happy, I'm having feelings for someone who is not my DH, etc etc... and the overwhelming advice is to talk to DH, not to do anything 'stupid' and to sort it out properly first. Other threads where OP has been attracted to OM, and he's married... the shrieks of don't go there, are still echoing around the halls of MN.

An affair starts WELL before they end up in bed: a thought, a look, a glance, a kiss, a touch. At any of those points one of them at the very least needs to have a modicum of a conscience.

I'm so very sad to see that it's expected of us to just allow such betrayal of a family to be normalised. In the past such behaviour rightly had a stigma attached.

This is not a case of taking someone's last Rolo, this is a decision by two supposed adults to undertake something that could have profound and permanent consequences for children who have no idea what is going on or why.

Why should his first family just have to get over themselves? It's been 5 whole years... surely they've forgiven us by NOW?

OP is literally kidding herself, and some of you are just humouring it.

'Oh there there OP, you felt a bit guilty, pat, pat, it's OK, it's all forgotten now.' Never Mind eh?

Her DD will most likely never really be embraced nor welcomed by the first family, because of the actions of her parents. Sorry if it makes uncomfortable reading, but it's highly likely to be the case.

FWIW, OP should play absolutely no part in anything to do with his prior family, unless THEY want her to. He betrayed them, for no good reason, and should spend as long as it frigging well takes to rebuild their trust and respect in him.

While I agree that affairs are poorly thought out and in an ideal world should be entered into, I also know a few people that didn't fully realise just unhappy they were until they met someone else and that gave them the bravado to leave (all women btw) I think the same can be true for some men

op said he fully intended for his children to come with him but they wouldn't - that isn't walking away

we also don't know how much effort he put into keeping the relationship going - he may have tried very hard but the children were stopped by the mother or maybe they were angry and stopped themselves - we don't know

How did the children know he had an affair? I would have thought that could only come from the adults, why tell the children that? Someone lower down mentioned a child saying daddy threw this first family away - a child wouldn't say that, it had to have come from an adult. Unfortunately, many husbands/wives can't see past there hatred of their spouse and say too much in front of and to their children. That should never happen

I read this thread as a man trying to keep relationships going and wanting to lessen the divide that has grown and think the OP has been given a really hard time

So many people project their own situation into threads when we don't know if the situations are even similar.

ideal world shouldn't

I just don't get this attitude of it would be semi okay for someone to leave a miserable marriage SO LONG AS THERE WAS NO CROSSOVER RELATIONSHIP ( specifically sex) with another person . It's like something out of Tess of the D'Urbervilles

DOn't you people live in the real world?

Typically a person unhappily married with kids struggles on for years to hold the family together and is only prompted to make the jump when they meet someone else who wakens them to the possiblity they do not need to be miserable forever. How does that make them cowardly and lacking in moral fibre.?

And why do you insist on using derogatory terms for the sex act as it relates to adulterers . ? All this talk of "why couldn't you keep your knickers on"?and "you should have the decency to leave before FUCKING someone else". I bet you don't refer to it as fucking in your own rose tinted marriages.

Fast forward ten years and I bet several of the holier than thou stone the OP squad here will experience some knicker off not with their husbands action of their own. BECAUSE we are all human and fallible.

If my dh was unhappy with me, and despite all our efforts to make things right we were locked in a miserable domestic situation ,and he found someone else who made him very happy I would positively encourage him to pursue the other relationship.

I strongly suspect I am considerably older than most of the stone throwers

Go on , stone me too

Children knew he was having an affair because he told them ...

Not posting too much as fear of more stoning ...

And thank u so much jasper for your post ..

Jasper, speak for yourself. There is no way I'D stoop to sleeping with anyone outside my marriage. I DO live in the real world, the one where it's not OK to just bed hop when you get bored of playing Mr Dad.

So if someone, the greater part of 10 years younger than your DH, rocked up and started sleeping with him, you'd be tickety boo with that?

There is no way in hell you'd just roll over and wish her well... Don't delude yourself for a second. Your desire to wade in and play devils advocate is most touching, but totally mis-placed.

It's all so convenient for an OW to play the victim, soothes her conscience. But it doesn't make what the H and her did any less wrong, nor any less painful for the DC.

HE knew he was married, she knew he was married, the kids weren't a secret to either of them... But that didn't matter did it... Why would these people be afforded any kind of respect, when they have shown nothing of the kind for themselves, nor their families.

There is NO way an OW who starts a relationship with a man that is not separated at least can rightfully expected to be viewed as a decent and morally intact person. Sorry, but why would she be afforded that right. Why would HE?

Oh yes, we do actually use the word Fuck in our marriage, it's not always meant as an insult you know?, but if it's taken that way.. could be guilty conscience...

That's it, groundhog out... stick around jasper, the OP's DH will get bored of her soon enough, he does that you know.... and then she'll be on the look out for a replacement... care to offer her your DH?

Mine wouldn't touch her, he can't abide women who do that. Of that I am absoloutely certain.

There is no need to be so personally insulting to the OP Groundhohohogs.

"Mind wouldn't touch her, he can't abide women who do that. Of that I am absoloutely certain."

Who asked what your husband thought of OP? Are you speaking on his behalf? My DH's EXW used to do that before he got fed up of it and left too!

Groundhog - I think you are being naive about the rosy glow of marriage never ending. Relationships are hard work and involve constant renegotiation and compromise. Young children, money concerns, elderly parents, ill relatives, a bullying boss, looming redundancy.

An affair is just a symptom of the relationship not working as it should any more. Of course it's wrong and it's disloyal and it goes back on a deal etc. But some people use the affair to explore what went wrong and renegotiate - even if it means they will separate (and if they do separate they still treat their relationship with respect and manage to contain themselves). Others treat the affair as catastrophe and feel the erring partner should be shunned and punished. By not only them, but the wider family, especially any children. And these people honestly see themselves as the victims. Often this shit carries on for years. And often both parents end up having a poor relationship with their offspring because the children are angry with both of them because they weren't parented.

Rejection hurts. Of course it does. But it isn't a good enough reason to psychologically fuck over your children.

'There is NO way an OW who starts a relationship with a man that is not separated at least can rightfully expected to be viewed as a decent and morally intact person'

It'scalled forgiveness,I hope to goodness that after five years I would have that. It'd be a big change in my personal;ity if I didn't 9and I know how it feels to be cheated on, albeit not by my DH, an ex).

We all do things differently and I would feelashamaed if I judged anyone by one thing only. I've hasd some really awful things happen to me so I do feel I acn say that.

However, it's not for us to forgive or not- OP has done afaik nothing to anyone ehre and peopleareseemingly dumping their own experiences onto her, only the children have that right. The amount of flack she has taken is incredible frankly, nobody is pure and whereas we might not do this there are no doubt other thinsg we would get wrong OP hasn't.

Somuch for supportive website eh? Sorry,, OP.

'Rejection hurts. Of course it does. But it isn't a good enough reason to psychologically fuck over your children.'

(BTW supportive does not equal agreeing with before I get hauled for that- its perfectly possible to say 'whilst I don't agree with X, and ca see the POV of Y, I think what you need to do now is Z'

Unless someone can offer OP a time machine to go back and change it? ( though it would be silly to wish as she has a lovely DD to thank her DP for,perhaps her DP could use it to not marry ExW in the first place).

There you go OP, that's yer solution, get building

MCDL - please do post as much as you want if there is anything else you want to discuss.
You have just as much right as anyone else - no need to worry about the 'stoning'.

Clearly, there are a few people here who mourn the passing of the days where scarlet letters and public stocks were de riguer, but you really shouldn't pay attention to them.

Have you decided what to do about Xmas, yet?

Jasper I think you're right

Stone throwing does describe it well, too, Stinks of that in fact,becuase of course it's never the DP's fault oh no, always the evil OW. Poor men can't help it can they?

As I said before FILleft MIL after 35 yaers miserable marriage, cued on by meeting someone he adores and hopes to marry now. It probably would ahve been better if he hadn't crossed it over becuase of a few lies that became attached and did hurt his sons, but it could not have been done painlessly or even without serious harm. The man was losing it in that marriage- serious mental breakdown level. The man I know now is great, completely different in so many ays, for the first time in his life he is happy.

Of course MIL is not, she is a professional martyr anyway,but neitehr was she before he left: sadly, one person happy (3 if you count his Fiancee) is a better overall outcome than 2 (or 3) miserable within a failed marriage.

If Dh did this to me it would break my heart, but I can promise now that in five years time I will not be rolling over and letting a man destroy that time. I ahve a responsibility to myself to seek out happiness, after all.

Wow! Haven't read this post since yesterday.

What happens to a lot of families when they split is that when the father leaves the wife - he emotionally leaves the children too. But the fathers don't understand this.

Before separation, the kids go from seeing their father everyday - at breakfast, arguing over pocket money, being untidy - after - they go to maybe seeing their father once a week (or maybe just a phonecall). The father (if he has had an affair) is often consumed by his own guilt when he is in the company of his children - so he sees them less. The children try to hide their pain, cos they want to see their dad, and their dad to like them. The kids can only do this for so long - but low and behold suddenly they are ranting and raving at him, about something minor. The dad steps back and thinks the children are being unreasonable - and so does the OW. Basically becomes a mess.

That's where your mum steps in to give you cuddles etc. However, if you turn around and see your mum is a mess - thats horrible.

I am quite spiritual in my ideals about why people are together. There is no way I would stay with my DP if I felt that it was destructive or we were making each other unhappy.

MCL - I would urge you to encourage your DP to keep up contact with his kids. Call them, tell them he loves them, explain to them again what happened, ask them how it was for them? Tell them how sorry he was they had to go through it and how impossible it was for him to stay. Ask what he can do to help them. Tell them he knows it was hard to start another family so soon, remind them of how much he loved his older kids when they were little. Reassure them he is there for them, not running away.

Maybe he is doing all this already. If so keep it up. I promise you that after some time of maintaining emotional contact - the anger will go.

Then if the older children are being difficult still, well you can assess it at a later point - years down the line.

If your DP can't commit to that, well I would question what sort of man he was.