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Original poster

So angry with my husband

55 replies

stripycurtains · 16/10/2007 20:29

A bit of background. Before I met my dh he was married with a ds. He split up from exwife at her instigation and they divorced. She went on to have 2 more children with a new partner.

We met some years later when I was 36 and went out for 4 years before we got married. From the start I made it quite clear that it was very important to me to have children. We got married when I was 40 and had a ds a year later. I've now been unsuccessfully TTC no 2 for 3 years and in this time have had 2 mc.

I've now reached the stage where I'm so angry with him for making me wait for 4 years before we got married. I feel that it is his fault that I'm desperate for another baby at 44 and can't have one and that I've had 2 quite traumatic mc. I've tried to understand that being divorced made him more cautious but at the end of the day I feel that he didn't take my declining fertility all that seriously. I compromised in the sense that it has made life much more difficult for me to have a dss. He just did what felt right for him. Please don't tell me that I'm lucky to have one because I know that. I'm now getting to the stage where I'm so angry with him that I don't want him near me.

OP posts:
Original poster
stripycurtains · 16/10/2007 21:04

www, the new exw's husband adopting dss means that dh reliquished all rights over his son and no longer has any contact. Dh said that it was becasue exw was not going to allow him to see dss anymore and that he might as well allow them to adopt dss because that's what they were constantly asking for.

OP posts:
Original poster
stripycurtains · 16/10/2007 21:06

moondog, I was running out of time, I had to make a decision to go or stay and I decided to stay. Maybe the wrong one with hindsight.

OP posts:
moondog · 16/10/2007 21:06

I mean the one you stayed with for 10 years.

WideWebWitch · 16/10/2007 21:09

Adoption by a new partner shouldn't mean father relingquishes all rights - when she re married the new dh automatically got PR over the ds but it didn't change your dh's legal rights and his PR.
Oh well.

Original poster
stripycurtains · 16/10/2007 21:09

I loved him and thought that we would eventually get married when he'd reached a certain stage in his career.

OP posts:
peggotty · 16/10/2007 21:10

It does sound like you are angry at the route your life in general has taken and the anger is a bit misplaced in being directed at your dh. Sorry if that is harsh. You have no way of knowing if your ex wanted to get in touch to rekindle things with you. And who's to say he would have been gagging to have children just because he doesn't have the 'baggage' of an ex-w and other children?

Original poster
stripycurtains · 16/10/2007 21:10

My understanding of the adoption was that he no longer had rights over his son. Perhaps I'm wrong and someone can advise.

OP posts:
WideWebWitch · 16/10/2007 21:13

The point is that the new dh of the ex wife automatically got PR once he married the ex wife. They didn;t need formal adoption. So why ever did your dh give up his access? This all sounds wrong to me.

Anonymama · 16/10/2007 21:13

Stripy. Sounds like you are carrying round a load of regrets about the past, and these can and will damange your future if you don't deal with them. Not least your future relationship with the man who is your husband and your son's father.

You can still work things out with your partner, but may need to do so with the help of organisation like Relate or some other sort of relationship counselling. In the meantime though, try to focus a bit on what made you stay with your DP despite his dithering. (You say it wasn't strictly a last chance saloon scenario and that he has some positive qualities).

If you let the past poison the future, you might sacrifice a viable and ultimately satisfying family life because you are focusing on what might have been.

Good luck.

moondog · 16/10/2007 21:14

I think you are/were deluded if you honestly thoguht that it is ok to treat someone you love like this. If you care for someone,career stages maen bugger all.

Original poster
stripycurtains · 16/10/2007 21:15

For the reason I explained 7 posts below

OP posts:
Anonymama · 16/10/2007 21:16

And in your DP's defence (not that I know him!), he may have decided to stop letting his ex push his buttons and focus on his future with you. It sounds insane that someone would ever "give up" on their kid, but at the end of the day, maybe after years of pandering to the ex's whims, he just decided he couldn't go on that way and move forward in his own life. Perhaps he was satisfied that the new step-dad would be a decent father to his son, and that it might be less confusing for his child if he stepped aside. I don't know, but you need to get to the bottom of this with him before you (and all of MN) send him to hell.

Original poster
stripycurtains · 16/10/2007 21:18

I think that there is probably some truth in what you've just said anonymama

OP posts:
WideWebWitch · 16/10/2007 21:18

The law was on your dh's side though. he is allowed access. He didn't have to agree to adoption, in fact, there was absolutely NO NEED once the ex w married her the new dh - marriage conferred parental responsibility on the new dh. So there;s more to this than you're telling us or than your dh is telling you.

Original poster
stripycurtains · 16/10/2007 21:20

www he was granted access by the courts but every time he was due to see dss there was always a reason why not eg too hot, too cold, party to go to, football match. Always a reason, what were the courts going to do? they wouldn't send to her to prison or fine her

OP posts:
Anonymama · 16/10/2007 21:25

Stripy, I do hope there is some truth in it. Many of us have been in protracted, ultimately crap relationships in our twenties, when we were at our most fertile . Hopefully many of us learn to avoid crap men as a result of them

In the end though, you can either sit around regretting not leaving earlier/wasting those "breeding years"/ taking the abuse/ not sh*gging someone else or whatever - or you can just say to yourself that you are only 30/35/40/whatever and that you hopefully have another few decades on the planet, and that you are going to make damn sure that you enjoy them.

If your husband is a good man, if you have things in common (and sounds like you do - not least a child who you both love), then try to work through this sh*tty time together and come out of it ready to enjoy your family life together.

I really hope you can weather the storm.

margoandjerry · 16/10/2007 21:30

Agree with Anonymama.

And I know this is trite and annoying but it is wonderful to have one child. Don't let your sadness over not having a second child cloud the fact that you have a child and that's your family right there.

Kewcumber · 16/10/2007 21:33

I would be amazed if adoption didn;t terminate all his parental rights and transfer them to new partner. Thats what adoption is.

It is good practice however to have some kind of contact with birth parents f known for the childs sake even if letter box contact.

Stripey curtains - I never managed to conceive and I can identify with your anger. In essence you are going through a grieving process of sorts and anger is a classic stage of that. I had no-one to blame but was still angry for some time. Throw depression, denial and just plain old sadness into the mix as well as anger at varying times (sometimes overlapping!) and you have a potent mix.

If may be partly your DH's fault you haven't conceived again, it may be yours, it may be his exwife's or your ex partners (all of whom probably contributed). It may just be bad luck and you may never have conceived a second time.

I hate this as a stock reply but... I really think you should consider some counselling or talking to other people in the same boat as you.

People who haven't suffered from infertility don't understand how irrationally angry you can get sometimes. Blaming your DH s convenient but not really relevant as sadly you are where you are and that is what you have to learn to deal with. Any amount of punishing him for not being the perfect partner is not going to change what you are really angry about. Trust me when I say you would be just as angry with him (or someone else or yourself) if he had done everything the way you think he should.

Kewcumber · 16/10/2007 21:37

and whilst I should (in theory) be the first person to say that you should be thankful for your DS (and of course you should in the same way that we all should), the fact remians that you are not angry about your DS, you are angry about the loss of a sibling you think he should have about the otehr child you had in your dreams, the family you thought you would have. Whether other people think it is ungrateful or not, it is still obviously a source of pain for you.

chipkid · 16/10/2007 21:42

www you are wrong about remarriage conferring PR automatically on new H. It doesnot. the only people entitled as of right to Pr is that child's mother and father. Also if she was married to someone who was not the father at the time of conception he automatically has PR as he is presumed to be the father. Step parents do not automatically acquire it on re-marriage.

Adoption replaces the natural father with a new legal adopted father. Contact is not an automatic right.

He would have to apply for leave to make a contact application to his own natural child

wannaBe · 16/10/2007 21:46

While I understand your frustrations at not being able to conceive another child, it is not your dh?s fault. And it is not your fault.

But you chose to wait for him for the 4 years it took. He didn?t make you wait, you chose to wait.

And if you hadn?t waited you would not have the ds you have now. yes you might have had another child, but it wouldn?t be that child. Would you really want to turn back the clock and have a different child? Different children? Not have your ds but have totally different children? That?s something that?s worth thinking about imo.

What?s in the past is done. If you and your dh love each other then it?s the future you need to look to now, because all this resentment isn?t going to change the past, but it could very well change your future.

And while I know this isn?t what you want to hear, you do have a child. It?s always better to be happy with the things we have than regret the things we don?t/can?t have. And I speak as someone who has been unsuccessfully ttc for the past 2.5 years and who realizes that I will probably never have another baby. But I have one child. I have everything to be thankful for.

WideWebWitch · 17/10/2007 02:51

chipkid, I was told that marrying dh#2 (who is not ds's father) would give him PR for ds. Are you sure it doesn't?

Kewcumber, I don't disagree about adoption conferring rights etc, my question was why the new dh and the ex w went down the adoption route when the birth father was in the picture etc

WideWebWitch · 17/10/2007 03:00

chipkid, I just looked it up and you're right I think, apols

Kewcumber · 17/10/2007 09:27

WWW would agree with you there. I also don;t understand why you would agree to an adoption unless you didn't want anything further to do with the child. Perhaps people really don't understand that adoption is a permanent change of parent?

chipkid · 17/10/2007 12:09

www-you are right to ask how this adoption was allowed to happen-it is almost impossible to persuade a Court to replace a father with a new husband if the father puts up a fight. It shouldn't happen. Unfortunately sometimes rarely it does!