This is the only place that I'm not a monster.
Seriously. I'm so tired of being villified.
My wife took her daughter to disney last week, with her parents. Great, right?
The kicker was that our shared daughter and myself were left at home for a full week, since I didn't have leave. I asked a million times to wait for spring break or summer, but that was largely ignored, as they went zoom on a plane on time.
Whatever, right?
So my parents call and ask that I bring the baby up to where they live. I asked my wife to have her parents watch her daughter for a week while we traveled to stay in-house with my parents, in their dollhouse (small house). I want my parents to have overnights with the baby, I want my wife to actually get to know my parents. We all know SD is rabid, that's why I asked my wife to asked her parents to watch SD for that time.
It was like a stick of dynamite went off in the asses of my entire in-law family. HOW DARE I? -Although not a single soul would talk to me directly about it, only snide behind the back crap. They're afraid I'll shove it their faces.
It kills me. I don't want to go home as a married single dad. Is it too much to freaking ask to have something as simple as this after the did something as extravagant as that?
I wouldn't want to go stay with my inlaws, either
While I understand your desire to delay a Disney trip to a time that is more convenient, I know that the best times to visit Disney are *not* during common vacation periods. Crowds are larger, waits are longer, and everything is more expensive because they literally increase prices for crowds. From the sounds of it, your shared child is quite young. Not an appropriate age for a Disney trip, at least, so the decision to leave that child behind makes sense to me, since you weren't going.
I would not want to stay with my inlaws for a week under any circumstances, and especially not after you asked to leave the bioDD with your wife's parents. I get not liking your SK, but you're wanting to purposefully exclude a 6 year old child. 6 year olds are often feral. Your bio child may well be feral when s/he is 6, as well.
You want your wife to spend time with your parents and your baby, but not the SK. And I guess I don't understand how/why you would have time off to do that but not to go to Disney with your wife. But I agree with Futuro. If you want to go to your parents' for a week with your kiddo, you should go. Wife can go or no, her choice.
You are representing your issue here as "not getting a wife" even though you're married, but from the sounds of it, you all have some serious issues that no one is addressing. You all need to be talking through expectations and really communicating instead of just hurting eachother.
Spring break. I teach. Coulda
Spring break. I teach. Coulda went on vacation then, too. It's a week long.
Is it wrong to want my wife to spend time with me and my daughter absent the skid? From most testominals here, I'd think the answer would be that she is being unreasonable.
I figured that this week would make up for the week that she just meaningfully exculded my family, not directly as a tit-for-tat, but as an equalizer.
OK, I get why you couldn't go
But you're looking at this as a purposeful exclusion of "your family" instead of possibly a pragmatic decision. If your feelings are hurt, you need to talk with your wife about that instead of looking to "equalize" the situation (which is tit-for-tat, just to be clear).
I don't think it's wrong to want to spend time with just your wife and bio, but it sounds like your wife isn't on that page. You all need to communicate directly about how you're feeling, you both need to really hear eachother's perspectives, and you need to work together to find solutions.
I'd take my kids to my
I'd take my kids to my parents without her and stay there permanently if I was you.
Enjoy your week with your
Enjoy your week with your parents and the baby. Don't allow your wife to steal your joy!
I think the others captured
I think the others captured it - you know she's not reasonable, and you know she's selfish, so why do you expect her to suddenly be reasonable and not selfish?
She is always going to do what she thinks is in her best interest, and she is always going to be a short-term thinker - what makes her feel good RIGHT NOW. So plan on that.
If you are going to stay for your kids, and think of it as "my family" and "her family" (two different things) - then just plan to live that way. She went to Disney with "her family" (baby was too young) so you go to your parents with "your family". Why would you want to play happy family with a woman who is so abusive and destructive anyway?
You've convinced yourself that staying for your kids is worth your sanity (literally) and your physical health, so do all you can to protect those. Which means stop trying to make her be the wife you wish she was. She never will be.
^^^^This^^^^
^^^^This^^^^
Tog's right. You need to
Tog's right. You need to reduce your expectations as you are simply going to be constantly let down. That's no life. I'm personally in a pretty tough similar situation with SO right now and in order to cope, I reduced my expectations of what he could provide me as a partner and I'm not pissed off everyday now.
Wouldn't it be easier and more relaxing
to just take your daughter to visit your parents without your wife and your SD? Most six year olds can entertain themselves for a little while, but they are more intense in their need for interaction than a baby. Do you really want to sit there and listen to your wife go on and on about her Disney vacation with her parents and her daughter?
Most of us are here because we are not in the type of marriage we expected. We are trying to figure out if we can live in the marriage we got or we can't and we need to leave.
Not a monster.
I'm sorry you're home life is looking so impossible for you. What a lousy set up, on a lot of fronts.
There's a giant difference to your private integrity between being a doormat, and being high caliber. Sometimes, however, the appearances are the same on the surface. I'm of the opinion that going to your family isn't folding in on your boundaries. It isn't being whipped by her decision to exclude you. It is scraping together the reality of your dynamic and making the best of it for your self. Don't spend your visit grousing about this: enjoy the family you have that is welcoming you and the baby. That's really awesome that you have that!
You can't live being a 'tit for tat' measurer of fairness like you are leaning towards. It. Will. Destroy. You. You will destroy you.
Separate this a bit into pieces you can make less knee jerk reactions over. Your feelings are hurt. Your marriage sucks. Your SD is a drain. Your wife is definitely not playing by the same life rules as you. All true! All valid! Staying means you can't choose a war over everything. You don't get to ping pong from her disrespect to intentionally wounding her. That's not a man you can proudly be.
If you stay in a lonely marriage, the personal commitment you make isn't to your spouse. Obviously, you picked a dud and then compounded the chaos. Who are you when it doesn't feel good and it isn't fair and there's no hope? Are you proud of how you carry yourself, or do you shoulder righteous indignation and justification for petty backlash at her jerk moves?
My suggestion is vent loudly here. Live above the fray there. If you plan to stay in this situation, you have got to do better at not getting buffeted about by the actions and drama of your wife and SD. You can't change them. You can't be such a great guy that they come around and acknowledge what a wise and long suffering dad/step dad you've been. Give up that magical thinking. Your home life is gonna suck and you have your children to protect. You have to quit dwelling in the pain so deeply. It will eat away at the good things in your world that keep you balanced.
I hope throughout your day today you make yourself see enough small joy that the volume of noise in your head regarding your marriage is lowered. Hopefully, enough that you can remember the way back to your less vengeful self. Again, I'm truly sorry this is consuming you today.
Sounds like you are in a tough spot
Enjoy what you have - you are in a tough situation and have to look at the big picture for your life and your childrens lives.
Good luck and keep posting!
It's just infuriating. Who in
It's just infuriating. Who in the world would willfully marry into this. I get that the 2nd child is my fault, but I'm not going to lament it. I'm also not going to turn my own 2 children into skids.
I don't feel that I'm wrong to hope that the skid chooses to live with her father when she gets a little older. Considering the differences in environment, I wouldn't be suprised if she did. The child support payment would be the best investment that I've ever made. Then maybe the problems that exist now will be dulled.
Your SD is a terror because
Your SD is a terror because her mother is abusive. She has tried to withhold SD from her family (dad), and that's going to screw with a kid in a lot of ways.
Look, I get why you stay. Until courts don't suck for dads, this is the only way that you can ensure that you see your kids. But don't try to make this a happy marriage where you're getting any sort of good times out of it. If I were you, I'd be keeping a detailed diary (at school) of what your wife does. I'd be funneling small amounts of money into a separate account to pay for the best damn fathers rights attorney you can afford, plus a down payment on a new place to live. I'd have an exit plan ready to go so if you ever feel like you CAN or SHOULD hit the "ABORT MISSION" button on your marriage, you have the best shot at a good outcome.
You are expecting your wife to act like a wife. She isn't a wife. She's a parasite. She uses you for your money and stability. You can be mad and sad that she's not the person you thought she was, and that you aren't getting a wife out of her. But reality is that you're a single married man. It's a crappy feeling and a crappy way to live, but your wife has concocted this whole thing to her benefit. She isn't stupid, but she is betting that you are. Make her lose on that bet by being one step ahead of her crazy.
Yes - this. juststressed - my
Yes - this. juststressed - my DH was in a very similar situation with BM. She had an older daughter she was alienating from the father (though more subtly, and DH liked her). They even decided to have a second child (miscarriage, fortunately for everyone, including that child). He stayed because he feared losing SS. Then BM started cheating on DH and he knew he couldn't stay anymore, so he put money away slowly and made an exit plan. Once things were in order, he left BM when she was out of the country.
Now, he DID end up losing SS for over 3 years due to alienation, BUT, he knows that if he stayed there, he would likely have died from the stress of all of it. He has some health issues, and the stress of living with BM was not helping them whatsoever. 11 years later, he's 30 lbs lighter and so, so much happier - even with the fact that SS has turned out like a mini-BM. He knows he never really had control over that, even though he thought he did. BM started ruining SS from the day he was born.
Staying in an abusive marriage "for the kids" is simply not tenable long-term.
Bingo! "It's just
Bingo! "It's just infuriating. Who in the world would willfully marry into this”? Welcome to Step World. A crazy backwards world where children are so often treated like spouses and spouses are treated like children. It is a world where exes or children get to take mom or dad's spouse's place in a line or in a seat next to 'em any time they so please. No permissions needed. And, if you're a bio-less stepparent, it is world where you are expected to say "how high" whenever anyone in the initial family asks you to do pretty much anything.
Yes, why would anyone willfully marry into this? No one fully knowing ahead of time what they were getting into would! That's why most of us are here--we learned after the fact what our spouse's, bios, society and on so expect of us simply because we bear the title "stepparent."
My hope though sites like this is to get the word out there, because the only way this will change is for SPs to demand change, to have it affect the bios directly, to let other SPs know what they could, through a throw of the dice, be in for. Only then, when people refuse to become SPs, at least without seeing this and this happen FIRST, will the totally unfair and asinine expectations for SPs be changed for the betterment of ALL.
i honestly don't even know
i honestly don't even know what to say to you. I am so disappointed in you.
Your bride has already
Your bride has already demonstrated that she has no interest either in being your wife or in making her marriage and your baby and older child her priority. So... take the baby and your older child and go visit your parents. Your DW has already shown that this kind of thing is acceptable for her since... she abandoned you and the baby for a Skid fest in Disney with her own parents.
And... while you are home find a new job, get a lawyer, and don't go back to the Mecca of Skid worship. Your IL clan has proven themselves to be a shallow and polluted gene pool. Protect yourself and your children from that cesspool of genetic refuse as much as you can.
Just my thoughts of course.
I agree Rags. If only OP
I agree Rags. If only OP would follow your advice. But you forget that this clever man has gone and impregnated his violent, abusive, gaslighting and manipulative wife. (One that stood by while the skid abused the poor family dog) What a catch this woman is!
I missed the part about the
I missed the part about the dog. Is the OP's SO currently with a bun in the oven? I may have missed that too.
Rags, click on these links
Rags, click on these links that I copied and pasted. These are previous topics by OP. Just read the opening post for each one (no need to read the whole threads). It won't take long. Tell me what you think. : )
https://www.steptalk.org/forum/general-discussion/i-want-out-256502
https://www.steptalk.org/forum/general-discussion/so-sick-crap-257035
https://www.steptalk.org/forum/general-discussion/oh-god-258492
Okay. Now I remember this guy.
As for what I think, I feel for these babies with a whack job mother and a father incapable of making effective decisions or taking effective action they are screwed.