Dad being irrational and damaging.
So I created an account this morning because I'm sick and have the day off with the little one and I had the idea (while on the idea seat) to seek out some support forum for step parents and this one seemed to be what I was looking for. Pardon me if I don't know any of the lingo or rules and regs around here but I'm a pretty easy person to deal with so I don't think there will be any issues. If someone could fill me in on some of theblingi though that would be nice.
Anyway I wanted to start a thread about the particular situation I'm in because every situation is different but some people might find some comfort in relating to my predicament and hopefully someone out there could provide helpful insight to me about what I'm going through. So I'm going to give you a brief history of what my fiance and I and what she went through with her ex and why she left him and what we're now going through to date and the issues we're having.
My fiance met her ex two years ago and she became pregnant and she has told me multiple times that it was just one of those things. That there really wasn't any substance to the relationship that would ensue for the next year - as she left the father when her son was 2 months - and that it was really just a dark period of her life, unfortanely. She doesn't go too deep into it - and I'm afraid to pry as she can become very emotional - I know however that there was (infrequently) physical abuse against her and very frequently emotional and verbal abuse. I've always known that her ex was a very manipulative person.
He's one of those people that is always living somewhere else always trading his crappy vehicle for a crappier vehicle and sinking a fortune into it in 'repairs' only to trade for another vehicle and move again. And he's been like this forever. It should be known that he doesn't pay any child support or respect their arrangements. For the first year and a half of the child's life he was not involved at all. Even the two months he was with her. She said that he yelled at the baby all the time to stop crying. As soon as I got with her he seemed to magically have decided to start being a part of his sons life. Since then the arrangement has been that if he gets him every weekend of the month he doesn't have to pay her anything (her idea not mine) and he has not been able to keep up with that barely at all. I think one month. In that instance we agreed he should pay $200 a month. As far as I'm concerned he owes her $600 and has yet to really give her anything.
Meanwhile he is trying to get her to deviate from this arrangement and come over to the house and linger there and 'spend time with him' which often involved undermining my relationship with my fiance and talking about a girl he's talking to and 'putting his son to bed which involves putting him in his bed saying good night and walking out. I personally like to read him a Dr. Seuss book as he falls asleep because well we're not in communist china. My fiance and I have already agreed to discontinue this behavior and not allow these visits because how he uses the time and lingers for a pitty party.
So I've got a few questions and ending statements.
1. I don't want to keep this child from his father because that's not my place. But at what point is it necessary? I could provide situations where I've thought its necessary upon request
2. It seems to me that he's coming in and expecting too much from his son right out the gate and making my fiance feel like she's doing something wrong how do I work that out?
3. My fiance is in the process of filing for child support so she can get ABC vouchers for daycare. The dad said right off the rip (it should be noted we didn't even mention the price)he wouldn't be able to even pay half but could 'help out' I told her it doesn't bother me at all to do it but it's like I'm giving the dad 350$ a month and enabling him to be a deadbeat
4. Should we take this to the court system? Its unlikely they will even gt to serve him because his address changes so much.
I don't know. I wanted to say I'm not being clueless here I think about this stuff all the time and have my own opinions and ideas and strategies but I wanted to get a third party opinion that's completely unrelated go the subject. All are welcome to comment. Thank you sorry if that was too long. There's still so much.
Personally, I do think your
Personally, I do think your SO should take her Ex to court. We have my Skids EVERY single weekend (3 days a week) and my SO still pays $850 a month to their mother.
If I'm reading your post right, the child is around 1yr old. Your SO should contact a lawyer about the situation. If her EX can't provide a safe enviroment for the child, should he really be getting the child for overnights?
Wow.... So I guess to
Wow.... So I guess to answer what you actually asked...
1) when your SO feels it's necessary. It's her child, she will have to make that choice. If they haven't been to court and they were never married she likely has default sole custody so she would be able to make that choice until such time as the father took her to court to sue for visitation. If she has no issues with him seeing the kid, stay out of it.
2) you don't work it out. You can tell her she's doing a great job as a mom, that she's not doing anything wrong, that she should seek a therapist to help work on her self esteem etc - but this is not something you can fix. You can't change how guy interacts with his kid. You can't change how she feels about what an abuser tells her. She will have to work that out for herself.
3) she should absolutely file for CS. What dad says and what the court orders may not match up. He may not pay what the court orders. But it will be on file, they will do things like take his tax returns for CS arrears if it gets to that point.
4) yes there should be a court order in place for CS and for visitation. As the non custodial parent, dad will not Have to excessive his visit instill, it will simply be that mom must make him available.
Now the stuff you didn't ask.... Your girl seems like she needs some serious help, therapy, to get past what's gone on with her. She should never be putting herself in a position to be abused by the guy again - and long lingering drop offs are exactly that. She needs to find someone to talk to if she can't talk to you. Women's shelters or domestic violence hotlines can probably help her find a therapist at reduced or no cost.
You need this done legally.
You need this done legally. GO to court for the visitation agreement and CS. Then there is no question. As for him being in your house, HELL NO!
She needs to work on
She needs to work on improving her self esteem, getting over the abuse, and proper boundaries.
She needs to get everything legalized in court. Even if she feels she doesn't need the money or won't get it, it took two to make the child, two should be legally financially responsible for the child.
Everything else is on her to decide and you to enforce. I would definitely put my foot down about allowing him inside the house!
Thank you for your replies
Thank you for your replies they're very much appreciated. I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm trying to work this out on my own or anything like that. I definitely involve her and I don't make her do anything unless she agrees to it I just let her k ow how I feel about it and provide examples and things and just open her eyes to it. She's been through a lot and from a very young age so she really wants her son to know his father and I do too but it seems go me that the cost is too high and that at some point we have to protect the child its not all about dad. If dad can't grow up that shouldn't be her fault or the child's.
He's pug the his son in very dangerous situations since he's been able to have him overnights and it scared me to the point where I told her we had to sit him down and tell him those things couldn't happen. He was just bringing him around shady ass people that he calls his sons GODPARENTS and I mean like drugs and all kinds of stuff in the open. And as for the phsycial abuse like I said it was infrequent to my knowledge but infrequent I believe is frequent enough on that subject. And the same thing about verbal and emotional abuse. It just shouldn't happen.
I'm not trying to over involve myself in this situation. But I love her and I love her son both to no end and it really just gets under my skin when I see him manipulating her and she doesn't realize it and when I hear him talk to her on the phone some times and act like he's in control of the sitatuation and he should be able to dictate things. He's a control freak and its all about HIM all the time I wish I could pull out a pen and paper some times and count the times he says I and me and mine.
I mean THIS guy came over to MY house the week after saying he couldn't pay half of child care showing off his car talking about how he's going to get it painted and get rims on it. THAT is the type of person we're talking about. He came over on the weekend and we were all dick as he was leaving he said see you Wednesday (yesterday) and I said maybe - if they're not still sick. Dude had the nerve to tell me to get them medicine. After I had already got then medicine. And I took the day off today to go to the doctor myself and then take his son to the doctor because he can't take off for that. That's the kind of 'father' we're talking about.
And all these things are second nature and common sense to me I don't want anyone to think I'm complaining at ALL. I am MORE than happy to do everything I can for my family but this guy just comes in acting like he knows everything and points his dirty finger in my fiances face and tells her to quit spoiling his boy. I mean I told her last night that if he keeps coming over I'm going to get in trouble I can only restrain myself so much. And I'm not a violent person by ANY means but DAMN IT there's a line for everyone.
You've got quite a lot going
You've got quite a lot going on here! So, from your original post....
Lingo/rules/regs - There's not a lot, really. Check out the FAQ's (http://www.steptalk.org/faq) and it should answer most of your basic questions. (Basic rule? Don't call people names. Swear if you like though. ;))
1. When should you keep the kid from his dad? If he's been abused. There are some other gray areas (safety issues), but honestly I'd leave those to the courts. Request a no contact order and put your reasons in front of a judge. Not reading him a bedtime story doesn't even come close. Having his kid be in the same room as people doing drugs does.
2. You don't "work that out". That's up to Mom and the courts. The ONLY thing you can - and should - do, is tell your fiancee that you support her, that she is an awesome mom with awesomesauce on top, and that she doesn't deserve to have someone who's clearly such a crappy parent himself judge her parenting skills.
3. She needs to file for CS, and that filing should include something about daycare costs. She's probably eligible for some sort of state assistance for it as well, since you guys aren't married yet. Don't jump right in paying for things. It's nice of you, and I know you have good intentions, but you know what they say about the road to hell, right? That's doubly true for the road to step-hell. Read around on here for a while and you'll see LOTS of stories of very well-intentioned people who jumped in to help with both feet - and it cause MAJOR problems down the road.
4. Yes. Yes yes yes, SHE should absolutely take this to court if the guy's name is on the birth certificate. Get it resolved. DO NOT allow verbal agreements to be "good enough", or rather tell HER not to. (You have zero legal standing, and wouldn't even if you guys were married. You can file nothing, she HAS to do it.)
Thank you again for your
Thank you again for your help. I've been thinking a lot of what some of you are saying about therapy and all. I don't want to freak her out or anything -not to say I'm not considering it but I don't want her to think SHE needs it I think that the both of us could benefit from sitting down with a counselor together initially and if said counselor wants to see us individually then we can go from there.
With that said - two years ago I sat down with a counselor to get through a lot of things in my own life I was struggling with And she really helped me to open up and talk and sort out a lot of things I just had jumbled up in my head. I attribute a lot of my accomplishments and life changes to those sessions and to just having a good 3rd party support me in those times. I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to talk to my fiance and see if she wants to revisit that and sit down with her and see what she has to say.
There's a lot going on behind the scenes of the drama with the BD as well in our own lives and I've been trying to work through all of that but introducing him into our own lives and routines like this has really causes more tension and damage. Like I said love my fiance and her son to no end - Ive known her gor almost a decade and I'm just finding myself very scared that I'm going to lose her and that's ALWAYS been my biggest fear in life and now I'm scared I'm going to lose her son and somehow that hurts even more to think about. Its just getting really tough for me... Thank you all for your support and advice and I look forward to the day that I can thank you guys too for helping me and my fiance get through this. I really am grateful.
Hey guys . I talked with her
Hey guys :). I talked with her tonight about how the BD treated her when they were in a relationship (it kind of came up in conversation convebiently) and pryed into more details about the physical abuse that took place. She said that when he would make her mad he would restrain her which she said basically involved him wrestling her to the ground and holding her still. Which she does NOT like. She said that this would always happen when they fight.
But then she said something that caught my ear. She said 'that's why I don't fight with him. So I was like hold on. Do you mean you try to avoid fights with him because you're afraid he will do that again? And she said yeah well not really I'm not scared. I told her that wasn't good and asked her if she would make different decisions with him and her son if she didn't have the memory of him doing that to her and she blatantly said yeah didn't even hold back. I mentioned the word abuse at some point and she said she thought that was too much because she had hit him aswell but I asked her if that was before or after he started his behavior and she said after and I told her either way a man shouldnt treat a woman like that. We went on talking about that and I broke it down for her a few different ways and how its up to the man to DE-escalate the sitatuation.
I fear that I've really messed up here and that I really overlooked something serious. I mean I never pryed into it because she didn't want me too but damn I feel like a real asshole for not doing it. I feel like I'm more lost than I was before in some senses... I thought before that he was manipulating her but now I see that I was totally wrong about it. He's INTIMIDATING her.
And this is why I've been feeling the need to involve myself so much because she's not willing to stand up to him at all and she keeps giving into what he wants. I know she doest want to do a lot of these things but she said tonight she does it to avoid conflict with the BD. I told her how thats not good to do and that its not her fault because she's just scared and I get that but that she can't let someone who abused her take her son overnight unsupervised.
I know a lot of you have said there's nothing I CAN DO to work the situation out and to get things resolved but I think that's B.S. just to be frank about it. It may not be my place to keep a dad from his son but it is my place to advise my fiance on keeping HER son from a man that abused her and my duty to ensure that her time spent around this person is exTREMELY limited. I'm not at the point where I'm going to tell her what to do in the situation and I probably never will be. But I am at the point where I want to tell her we need to sit down with a lawyer and we need to sit down with a counselor. That's where I'm at with that.
As a side note. She has been working 40+ hours week for what we've recently realized is chump change like below min wage. (Long story) so she's on the brink of quitting because all the money she does make goes to day care. Week after next she won't be able to pay daycare unless the BD mans up and throws down some cold hard cash. She said that if he doesn't then she's not going to let him see his son until he DOES.
I told her if we need to I'll pay it if he doesnt and she said that's bull I shouldn't have to and I compromised with her to still pursue the money from the BD BUT if he doesn't man up to put him on part time care so it'll be cheaper and she'll have days where she can take him to daycare and get in that kitchen and make me dinner. Haha jk about that last part I'm clearly not like that. But just so she can get a part time job so she doesn't feel like she's going to die in the house and kill me when I get home
So there is that.
P.S. like I said there's a lot going on in the background too with our own finances and schedules and family so its not just the BD there's ALOT going on at MY work as I work for a large General Contractor and we're in the middle of a huge contract. And a lot going on at her work because she's not getting paid enough and working too much and working with all WOMEN. I couldn't imagine. Its hard enough worming with mostly men. Haha. Any way I digress. Good night to you all and I'm looking for this very relaxing weekend
and I hope you guys are too!
First, my perspective tends
First, my perspective tends to differ from the majority when it comes to engaging as a Sparent. My belief is that a Sparent is an equity parent to any children in their home. A Sparent is an equity life partner with the BioParent in their blended family relationship and far out influences and out ranks the absent BioParent. Regardless of how involved or uninvolved that parent may be. If the blended family opposition will work with you reasonably then work with them. If not destroy them, and do what you think is right for your marriage, your Skid, and your family. It is a binary decision. There is no grey in a blended family situation IMHO, there are no guilt feelings, and there is no compromise if the opposition is anything but reasonable, ever, no matter what.
Okay Zero5692, the fact is you are Dad. I too am Dad to my Skid. One point of clarity that I gained very early in my 20+ year and counting marriage to my bride was that part of my responsibilities to the marriage was to be dad to my Skid. His mom and I met when he was 15mos old and married the week before he turned 2yo. His mom and I made our marriage the priority for both of us and raising the kid to viable adulthood was our top responsibility. Marriage = top priority. Kid(s) regardless of their biology = top responsibility.
My son's Sperm Idiot, like your Skid's Sperm Idiot, was, is, and will forever be a worthless and useless POS. Part of my goal was to set the example for my son of what a husband, father, son, uncle, and man of character is. That is the best thing I/we could do for our son to prepare him to overcome the behavioral influences of the shallow and polluted end of his gene pool.
One thing for sure is that though we did not need the money I made damned sure that CS was in play, updated regularly to minimize the benefit of my income to the Sperm Idiot in the support of the kid. As your SS's Sperm Idiot has done my Skid's Sperm Clan whined, avoided, and did everything they could to not support him. My priority was the best interest of my kid and my bride. So, we held their gonads to the CS fire for 17+ years. Their situation was exacerbated by the Sperm Idiots serially out of wedlock statutory rapist breeding habits. My SS is the eldest of his 4 all out of wedlock spawn by 3 different (2 of them under age) baby mamas.
I would suggest that you nail the toxic Sperm Idiot in your situation to the wall for every possible penny whether he can pay it not. Let it accrue. The more you have to hold over his head the better control you can maintain and the more power your bride will have in the situation. Most importantly your Skid should know that there is a CS order in place that will hold his "father" accountable for participating in his support.
That your bride was abused by the Sperm Donor makes the need to bring the pain down on him to the fullest extent until your son is a viable adult and has the confidence and tools to deal with his idiot BioDad. This is imperative IMHO.
Not only does your son need you be his dad, your bride needs you to be her defender, and confidence in dealing with this abusive POS she spawned with. In our case I made destruction, humiliation, and abject public embarrassment of the Sperm Idiot and the Sperm Clan my hobby. I was very good at it. My bride needed me to be a firm backstop and her support in dealing with the Sperm Clan during the course of our 17+ year Custody/Visitation/Support CO. With my support she was able to more than handle the toxic Sperm GrandHag, the Sperm Idiot, and the rest of the Sperm Clan.
You are in a similar situation with your bride. She can confront and deal with the Sperm Idiot with confidence if the two of you are a team.
Our son is now 22, serves in the USAF intending to make it his career, is studying towards his BSCS, and has the tools to manage the Sperm Clan on his own. I am proud that I am his dad and if he needs me, I am there to bring the pain on his Sperm Clan as needed. His mom and I are very proud of him and have his back.
Keep your bride as your priority, partner with her as equity life partners and equity parents to any children in your home regardless of their biology, and take care of yourself too. Do all of that and your blended family adventure should be pretty amazing. Mine sure has been.
Welcome by the way. I hope you find this to be a good place to vent, contribute, and pick up some useful advice from others who are living the blended family dream.
All IMHO of course.
I look forward to hearing your story and having another testosterone perspective in this very estrogen rich environment.
Thanks Rags for sharing your
Thanks Rags for sharing your experience. I've had a lot of these thoughts as well but really wanted my fiance to be on the same page as me and after today I am sure she is. So let me lay down some of the back story to make todays event easily understandable.
Against my greater wishes my fiance decided it would be the right thing to allow this piece of scum to have his son this past Christmas (barely a month ago). I examined to her that it was a bad idea and I voiced my opinion to her. So the plan was the BD would get his son Christmas Eve evening (seems redundant) have him overnight and Christmas morning. All seemed well until myself and my future brother in-law went to go pick him up.
I brought the clothes we had bought earlier in the week for him to wear and we arrived at his self proclaimed drug dealing god parents house to pick the child up. When I walked in the door there was the BD and the drug dealing god parents - naturally - as well as two other upstanding individuals residing in the house. The house itself was so smoked out it was as if I'd walked into an opium den. The whole transaction lasted about 10-15 minutes. By the time I got home I had to douse my clothes, my brother in-laws clothes and my skids clothes with all kinds of cologne to mask the smell as we were going to my families house shortly.
Later that evening I brought it up to my fiance and we decided to talk to the BD about it. We did. We laid out all the reasons why that was applorable and irresponsible and negligent and disrespectful. He spewed out a whole slew of things about how he'd never let anything happen to his son so on and so on. But we came to the agreement that he could not go back over there or any other environment similar to it.
We had to talk to him numerous times in the past month about the issue still as he tried go con her into allowing it and we stood very firm on the fact that NO it was unallowable. We thought he had enough decency to respect that.
Well today he was coming to pick up his son and as I was putting his pants on and getting him ready this moron walks in and starts talking to me - while my fiance is in the other room - about a picture she posted on Facebook earlier this week of me kissing the skid on the cheek. Before I could look up and say dude you're picking a really bad time to talk about this my fiance had reached the door and knew what time it was. She cuts him off and says what I was going to say. He says no let's do this now. So she goes off on him - calmly but stern and confident - and let him have it about what's up and where he stands in this thing. I mean let him have it. Just laid it out for him. He continues to insist that it is wrong that I don't need to shoe his son affection and that she shouldn't post stuff like that on FB. He starts becoming irate towards my fiance so I step in the middle and tell him to suck it the fuck up its her son and she can do what she wants so on and so on. He looks at me and says if his son ever calls me daddy is over and makes a threatening gesture. I asked him to edify that and he becomes more irate and tries go walk out my door - his son being in his car with a girl he literally had just called a skank a minute earlier. I kick my door shut as my fiance catches up and says to him he's not leaving with her son today. He rips the door open and goes to his car and gets in.
So I open the door and stand between it and the car so he can't close it. I tell him he's not leaving with her son and that he needs to get him out now. He says no he is and she proceeds to call the police. All the while he shouting profanities and such. Just real stand up behavior you know.
Long story short the police come he puts on a little show and my fiance sticks to her guns and says she wants her son to say. So of course the kid stays. And he maybe gets a better understanding of where he stands in this thing. Well the cherry on the top is 15 minutes after he leaves the drug dealing god parent texts my fiance saying she doesn't want to get in the middle of but she just wants to see the kid as TONIGHT WAS HER NIGHT TO SEE HIM. GTFO I say to my fiance. So she's done. She's said he's getting supervised visits only. No leaving with the kid. No overnights. No holidays. And she's for real I know because I wanted to test her so I tried talking her out of it. She says she can't trust him alone with her son so why should he get anything more than a supervised visit.
These guys just dig their own hole it seems. Saved me a lot of work I guess
I'll still keep you guys posted of course. But I think that she's definitely on the same page now with how this guys a conniving manipulative waste of space that just gives no shits about what she wants or the safety of her son.
I mean to come over and try to tell her what she can or cannot do with something as stupid as a picture all the while he's disregarding her wishes about not putting her son in harms way??? GTFO. What kind of two faced lowlife dirt bag has the nerve to do that? Then call us bad people. GTFO. WHAT A DAY. Anyway the little guy is sleeping sound in his room as I type
cuddled up with his little bear dreaming about puppies.
Applause!!! That is IMHO
Applause!!! That is IMHO exactly how to handle this situation.
I would suggest that you and your bride stay very well aligned in all of this. It can be a long and exhaustive journey to get a young child with a toxic half to their family to viable adulthood and safely raised to a point where they can deal with the toxic half of their family effectively.
One thing that my bride struggled with is her belief in the inherent goodness of people including the Sperm Clan. She would shut them down and pound them into submission then after a lengthy period of non-drama she would start mentioning that she thought they had changed and would start to loosen up on them at which point they would start pushing, manipulating, and resurrect their toxic crap. This occurred on a 2-3year cycle until the final incident when SS was about 14yo. At that point my bride gained clarity that the opposition was hopelessly toxic and never again did she put herself, the Skid, or our family in the position of having to once again confront their escalating toxicity. She kept them pummeled into submission for the last 4 years of the CO and I had very little to do but give her my opinion.
We never kept any secrets from the Skid. We kept him abreast of the facts of the situation, the CO, the court cases, and his Sperm Clan in an age appropriate manner. As he got older he started doing his own research into the crap spouted by the DipShitiot and the rest of the Sperm Clan and came to his own conclusions. Not long ago SS-22 gave me a hug and told me that he appreciated my being truthful with him about the entire Custody/Visitation/Support stuff and that he realized that he can deal with that part of his family with confidence because his mom and I did not sugar coat it or hide any of it from him. They still try to play the Skid but they are no more successful in playing him than they were in playing my bride and I. Most recently they have been attempting to guilt him in to sending money to help support his three younger also out of wedlock Sperm Idiot spawned half sibs.
Nope, he does not play games with them. He has not sent a dime. When spawn #3 was recently arrested for gang activity SS flew to Sperm Land and put the Sperm Idiot against a wall with the clear message that if he did not step up and parent the youngest three and knock off his glorification of gang banging, etc.. that SS would be back and DickHead would not like it if SS had to come back to address the topic again. After that the Sperm Idiot crawled under his rock and has stayed there for about 7mos without a peep.
That’s my boy!!!!
Wow sounds like you guys did
Wow sounds like you guys did really well. One of my biggest fears is that the skid will grow up and feel it natural to follow in the BDs foot steps and be like the BD. NOW GRANTED if the BD had a coming to Jesus moment and really genuinely changed I would have no problem with that. But as it stands now I would want him to be like your skid and call the BD out on his BS and stand up to him. To me that would be an amazing thing for any son to do. To stand up to his dad when he's wrong like that and to tell him to straighten out. Might be the wake up call that BD needed to be honest. But then maybe not.
The situation I'm in is that the BD thinks because he's a dad he's somehow an adult. But in reality he's just a cussing spitting and yelling angry little infant that has no idea in life. None at all. But thinks he does and that no one else does and its his duty to inform them of the ideas of life. Its sickening. It really is. Like over the past month when we've been around him I've just had to leave the room. Just the words that come out of his mouth are so moronic and so victimized its ridiculous.
My fiance is waiting today for him to call her like he said he would and if not she's going to call him and inform him that his games have been realized and she knows what he's been up to and its over. I'll update y'all on how that goes.
happy Sunday!!