@Linkat,
Linkat wrote:
I am glad it worked out at least for you to see your grandchild. The poor little thing has to grow up with a daddy that is a mess - it will be nice though for her to be able to see and spend time with her grandparents.
Yeah your wife should let go of her son - but unfortunately you cannot control what your wife is going to do. So on the flip side you need to let go of your wife in this respect. Just let her do it as it seems she will not see otherwise.
Maybe come to an agreement - with her son or sons if they all behave that way - that you really are not going to be a part of it - it is up to her how she wants to handle it as long as it does not personally or financially impact you. You can try to say this as diplomatically as possible knowing how sensitive she is about it. Say something like - I know we do not see eye to eye on your son, and I do not want these disagreements to impact us as a couple, so it might be best for the us to agree to disagree on how you handle him. I will always be there for you and I agree not to say anything or do anything about a particular situation even when I do not agree with how you handle it -- as long as what you do does not impact my personal time or money. Not sure how that would fly but to me that seems about as fair as you can be for each other.
The child's mom isn't willing to let my wife see the little girl now. She won't let her come visit us because of everything that went down. So not only is the son not going to see his oldest daughter, the 2nd baby momma already won't let him see the other child, she is now saying that my wife, the baby's grandma, can't see the oldest granddaughter either. If I see her I'm going to have to go unbeknownst of my wife. How do you think that's going to go over with her when I tell her, "honey, I'm going to see our granddaughter for a little while. Be back later." This knowing the baby's mom doesn't want her to come along. Either I tell her upfront and piss her off or I don't tell her and she finds out later that I've been seeing her whereas she can't.
The thing is this. As much as I try to stay neutral and stay out of it as much as possible the wife thinks I should immediately and automatically side with her. When she asks my opinion and I give it she's pissed I don't agree with her. But when I opt to stay out of it then she automatically assume I'm on the side of the baby's mom. Sure, we can agree to disagree but that only works as long as I don't disagree with her. Yeah, I can disagree with the child's mom and that's fine but the minute I give an opinion on what the step-son should be doing then I'm going against her.
Many years ago when my daughter was born her mom and I got along good up until the pregnancy and even up until about a year after our daughter was born. When I found out she was pregnant I moved out of my parent's house and got us an apartment, furnished it and even took care of my daughter's mom's oldest child at the time. She let her family get into her ear and I was never good enough for her. About a year after our daughter was born we broke up. Long story short, she hooked up with this other guy who meant her no good and our daughter ended up 5 or 6 states away with her mom while she and the new bf came back to our state without her. Every attempt I made to see or get my child back failed until the grandmother made claims that I had been sexually abusing my daughter. I knew at that point I had to do something. I found an attorney and filed for custody. After an extensive investigation by two state's DSS and a custody battle along with phycological evaluations on both our parts, I was awarded full custody of my daughter. Since then my daughter's mom has had 4 other kids by 4 other men. Yes, that's 6 kids by 6 different guys. In the past 4 or 5 years we discovered that she has even gotten strung out of drugs and crack. My daughter graduated high school and college.
I say that to say that I stayed behind my daughter. Men can raise kids just as much and even in some cases better than a woman. It just depends on how you want them to be raised. The more I tell my step-son what he needs to do the more he does the complete opposite. And the more my wife tells me I'm wrong. He's always complaining about not seeing his kids on a regular basis and I told him that if he feels that way then he needs to go downtown and petition for a visitation order. But what that is going to mean is that these other baby momma's are probably going to turn around and file child support papers on him. So I'm thinking he'd rather complain about not seeing his kids than to go do what's right so he can see them. He feels that child support is a new pair of shoes every now and again or taking the child to the park or the movies when we have her.
What I really don't understand is that when my wife divorced her first husband she was a single parent for a number of years with little to no support from their father so it baffles me as to why and how she condones his behavior. Their dad, like the boys are now, was constantly getting arrested, drugs, alcohol, running from state to state to avoid getting arrested. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
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