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Mon 10 Jul, 2023 03:22 pm
I have been through a lot and I want to share my life journey:
I am a 33 year old widowed father of three daughters who are aged 14, 11, and 9.
I was born in Bangladesh and came to the United States at 6 months old. I moved from state to state as I was raised by a single highly educated mother. I call Ohio my home state. I will always be a Buckeye.
I am dark-skinned.
My mother who is still alive, was a very strict woman when it came to my education however, she did let me enjoy watching Football on the weekends and bought me stuff that I wanted or needed. I haven't spoken to my mother in 12 years. She has never met her youngest two granddaughters. Our relationship has been damaged
In 2008, I was accepted into my dream school The Ohio State University on a Full Scholarship and attended.
During a Fraternity party in the fall quarter of freshman year (it used to be the quarter system) I met my late wife. We were both intoxicated and we snuck back to her dorm room and had a one-night stand. My late wife was a Caucasian Woman. She got pregnant from the one-night stand. Our oldest daughter was born out of wedlock. We dated for one year and got married after Sophmore year at tOSU.
We left our daughter with her parents and sisters in her home state of Texas (Where I currently reside.) We would come see her during breaks. Even though I am politically conservative, my former in-laws including her sisters at the initial point did not approve of the marriage as they are a Conservative and Caucasian Family and I am a dark-skinned guy from Bangladesh. They are great people and our relationship has been much better to this day.
Our second daughter was born after we both graduated from The Ohio State University and our youngest daughter was born two years after that.
We moved to Texas after our second daughter was born to be closer to her family and we both were attending graduate school. I earned my undergraduate degree in Computer Science from The Ohio State University.
I earned my Masters in Economics from University of Texas-Austin.
My wife wanted to be a Pediatrician.
In late 2015, my wife at the young age of 25, passed away from Ischemic Stroke. She passed away right in front of me as I held her. I learned that the stroke was caused by a small piece of plaque which mounted in one of her arteries leading to her brain.
I was a widowed father for 2.5 years and got married in 2018. My second wife who is now my ex-wife is also a Caucasian woman and it was a second interracial marriage. My ex-wife is an Assistant Prosecutor here for our county in Texas
My second marriage lasted 3.5 years and got divorced in October 2021.
The reasons on why we got divorced was that she wanted children of her own and after we had gotten married, she found out that she can't have kids biologically. She wanted to legally adopt my three daughters. I refused to allow her to.
The first time that she had asked me, I kindly told her that I do not want the adoption of my daughters to happen and leave it at that.
The second time that she had asked me, I was starting to lose my patience and I hold her "No" more cold heartedly. She asked me why and I told her that "you're not their mother, you're their stepmother" and I also had to remind her that I witnessed my late wife pass away right in front of me, why would I want to remove the connections the girls have with their mother? The youngest was only 16 months old when her mother passed.
My late wife was robbed of the opportunity to be their mother, so why should I let another woman become an "official" mother to my kids? I told her this.
What you need to know is that, I wanted my daughters to have a mother-figure in their lives and by that, I mean a stepmother figure and not the changing of the damn documentation.
While we were married, I told the girls to only refer to her as "stepmother" or on a first-name basis. Not to refer to her as their mom.
I believe that biological children and their biological parents should never be separated. I do not believe in stepmother adoption. I believe that it is complete bullshit for a documentation to be changed and then that person can call themselves a mother.
Another reason for refusing to allow the adoption to happen, is that had the adoption happened, then all 3 of my daughters' connections to their late mother's side of the family is gone.
I have no respect for stepmother ------> adopted mother.
To make matters worse, I had an affair with one of her former law school classmates and that affair lasted for 9 months. She saw text messages on my phone while I was taking a shower. We were about to go to bed after I took the shower but once I came out, she confronted me about this and I admitted it.
That was the last straw for the marriage.
Now, I am raising my daughters by myself with my late wife's parents, and her 3 sisters.
Also, after our youngest was born, we had a conversation and decided that the girls would go to my former sister-in-law and her husband should in case anything happen to the both of us, she is the oldest sister of my late wife.
I am thinking of moving the girls and myself back to my home state of Ohio. I want this because the two oldest were born in Ohio and they are born Buckeyes. The oldest is about to start her freshman year in high school here in Texas. I do not want them to finish their high school in Texas. I want it, Ohio.
That's an awful lot of words to say that you've got outdated concepts of parenthood.
The only reason why your kids would have lost a connection to their late mother would have been because you did that. Adoption doesn't have to be like a light switch, turning one relationship off and another one on. Your late wife's family has your phone number, yes? That doesn't change due to an adoption.
Tell the truth at least. That you didn't want your second wife to adopt your girls because you're a hot mess and couldn't keep it in your pants, so deep down, you knew that marriage was doomed.
But hey, keep telling yourself it's all about an adoption that you planted your feet on and stuck your fingers in your ears, yelling, "La la la I can't hear you!"
Lie to yourself all you like. But try not to lie to other people. And if you've got any balls, tell your kids that your ex-wife wanted to have a closer relationship with them via adoption but that you're the one who objected.
@WidowedBuckeyeDad90,
WidowedBuckeyeDad90 wrote:I have no respect for stepmother ------> adopted mother.
How dare you depriving your children of a loving stepmother who wanted to
adopt these girls to show her commitment to them. Instead they're left with a rigid father who is forcing his own antiquated belief system on them. To make things worse you want to uproot them from their mothers family and move to Ohio where they don't know a soul and have no friends.
What the hell is wrong with you? For once think of your children and not
yourself and your needs and wants. In a few years they're off to college and you can move back to Ohio. Until then, do what's best for the children, put them first!
I find this very disturbing:
"While we were married, I told the girls to only refer to her as "stepmother" or on a first-name basis. Not to refer to her as their mom."
That is just mean and petty.
"I believe that biological children and their biological parents should never be separated. I do not believe in stepmother adoption. I believe that it is complete bullshit for a documentation to be changed and then that person can call themselves a mother."
The biological parent is already separated from her biological children as she died. They had a chance to connect to a woman who was not only willing to take YOU on, but also your children. You deprived them of that love.
Why is it bullshit for a stepmother to become a second mother?
"Another reason for refusing to allow the adoption to happen, is that had the adoption happened, then all 3 of my daughters' connections to their late mother's side of the family is gone."
All of their connections are NOT gone if they are still alive; an adoption by your second wife could not prevent that. It's what is called a Blended Family. The more love the better, no?
I'm very sorry for your kids.
@Mame,
I agree with all of what you said. I did not answer before because I found the entire post disturbing. Your poor children; being deprived of a loving mother, someone who appeared to love them unconditionally whether it is giving birth to them or not.
Quote:I believe that biological children and their biological parents should never be separated. I do not believe in stepmother adoption. I believe that it is complete bullshit for a documentation to be changed and then that person can call themselves a mother.
I agree that ideally children stay with their biological parents, however, there are situations where it is actually better for them to be separated. What about biological parents that abuse their children? Are unfit to parents for a variety of reasons: drug abuse, mental illness, they simply don't want children. It is better to give them a bullshit document so they can be with potentially loving adults that simply want to raise and love a child unconditionally vs. a biological parent that sexually abuses them? Which is really bullshit? The paper or the rapist parent?
What happens then to children that both their biological parents die? Are they never to be able to be adopted and loved due to no fault of their own or due to an unfortunate incident that took their biological parents away?
Adopting a child due to a parent dying does not diminish that biological parent's love or position. That parent will always be their parent and the child can still love them even while someone else may adopt them. Love is not finite. You can love more than one mom, love expands it is infinite. You have more than one child, when you had your second child, did you love your first less because now you had to divide your love between two children? Of course not, there was simply more people to love.
The one positive. This loving caring potential mom for your children at least got away from you. Obviously you are not the ideal husband and although she is worse off for not being a part of your children's lives as it is obvious she loved them dearly, but she is far better off not being married to you.
@WidowedBuckeyeDad90,
You really buried the lede here. Your second marriage failed due to your infidelity. All that stuff about your wife being unable to have children was just a smokescreen. If you had said "I won't force my children to call you mom", I could see that. Instead, you went with the "I refuse to allow my children to have a new mother". You are not thinking about your children here. Maybe they would have been better served by having two loving parents again. You could at least have given them that choice.
Also, your love for Ohio seems misplaced. If the most important thing here is your children and you want them to remember their mother, why would you pull them from their support system, their mother's family, to put them in a place where they don't know anyone and have no support? Why do you think high school in Ohio is superior to that in Texas? (Note that both states are huge and you can find great and not so great schools in both places.) I don't think you are truly thinking of what is best for your children here.
Overall, you are painting a picture of a selfish father who is disguising his wants as something that is "best for the kids".
@engineer,
Being from Ohio and living in Texas for over twenty years, I have to say it was hard and took continuing struggle to get my kids into the best public schools in Austin, both daughters went on to summa cum laude, one from Texas A&M and the other from St Edwards in Austin. It would have been much easier to have done it in Ohio.
However, I agree 100% with what you say.
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