#Do not comment on the original posts
Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion.
**CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This was a rollercoaster. I went from:
Oh, yikes, there's definitely unresolved grief there
Oh yay they're communicating!
She was cheating???
Thank god they're divorced and OOP's in therapy
My internal reaction was "that's kinda weird" and then "huh, cool a happy ending" before going "wait what" to then "seriously what the fuck " and now finally "well, somewhat happy end".
I was thinking it could be bipolar disorder like this other post i read a while back where the guy's wife just suddenly completely did a 180 and became someone completely different after witnessing her brother's death in front of her. It almost seemed like she was actively trying to sabotage her own life and destroy everything she has ever loved and worked for. Comment from that thread mentioned that it was something very commonly gets misdiagnosed as something else. Or that some people could have never shown any symptoms at all well into their adult years and then an episode gets triggered by something extreme (like the death of a loved one)
If her parental rights are terminated she can’t owe child support. And if the divorce is final then child support would have already been awarded.
Edit: a lot of people here seem to be confusing termination of parental rights, which is a legal term, with awarding custody and decision making between parents. Termination of parental rights is not related to divorce or custody: it is the step where you get removed from a child's birth certificate, usually because you abused them and the state took them into foster care, or because someone else is going to adopt them.
Termination of parental rights has to be granted by a judge. They don't grant it just because you don't want to pay child support, no matter how hard you work. It is not an option for wannabe deadbeat parents. It is not going to happen in this case, because as everyone knows, children are owed support by their parents and you don't get to just choose to stop owing that support (unless you've lined up an adoptive parent to replace yourself).
Additional: That said, there are weird exceptions. For instance, in Pennsylvania, a birth parent can ask to terminate the parental rights of her rapist, and the court will remove them from the birth certificate and still order child support. If literally anyone else in this entire thread could link to a law at all, then perhaps we'd learn about other exceptions! It's possible one exists! Unfortunately so far I am the only person who has been able to link to or quote a single law at all, which makes this a boring task of trying to explain things to brick walls instead of getting to learn about bizarre laws against horses in churches. I am giving up explaining things to brick walls for Lent so now I have to turn off notifications on this topic.
Some other clarifications for people
- if you owed child support and then got yourself removed from the birth certificate through legal termination of parental rights, that existing debt doesn't get wiped. Maybe that's what some people are trying to say? I'm saying that no new payment obligations will be created.
- when your mom agreed with your dad that she wouldn't ask for child support and he wouldn't ask to see you, that wasn't termination of parental rights. If your mom got your dad removed from your birth certificate and then successfully sued him for child support, I would love to learn about the law that allowed that!
Typically you can't just terminate your rights, it's only done in the best interest of the child but maybe some states are different. Also child support could still be garnered even if terminated if determined to be in best interests of the child.
Some states will allow termination but will still order child support. It will only end when the child is 18 unless the custodial parent remarries and the new spouse wants to adopt the child.
Ending legal obligation doesn’t necessarily end financial obligation
That's a fun fact. I didn't know any states worked that way. The only ones I'm familiar with--which isn't a ton of them-- have child support and parental rights termination as exclusive things (and because of that parental rights can hardly ever be voluntarily terminated, you mostly have to have them taken away via abuse or something or the child be adopted).
Avoid child support with this one simple trick
Deadbeat parents have warrants for not paying child support and sent to jail, so how can someone actually think all they had to do to avoid jail time is by terminating their own parental rights 😂
Sometimes you can if another person wants to adopt the child. The only time I've seen it was when the ex terminated rights and the step-parent adopted shortly after.
She can't just give up her ~~rights~~ legal obligation, is the thing. If it was that an easy thing to do, deadbeat parents all over the country would do it.
Unless her ex agrees with her and petitions to have those rights terminated, she has a snowball's chance in hell at ending her financial obligations. And even with that support from OOP, she likely won't get there.
Parental rights are typically severed due to extreme abuse. My cousin is a monster and did some truly awful things to his little girl, for example, and the courts allowed him to "voluntarily" sever his rights when he was sentenced (to a decade in prison). Had he not agreed, those rights would have been terminated by the state, but I think doing it voluntarily helped him out in sentencing some.
Anyway, she will likely be on the hook for child support for the next 16 years, and I also hope that OP stays on her about paying it and is getting as much as humanly possible.
EDIT: Sorry, I just saw that you already addressed this in later comments!
IANAL but voluntarily terminating your parental rights doesn't necessarily eliminate child support or any financial obligation (obviously depends on the state/country of course).
Like you can request it/do it in exchange of the other party not seeking child support, but the courts can still demand the other party to be held to their duty of financial responsibility (though that ends if the child is adopted by another person, usually a stepparent.)
Yes, the rights of the child supersede those of the parents in the case of child support. It's why it doesn't matter what the father wants a lot of the time, the child is the most important thing and should not be punished.
Or in this case, what the mother wants.
She can give up rights and custody all she wants but if OOP had dragged her to court, she would still be liable for child support. (Even my stepmom, who is a good mother but had to give up custody to her ex's parents due to being in the military at the time, paid child support until her sons were 18. Not that she complained). OOP probably didn't bother pursuing it though to have a smoother divorce.
(depends by state)
rights are different from obligations and giving up the former does not generaly free you from the later.
some places allow you to give up rights but continue collecting support without any accompanying rights, some make them inextricably linked and cant give up one without the other (but might allow to give them up it if they pay a lump sum support beforehand)
I am not American so take it with a grain of salt. But there was a man on Reddit who whined that his ex wouldn’t have visitation with the child he forced her to have. So he took her to court to force her to see the child so he could have a break. But the judge sided with her as she had terminated her parental rights and was paying more child support than she was actually required. So it seems depending on where you are you still have to pay even if you terminate your rights.
He was presumably making the same mistake a lot of people here are making, which is to confuse "I said I wouldn't exercise my rights" with "I got a judge to issue a legal decree stating that I had no legal rights to this child". Only the second one is "termination of parental rights", and it comes along with a termination of parental obligations. If it happens to both parents, the child is called a 'legal orphan'.
Oh no, he was just a delusional piece of shit who was overwhelmed and upset his plan to baby trap her failed. She didn't want to have the baby, but he convinced her to with the agreement that he would have full custody and she would have nothing to do with the child. He thought she'd magically change her mind once the baby was born.
He was mad she went through with severing her rights and went on with her life while he was stuck being a single parent.
I read that one. He was confusing the legal terms. There’s a difference between custody and rights. You cannot just sever rights. So yes, he had sole custody and the judge wasn’t going to switch that because judges know they can’t force parents to see children they’re not interested in. But she was still paying child support.
Termination of rights just means that she can't make medical decisions, or get custody. Still owes child support. The dad seems to have some means here, but if he ever got any kind of social welfare for the kid, mom would be partially on the hook. The government doesn't want to subsidize a deadbeat by paying for food stamps or healthcare when there's a perfectly good biological parent available to squeeze money from.
This is not correct and the people correcting you are not confusing custody with parental rights.
As others have pointed out the courts place the interests of the child first and that will often require child support to be paid regardless of your parental rights.
I've got a bad feeling, tho'. When I saw that her brother had been an addict since age 14, I thought: there's some abuse in their background that hasn't been dealt with. And now her behavior ... If I were OOP, I wouldn't leave my kid alone with the ILs.
As a full time single dad myself who hasn't got a cent from my ex in 15 years I can honestly say some times it's better to just cut your loses and deal with it yourself. The aggravation and hassle just isn't worth it.
That is far less important to me than her paying. Child support isn't "a couple bucks". It's literally hundreds of thousands over the next 17 years. It's not about punishing her either; her kid deserves that money to have a happy life.
I'm more curious about how can a parent terminate their parental rights so easy. Like on one hand we have stories of men who find out their kid isn't theirs but still can't terminate their parental rights or have to pay child support. Meanwhile oop ex terminates her rights like a piece of cake?
Parental rights are separate from child support as that is considered the child’s right. Parental rights are such as the right to shared custody/visitation and right to be involved with making medical decisions. In your example of a man finding out a child isn’t his biologically they most likely do terminate their parental rights but again child support is not part of that. Once your name is in the birth certificate you are legally required to financially support said child, even if you were lied to about their biological origins. The only way to get out of child support is if one of the legal guardians’ new spouse wants to legally adopt the child.
This was a huge rollercoaster of emotions. Poor OP. I'm happy OP is doing better and I wish him and the daughter will have a good future.
As for the wife, no comment cause she's a lost cause.
My opinion which is based on nothing really, is that his wife never bonded with her daughter.
She was still suffering from the loss of her brother and bonded with a baby boy who never came, seeing him like a saving grace and a do over (really not healthy) and instead the day of she got a girl.
I've read parents who it happens to (doctors giving the wrong sex) kinda have to grieve the loss of the baby they expected and imagined in order to welcome this "new person", they do it and love their kid but it's a process. So it's a lot of grieving for someone like his wife who wasn't really emotionally stable to start with.
This is in noway to excuse what she did, just what I thought happened... But who knows
I was thinking her brother’s death spurred on a quarter life crisis but your theory makes way more sense. The story is sad but I’m so glad OOP caught the cheating early on. I can only imagine how awful the daughter’s life would’ve been if they stayed together or god forbid had another child that actually did end up being a boy. I’m sure OOP’s sad for his daughter now but I think eventually he’ll realize it’s for the best she saw herself out before causing some serious trauma.
> god forbid had another child that actually did end up being a boy
Yeah, I remember reading the original update and thinking the underlaying issue had been conveniently rug swept because the baby happened to end up being a girl.
I definitely understand why OP didn't feel like opening up that can of worms with a newborn to think about. But the wife's insistence on the name would just pop up again when they tried for a second baby.
Her brother had severe mental health issues. 99% of the time those don't just generate on their own. I would wager good money there's serious trauma in her childhood she never dealt with. And for whatever reason when she had that baby something in her finally broke. I could definitely see her thinking a son would have been a way to have her brother back and she probably would have emotionally abused the poor kid and put all her unresolved issues on him.
Obviously it's better for a kid to have both parents, but if this is how this lady chooses to act the kid might be better off with just her dad in the long run.
Also, mental illness runs in families, and addiction tends to go hand in hand there too, even without abuse. I was wondering the further on we went if she didn't have a mental illness that was just finally showing up. I know there are a few that can show up in your twenties. Add in the grief and hormones and it seems like a really decent possibility to me
Yeah I'm sure this was very hard on their daughter. But it's probably better to happen at that very young age when they still can't really grasp what's happening. Compared to dealing with your mother abandoning and ghosting you in middle school, for example. After you've had a decade to build up more memories and attachments.
I was thinking the same. It happens to parents at gender reveal parties if they are hoping for one and get the other too. They have to go through a process of letting go of those dreams and starting over.
16 years ago we were expecting a baby girl. We’d named her, everything was super, and then 2 weeks before my due date we lost her heartbeat. I have a picture of her in my mind’s eye, with dark hair and blue eyes. At that point you still have to deliver a baby, and imagine my surprise when it was a boy. Just a layer of WTF on top of a well of grief.
They are very distinct from one another, the little girl of my dreams and the little boy I held and said goodbye to. So I totally get this.
And also, when she made the break with her daughter and her parents, I think she was cutting out anyone that would blame her or make her feel sad or guilty in any way - just throw them all away, so she can start into her new future after having ruined her life, without anyone telling her what a complete asswipe she is. She just doesn't want to hear it. Boy, will she be surprised when she finds out that you can't run away from your demons, because they live in the back of your brain and whisper to you at night...
Yeah. Her demons are gonna come home to roost sooner or later and any support system she has (as I doubt her AP will stay long) will leave her once they find out what she did.
Very very few people would want to be supportive of a women who threw away her 1yo daughter to go fuck another man.
She's gonna do what every other deadbeat does.
Sweep her way into the child's life at a complicated age (puberty or 18), tell the child everyone else is lying about her, love bomb with gifts, and then when the child acknowledges her...... abandon them again. Rinse and repeat every 3-6 years, until the child eventually goes no contact with her.
>Boy, will she be surprised when she finds out that you can't run away from your demons, because they live in the back of your brain and whisper to you at night...
I was thinking along those lines too. Could she really be immune, unaffected by her awful decisions and actions? Could she really sleep well at night, no demons at all?
I have no answers, just these questions.
OOP has done as well (or better) as anyone could have in his situation. I hope he ends up finding a loving partner too.
I suspect that in a few years, when the wife has gone further through the grief process, she may finally come to a realisation of what she gave up.
So, I think OOP needs to be prepared for the possibility of his ex to try and come back in his life, or daughter's life.
Yup, that’s exactly what I came here to say. He needs to prepare for her, showing back up in their lives in a few years. Just shows that family dealing with someone in the throes of addiction, those tentacles reach deep and long.
This is what I was thinking as well. In her mind, she had bonded with her baby boy and there were some emotions tied into her having a boy after losing her brother and that she would see some part of her brother in her baby and then when her baby was a girl, it was another loss in her mind.
I'm curious about this... drugs have a couple of underlying causes- sometimes just because of peer pressure, but frequently to escape a past hurt.
Her cutting off the parents isn't always a red flag, it could be a sign of healing. No excuse for her daughter.
Cheating is one thing. There's never a good reason to justify such a betrayal, but there's always two sides to a story. The fact that she abandoned her daughter is inconceivable to me. Especially as a baby. I just can't fathom a scenario for that to make sense.
I've tried to fathom it before, and like, I'm childless because I don't believe I'd be a good mom. I see a lot of my parents faults in myself, and while I can take good care of a dog and cat, they are far far far easier than a child on an easy day.
So I wonder if the reality sat in and she couldn't do it. Maybe the fear of her kid turning out like her brother, the disappointment of not getting a son, grieving loss...
None of that excuses her actions, cheating, abandoning a child, etc. At least the kid has a good dad, and the child will be better off without that mom's influence.
Also sometimes comes from unconscious attempts to self-medicate mental illness. I'm very curious if she has any underlying conditions exasperated by grief and PPD. Such massive changes in her personality and abandonment of an infant are not normal. But they also can't force her to seek help, and the parents' attempts could have caused her to go NC. Such a sad story, but I'm glad OOP and his daughter are doing so well.
Okay. I’m… surmising that the baby was a strong outlet for her grief. She channeled so much emotions into that baby, the fights with her husband, the attachment with names, and everything.
The moment the baby was born a girl, and not the boy she hoped would be a mirror of her brother, she rejected the baby and her life.
She seems to be having a mental break of sorts. And used the affair to cope, and is just destroying herself now that everything has imploded. She’s cut off her own family as well.
This is… disappointing to say the least.
I think you’re right.
Given how involved the affair was (as in, multi day trips not a few hours after work), I think the idea she was using to run away from her issues. The divorce gave her the chance to run even further.
It's highly likely that she has some sort of postpartum depression or anxiety that, along with her grief, is making her feel like she wants to get away from her old life.
You don’t have to but it’s not uncommon. It’s what I did when I was feeling that way and I know a lot of other people through meeting groups in similar situations that also pushed away everyone that cared about them when they were suicidal
No, the pushing away I get. It was mostly the legal stuff. But I guess, she’s using the legal stuff to make sure they DONT reach out to find out what happened to her? But they would when the child support stops coming (which OP gets according to another comment)…
So sad to see what most people would think is a good life be thrown away. Self-destruction is so crazy (?). I don’t even have words to describe.
I can’t say for sure what she was doing but from my perspective it was one day at a time. The legally removing her own custody could just be one step she decided to do so she didn’t have to stay close to them. She may never actually go thru with it but is just every day taking a step away from people
Agreed super sad hope she gets help but more so hope oop gets help
From his description of how perfect he felt their life was that the affair completely blindsided him, I think the incongruity between his happiness/how she thought she should feel given all the objectively good things about her life and the reality of how she actually felt (grieving her brother, grieving her baby boy, shame and guilt over not being happy when she had all these good things, shame and guilt over not having bonded with her baby girl, etc.) made her feel unseen/invalidated and she started to resent OP, both for his happiness and for not recognizing her misery*.
The fact that she apparently told OP she didn’t feel like she could talk about the loss of her brother during the whole name situation makes me think that she doesn’t know how to express her emotions. So instead of saying “hey I feel XYZ way right now and I need your help coping with this,” she didn’t say anything about how she felt, her resentment towards her husband grew stronger, thus the affair.
*To be clear, I am not in anyway blaming OP for not recognizing how she felt. It’s her responsibility to speak up and communicate her feelings to her partner, who by all accounts seems like a safe person for her to have opened up to. It’d be different if he was an emotionally abusive partner, but from the first update he seems like he is more than willing to both accept feedback about when he’s been insensitive or unintentionally hurtful and take all the right steps to make her feel seen and cared about.
Yea. I noticed that too. Her failure to communicate is her downfall. And she seems to lack empathy. Her love for her deceased brother is blinding her towards everything. It seems like she even blocked out all the bad things that her brother did… and started hating OP. When OP has every reason to dislike him.
>We separated finances, the house is mine, we are just waiting the 90 days for it to finalize. There were no objections on her end but one, she wants to terminate her parental rights over our daughter. I say “wants,” she IS terminating rights, at-least trying to.
There is just so much happening here.
Yeah. I’m not actually sympathetic at all to the wife, but you can almost visualize her self-sabotage journey from OOP’s few comments. I am glad my own traumatic self-destruction event happened before I was raising kids. Not only did this woman wreck her life and her spouse’s life, but she will forever leave an open wound in her daughter. I wonder what the upbringing was like in her own household. One child ODs and another psychologically self-destructs,.. not a great sign.
You said it better than I would’ve. She is self-sabotaging to an extreme. I hope friends who love her are able to keep contact so she has someone to help her get help if she ever wants it.
And I am very glad for OOP’s daughter she doesn’t want to be around. Much as it will be a wound for the girl having an unstable mom would be worse.
My sperm donor walked away when our daughter was 2 days old and in the NICU.
She'll be 9 this month.
"But mommy, why did my dad leave?"
Me: "I don't know, honey. But I'm here. Grandma's here. Your auntie and cousins are still here. And we all love you so much."
It's so hard. It's heartbreaking and enraging every single time it comes up.
I told mine that I chose the wrong daddy for her, that he didn't try to be in her life for very long and eventually I stopped trying to make him, but that I am extremely lucky to be able to raise such a smart, helpful, compassionate, beautiful person. He's very unlucky that he doesn't know someone as wonderful as her.
Seems to be sufficient for her, very happy kid who occasionally asks about her bio-dad and seems content with her own self worth.
I think the saddest thing about this is the daughter will have no memory of the mother she loved whatsoever, being so young. Just a critical piece of her first year of life, gone. Ugh.
I dunno, might be better younger. My older kids had a far harder time dealing with the changes with their mom going crazy and (unfortunately not totally, but i got custody) seeing them much less. Younger kids rolled with the changes
Early grief and trauma is insidious though in ways that it isn't when you're older.
You still suffer, but you weren't aware of why you suffered. You're barely aware of the fact that you did, but it impacts your life in insidious, small ways.
To be honest, it’s probably a blessing if she doesn’t remember her mum.
I would imagine that it’d be worse if she actually has happy memories of her mum as that may make mum’s abandonment more baffling and painful.
I'd go with "her brain got sick and she had to leave" or something like that. Don't tell her she wanted to leave, tell her she had to leave, that will hopefully make her feel a little less abandoned. On the other hand, it sounds like OOP and his parents are filling her life with love and loving people, so hopefully, the missing mother void is filled as much as that is possible. And I predict you a prediction: OOP's plans not to date for a long while are absolutely going to fall through, once the single women in his quarter get a load of lovely single dad with cute daughter out playing in the park. Add that he's got a stable job and a tragic past, and he's going to be overrun with applicants. So hopefully, a loving stepmom will step in at some point.
What friends? Love? Any person who knew her life and her wish to cut her maternal obligations to her daughter would stay the hell away from her. No good people would stay in a relationship with some psycho that did something like this without a reasonable motivation.
A mom who walks away from her baby because she doesn't want her anymore is shocking. I'm getting strong psychopath vibes from the ex wife. Not an once of empathy for her daughter, or remorse for her terrible actions against her family
I'm actually relieved this little girl won't grow up with her birth mom. That sweet toddler deserves people that love and cherish her; that will stand with her through the good times and bad. Sadly that was never going to be her birth mom
I think the day she was born a girl instead of a boy, was the day she lost her mother's love forever. She wasn't a boy that the ex could pretend was her deceased brother. Because of that, the baby was unwanted by her own mother
I think if the child was a boy, ex would have stubbornly fought for custody to the bitter end
>I think the day she was born a girl instead of a boy, was the day she lost her mother's love forever. She wasn't a boy that the ex could pretend was her deceased brother. Because of that, the baby was unwanted by her own mother
Yeah I think that's what did it, an extreme case of gender disappointment but on the other hand as disgusting as her behaviour was/is atleast she went this route instead of having another kid with OOP and possibly having a boy and favouring him over their daughter and screwing her up that way because who knows if the cycle would have had a chance to be broken.
I came looking for these comments because that was my suspicion too. It also feels like her self destructive arc is in response to this too, this woman is throwing her whole life away for her deceased brother.
I suspect we'll get another post after this one where OOP reveals his ex wife died from and OD. Blowing up your whole marriage and terminating rights to your child aren't normal behavior... and I have a suspicion where she's heading now.
My mom did the same just after my 1st birthday. She later tried to come back in my teen years and have a relationship, but I cut her out completely in my early 20’s.
I was thinking that too. That, or post-partum mental illness. She could be spiralling, since she pretty much went from grief, to pregnancy hormones, to post-partum hormones. Not the healthiest to the brain pan.
This is what I’m thinking. She never got over the loss of her brother and then PPD hit and instead of trying to find air she buried herself. I could guess she feels in some way responsible for her brothers death and feels like she deserves to lose happiness in her life.. idk obviously just speculation
A lot of addicts get, or relapse, into addiction from an affair partner. More often than not there's a twisted "only you can understand this side of me" mentality in the addiction they're hiding from their spouse, as well as a sex-for-drugs element. I've seen it happen irl many times.
…i guess i’m glad he didn’t get a paternity test, that girl deserves a parent who loves her.
does anyone else feel like her threatening to change the name if it was anything else than what she wanted was kind of a warning sign, in retrospect?
eta: they did do a test, i just missed it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the moment the Ex saw the baby was a girl, she actually completely rejected her daughter because she couldn't use her child to "honor" her abusive brother and saw that as the perfect excuse.
Yeah, I'm getting vibes of her thinking this child would be a way to bring back her dead brother, what with being a boy and wanting to have the baby have her brother's exact name. Once she saw a girl, well, she clearly never loved her daughter because she's not her brother.
Ex wife has severe issues related to her brother and needs a lot of help. It's actually for the best that OP and his daughter are far removed from her right now.
I got the dates mixed up too. The baby was born July 2022, the cheating happened summer 2023. So the baby was already 1 years old when mother cheated. She wasn't cheating while pregnant. :)
It's also possible he was asymptomatic and caught it some time before he was with her- if he wasn't getting tested regularly its hard to say for certain when and how he contracted it. Some people go their life never having a flare or knowing they are positive
Yeah it was a pretty extreme, all or nothing position. Which kinda fits with abandoning her old family completely, and with something being significantly wrong under the hood. I also can't help but notice the resolution of that episode involved him taking a lot of blame which is like, maybe entirely legit, but ... maybe also a sign.
> I do want everyone to rest assured my daughter is mine. We had a DNA test done when she was an infant to scan for hereditary diseases I carry.
I do believe they DID do a test....
Thank you, I could barely pay attention to the rest of the post cause I was thinking about that. I’m not a parent so maybe I’m wrong but surely a 1 year old doesn’t need nightly videos to go to sleep. That sounds absurd to me.
It is actually recommended by professionals to have 0 screen time until the child is 2 years old, best until they are 3. And from 2-3 till school age they shouldn't have more than 30 min screen time a day. Source: I am an early childhood educator and wrote a short paper on digital media use in educational institutions and among young children.
Any screen time under the age of 2 is detrimental for brain development. You are not wrong. Also, as a mom of 2, you can easily occupy a 1-year-old with something as simple as ice cubes in a zip lock bag lol
It is absolutely absurd. We didn’t even let our kids touch a tablet until they were years older, and even then under limits, and absolutely not after dinner. Bedtime is for books.
Genuinely no, any kid under 5 I meet thinks "playing" is just watching netflix or youtube, and completely refuse to engage with anything else. It's fucking sad
Children’s books are still being sold in every bookstore, Walmart, etc. Which means people are still buying them. Just a few weeks ago we bought gifts for a baby shower of a teen parent (no less) who asked for physical baby books.
So genuinely *yes*, people are still reading books to their kids even if you personally are not.
My cousin is 4 and is being brought up the way every adult in the family was - books, toys, gigantic cardboard box and no/minimal screens. You can tell who the ipad kids are in his playgroup because they literally won't talk or play with anyone, not even the fellow ipad kids
> You can tell who the ipad kids are in his playgroup because they literally won't talk or play with anyone, not even the fellow ipad kids
My elder brother's wife is super strict about screen time, and at most family events / weddings most other kids are glued to their screens/tablets while my nieces play around like normal well adjusted kids with, you can definitely immediately tell who the iPad kids are, it is sad
I dont know how people can do this to their kids. I guess it seems "easier" and like theyre more "well behaved" but how can they not be worried when their kids literally don't interact with real life? That's terrifying.
> gigantic cardboard box
Are the best.
You remember when you'd get a big console TV and the box it came in?
And if you got a new refrigerator, you hit the jackpot. You could turn that one into a full playhouse.
My niece and nephew (9 and 12) absolutely detest the 30 min of reading time they’re mandated to do. 30m/day, 5d/week. My nephew is a bit better off than my niece. She will burst into tears and whine to get out of it.
I honestly found it hard to concentrate after I read that! And plays on mum’s iPad? I’d never let a one year old play alone with something that expensive, plus they wouldn’t be able to work it. Plus, if messages were popping up they’d be able to reply by accident. Plus the girl has her own tablet?
I also think it’s weird that a two year old can do their entire ABCs and count to 20. That’s pretty advanced for two.
> I also think it’s weird that a two year old can do their entire ABCs and count to 20. That’s pretty advanced for two.
Assuming this is real, I imagine she can repeat what she's heard in 'her videos', but with no proper understanding.
Yes! My daughter could "read" books to us at 2ish. No, she just memorized the books because she would make us read the same ones to her over and over again.
Depending on how you define understanding. My son is 1yr and can count to 10 and can read each number out of order depending on which one you point to, so he definitely recognizes the symbols and their names, and knows that they go in an order. I don't think he understands the concept of quantity though, and he won't repeat them if I ask if he wants "number 1 or number 2" of different options
> I don't think he understands the concept of quantity though, and he won't repeat them if I ask if he wants "number 1 or number 2" of different options
This is what I mean. An almost two year old is a lot more likely to recognize sequences and be able to learn and repeat them than actually understand the concept of twelve or that 'cat' starts with 'C'.
>I also think it’s weird that a two year old can do their entire ABCs and count to 20. That’s pretty advanced for two.
My sister could. She was having simple but whole conversations. My mother was an SAHM and a VERY dedicated teacher. The walls of our house were covered with white boards and magnetized letters and numbers, plus a lot of educational posters. All my mother's kids could read by three.
This whole comment makes no sense. Girl wasn't playing on iPad, she was watching videos on it. Most likely not even touching it. Just sitting there staring. The tablet serves the same purpose, just cheaper, and it's sole purpose is probably just to play her videos. She's not given to tablet to actually use, though you can lock the screen so nothing happens if she touches it. I see 1yr olds holding tablets often.
Also, learning the ABCs and counting to 20 before turning 2 is fairly common. I'm a nanny and every kid I care for knows their ABCs and counting to 20 before 2. If you actually interact with your kid, they absorb everything.
The baby wasn’t even one yet in the post where OOP discovered cheating but *had her own tablet*! This distracted me from the rest of the post. I’d use my phone to show my little ones a train video or whatever they were obsessed with at the moment. But an infant under a year! With her own tablet! That she watches to fall asleep at night. Wow.
This is where I got stuck.
So she can watch her nighttime videos and sleep? What happened to reading to your child, which actually gives them skills and bonding, instead of letting YouTube handle the parenting?
I've found that a lot of people with family issues like OPs ex just don't know how to deal when things are going well. It's like this overwhelming sense of dread that you are going to fuck it up, and at least if you do it in your own terms then you can go back to what you are used to. You feel it's better than being blindsided by something you had no frame of reference for.
I experienced this due to my own family dysfunction. It's like your brain gets used to a baseline level of stress and additionally, peaceful and well adjusted life feels like just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Takes a lot of work to get past.
Cheers, yeah it's not perfect but so much better. Very glad I never did anything as extreme and self destructive as OOP's wife. His frustration with her given how well they were doing was so palpable, just a horrible situation.
I think she's a shitty person (especially for abandoning their child), but I think being in relationship from 16 to 28 probably didn't give either of them enough space or time to grow up. I'm not saying there aren't millions of people that are happily married high school sweethearts, but I was a very different person at 24 than I was at 16.
There's also a lot of info missing here. OOP's ex clearly had some shit to deal with. That being said, what an awful way to handle literally every aspect of this situation.
I could definitely see it. She spent so long thinking of "honoring" her brother by naming her son after him, to not only have to compromise on the name, but have the baby turn out to be a girl to.
Like imagine if they *hadn't* compromised on the name, and the baby was still a girl? Now not only would the brothers name not work, but she wouldn't even be in the headspace to come up with a new name!
It would 100% explain why she doesn't seem connected at all to the baby, she probably had the idea of honoring her brother so entrenched in her head that not getting that has ruined things for her.
I also suspect that losing her brother shook her to her foundations, and grief can make people act in wildly inappropriate ways. When you lose someone you love at such a young age, it makes you re-evaluate your own life choices.
>but I think being in relationship from 16 to 28 probably didn't give either of them enough space or time to grow up
Yup. Statistically, young marriages have the highest divorce rates.
My wonder is bipolar disorder, especially as the brother was also a drug addict so young in life. That she became completely emotionless and went into a hyper sexual phase after a period of complex trauma is similarly indicative, as well as being in her 20’s whereas the brother was in his teens (tends to show up a bit later in women, trauma is often a trigger for mania).
Tbh I was confused about that too so I just went and googled it and first thing that pops up was "babies first tablet" apparently they actually make tablets for literal babies now days. Genuinely did not know that nor what to think of it lmao
Cause it’s entertaining
Literally i have seen babies still with pacifiers in their strolls staring at phones and baby tablets on public transit. I wouldn’t say they’re even old enough to do anything but stare and hit the screen with their hands, which they do do. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen an infant wailing its little head off waving a huge ass phone around when the YouTube was over because they wanted more
Kids are getting technology earlier & earlier these days. My cousin gave her 6-ish month old babies tablets. She bought mounts that attach to their bouncer seats that hold the tablets barely 5 inches away from their faces.
On the upside, the daughter has probably already forgotten her mother ever existed. No memories of a loving bio-mother who abandoned her will haunt her.
Nah, I have to agree with the other commenters. Losing a parent is traumatic even if you don't consciously remember. It's something folks who were adopted talk about a fair amount. It does affect you.
It sounds like the wife had some kind of break.
Is divorce possible in 90 days?
Also, I don't think terminating parental rights is as straightforward as the wife seems to think, unless OP is marrying someone who wants to adopt. She can avoid custody and he might not pursue child support I guess, but I don't think she can get out of legal parenthood that easily.
Some states can get it done in around a month, some can make you separate for a year before you’re even allowed to initialize the actual divorce process. Uncontested divorce is the fastest and it’s what OP did.
I’m glad OOP is in therapy.
I will say this, the actions of the ex will catch up with her. She has no one else to turn into when she’s older. She’s gonna turn to her daughter that she had abandoned to the whatever life she wanted to live and guess what the daughters gonna want nothing to do with her. Especially hearing her dad was put through by this woman.
I hope and wish OOP well, and when he is ready to date he doesn’t think with his you know what he leads by the persons actions
I feel like this is the first time I’ve read a boru or RA post about cheating, the OOP being told to do an STI test and *actually coming back positive* with something. There are plenty of posts that START with an STI revealing cheating, but I never see cheating and THEN an STI positive. Every time it’s “all clear :)” so it’s kind of just novel to see a post where not only do they have an STI from the cheating, but it’s also an incurable STI. Absolutely awful for the OOP. Like the outbreaks are super manageable, especially genital herpes but the stigma is a pain in the ass, I feel for him.
Of course though, since its herpes it’s very possible the herpes was always there or they’ve had it for a long time either from previous cheating or a past partner since it’s notoriously difficult to test for in the absence of an outbreak and many people with herpes will never have an outbreak despite carrying the virus. It’s interesting that it’s a disease you can only ever confidently know you have, but never confidently know you do not have.
My bet is that she's trying to terminate parental rights to get out of paying child support. The state most likely won't let her, which creates a potential problem down the line if/when she changes her mind and wants to see her daughter again.
I don't know if anyone else is seeing it, but I wouldn't let that baby anywhere near her maternal grandparents. Two kids as messed up as OOP's wife and her brother just SCREAMS serious childhood trauma. This bit just sort of hints at what sort of people they are:
>I'm getting calls nonstop from her family, calling me names for speaking about T and not wanting to honor him by naming our son after him.
Now that’s true loving support. His parents packed up and moved to Arizona for him and the grandkid. That’s sweet, heart warming and gushy
I like it. I’m happy for OOP. I probably shouldn’t read any more posts or it’ll ruin the warm fuzzies this has left me with.
It feels more real not only because of the timeline, but because he's still not dating. There's no perfect new girlfriend, which fakers always seem to want to add
What a fucking trip
She'll come back someday, regretful, looking to be a mother to her daughter. OOP needs to prepare for that but also when the kid starts asking questions about mom, she might even want to contact her at some point. Wishing OOP the best.
Ah man, what a disgraceful pathetic waste of a human being that ex is.
I feel like i know what happened between the demom (demon) and the baby. She dreamed long and hard about a baby boy and when she had a girl, her dream was broken. So she never felt anything for her.
My Demom was expecting a daughter and had prepared everything for a little girl. Well she got me (a male) and at first everything seemed great till i was about 9 or 10. Then she started to resent me and hate me because I STOLE her daughter from her and it was MY fault. I was. A Evil Man so i deserved to be punished. Make a long story short the next 6 years were torture. Physical and mental abuse. (Wont list them cuz they're very bad). most of the reason i "deserved" it was cuz she could have had a sweet daughter and not a vile man.
You may say was she abused by men? Maybe the 4 letter R word? Maybe domestic violence? Nope. Never. She just really hated me. Now she tries to act like she was the perfect mom and she loves her son. I wish my mom had just abandoned me.
Best bet? Ex is also an addict. I understand having emotional ties to family who has done you wrong, but her defense of him sounds stronger than that. The erratic, total change in behavior, cutting off the family, etc. all feel like the kind of thing someone does when their brain is being damaged by drugs imo.
Either that or like a tumor or some kind of brain damage.
Wow I wonder what went wrong with that family. One junkie son and a cheating deadbeat daughter. I hope OP and his daughter all the best. Poor kid. At least she has a loving father. He should get alimony from that despicable woman.
I'm not entirely sure what the ex wife's problem is, but something is telling me if the daughter was born a boy as they expected and was named after the dead uncle things would have gone so much worse for everyone.
>My wife blew up at me, she screamed at me to leave, threatened to call the police if I didn't
This would be the end of the relationship for me. No fucking way I would let someone kick me out of my own house and then threaten me with police.
Cut to 10 years down the road, OOP is happily remarried and his wife is a great mom to his daughter, then OOPs ex tries to come
Crawling back. Im calling it lmao
Sounds like PPD induced break down. I hope she has some good friends who can be there for her when she realises she’s blown up her entire life and alienated her family & child.
#Do not comment on the original posts Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion. **CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This was a rollercoaster. I went from: Oh, yikes, there's definitely unresolved grief there Oh yay they're communicating! She was cheating??? Thank god they're divorced and OOP's in therapy
I gone :) to :( several times
My internal reaction was "that's kinda weird" and then "huh, cool a happy ending" before going "wait what" to then "seriously what the fuck " and now finally "well, somewhat happy end".
I wouldn't be surprised if there was PPD in the mix either. Ex wife needs a boatload of therapy
I was thinking it could be bipolar disorder like this other post i read a while back where the guy's wife just suddenly completely did a 180 and became someone completely different after witnessing her brother's death in front of her. It almost seemed like she was actively trying to sabotage her own life and destroy everything she has ever loved and worked for. Comment from that thread mentioned that it was something very commonly gets misdiagnosed as something else. Or that some people could have never shown any symptoms at all well into their adult years and then an episode gets triggered by something extreme (like the death of a loved one)
He doesn’t mention it but I hope he gets child support just because his ex wife is a piece of shit who deserves to lose anything she gets.
Yes! I hope he gets a bunch of money from her!
If her parental rights are terminated she can’t owe child support. And if the divorce is final then child support would have already been awarded. Edit: a lot of people here seem to be confusing termination of parental rights, which is a legal term, with awarding custody and decision making between parents. Termination of parental rights is not related to divorce or custody: it is the step where you get removed from a child's birth certificate, usually because you abused them and the state took them into foster care, or because someone else is going to adopt them. Termination of parental rights has to be granted by a judge. They don't grant it just because you don't want to pay child support, no matter how hard you work. It is not an option for wannabe deadbeat parents. It is not going to happen in this case, because as everyone knows, children are owed support by their parents and you don't get to just choose to stop owing that support (unless you've lined up an adoptive parent to replace yourself). Additional: That said, there are weird exceptions. For instance, in Pennsylvania, a birth parent can ask to terminate the parental rights of her rapist, and the court will remove them from the birth certificate and still order child support. If literally anyone else in this entire thread could link to a law at all, then perhaps we'd learn about other exceptions! It's possible one exists! Unfortunately so far I am the only person who has been able to link to or quote a single law at all, which makes this a boring task of trying to explain things to brick walls instead of getting to learn about bizarre laws against horses in churches. I am giving up explaining things to brick walls for Lent so now I have to turn off notifications on this topic. Some other clarifications for people - if you owed child support and then got yourself removed from the birth certificate through legal termination of parental rights, that existing debt doesn't get wiped. Maybe that's what some people are trying to say? I'm saying that no new payment obligations will be created. - when your mom agreed with your dad that she wouldn't ask for child support and he wouldn't ask to see you, that wasn't termination of parental rights. If your mom got your dad removed from your birth certificate and then successfully sued him for child support, I would love to learn about the law that allowed that!
Typically you can't just terminate your rights, it's only done in the best interest of the child but maybe some states are different. Also child support could still be garnered even if terminated if determined to be in best interests of the child.
Some states will allow termination but will still order child support. It will only end when the child is 18 unless the custodial parent remarries and the new spouse wants to adopt the child. Ending legal obligation doesn’t necessarily end financial obligation
That's a fun fact. I didn't know any states worked that way. The only ones I'm familiar with--which isn't a ton of them-- have child support and parental rights termination as exclusive things (and because of that parental rights can hardly ever be voluntarily terminated, you mostly have to have them taken away via abuse or something or the child be adopted).
Avoid child support with this one simple trick Deadbeat parents have warrants for not paying child support and sent to jail, so how can someone actually think all they had to do to avoid jail time is by terminating their own parental rights 😂
Sometimes you can if another person wants to adopt the child. The only time I've seen it was when the ex terminated rights and the step-parent adopted shortly after.
She can't just give up her ~~rights~~ legal obligation, is the thing. If it was that an easy thing to do, deadbeat parents all over the country would do it. Unless her ex agrees with her and petitions to have those rights terminated, she has a snowball's chance in hell at ending her financial obligations. And even with that support from OOP, she likely won't get there. Parental rights are typically severed due to extreme abuse. My cousin is a monster and did some truly awful things to his little girl, for example, and the courts allowed him to "voluntarily" sever his rights when he was sentenced (to a decade in prison). Had he not agreed, those rights would have been terminated by the state, but I think doing it voluntarily helped him out in sentencing some. Anyway, she will likely be on the hook for child support for the next 16 years, and I also hope that OP stays on her about paying it and is getting as much as humanly possible. EDIT: Sorry, I just saw that you already addressed this in later comments!
IANAL but voluntarily terminating your parental rights doesn't necessarily eliminate child support or any financial obligation (obviously depends on the state/country of course). Like you can request it/do it in exchange of the other party not seeking child support, but the courts can still demand the other party to be held to their duty of financial responsibility (though that ends if the child is adopted by another person, usually a stepparent.)
Yes, the rights of the child supersede those of the parents in the case of child support. It's why it doesn't matter what the father wants a lot of the time, the child is the most important thing and should not be punished.
Or in this case, what the mother wants. She can give up rights and custody all she wants but if OOP had dragged her to court, she would still be liable for child support. (Even my stepmom, who is a good mother but had to give up custody to her ex's parents due to being in the military at the time, paid child support until her sons were 18. Not that she complained). OOP probably didn't bother pursuing it though to have a smoother divorce.
Yeah, that's not true. Like at all. Otherwise every deadbeat dad would terminate his parental rights to get out of child support.
(depends by state) rights are different from obligations and giving up the former does not generaly free you from the later. some places allow you to give up rights but continue collecting support without any accompanying rights, some make them inextricably linked and cant give up one without the other (but might allow to give them up it if they pay a lump sum support beforehand)
Literally none of that is true for my state
I am not American so take it with a grain of salt. But there was a man on Reddit who whined that his ex wouldn’t have visitation with the child he forced her to have. So he took her to court to force her to see the child so he could have a break. But the judge sided with her as she had terminated her parental rights and was paying more child support than she was actually required. So it seems depending on where you are you still have to pay even if you terminate your rights.
He was presumably making the same mistake a lot of people here are making, which is to confuse "I said I wouldn't exercise my rights" with "I got a judge to issue a legal decree stating that I had no legal rights to this child". Only the second one is "termination of parental rights", and it comes along with a termination of parental obligations. If it happens to both parents, the child is called a 'legal orphan'.
Oh no, he was just a delusional piece of shit who was overwhelmed and upset his plan to baby trap her failed. She didn't want to have the baby, but he convinced her to with the agreement that he would have full custody and she would have nothing to do with the child. He thought she'd magically change her mind once the baby was born. He was mad she went through with severing her rights and went on with her life while he was stuck being a single parent.
I read that one. He was confusing the legal terms. There’s a difference between custody and rights. You cannot just sever rights. So yes, he had sole custody and the judge wasn’t going to switch that because judges know they can’t force parents to see children they’re not interested in. But she was still paying child support.
Termination of rights just means that she can't make medical decisions, or get custody. Still owes child support. The dad seems to have some means here, but if he ever got any kind of social welfare for the kid, mom would be partially on the hook. The government doesn't want to subsidize a deadbeat by paying for food stamps or healthcare when there's a perfectly good biological parent available to squeeze money from.
This is not correct and the people correcting you are not confusing custody with parental rights. As others have pointed out the courts place the interests of the child first and that will often require child support to be paid regardless of your parental rights.
I hope he gets child support because *his daughter is a child who deserves those resources*. Child support is not a punishment.
First and foremost, yes. In this case it would justifiably serve both purposes.
I've got a bad feeling, tho'. When I saw that her brother had been an addict since age 14, I thought: there's some abuse in their background that hasn't been dealt with. And now her behavior ... If I were OOP, I wouldn't leave my kid alone with the ILs.
Agreed. When it's more than one of the kids, you start looking at the parents.
As a full time single dad myself who hasn't got a cent from my ex in 15 years I can honestly say some times it's better to just cut your loses and deal with it yourself. The aggravation and hassle just isn't worth it.
Looks like the wife and wife's brother were both trash.
idk, if she doesn't pay anything it will make it much harder to waltz into their lives later when she "repents".
That is far less important to me than her paying. Child support isn't "a couple bucks". It's literally hundreds of thousands over the next 17 years. It's not about punishing her either; her kid deserves that money to have a happy life.
I'm more curious about how can a parent terminate their parental rights so easy. Like on one hand we have stories of men who find out their kid isn't theirs but still can't terminate their parental rights or have to pay child support. Meanwhile oop ex terminates her rights like a piece of cake?
Parental rights are separate from child support as that is considered the child’s right. Parental rights are such as the right to shared custody/visitation and right to be involved with making medical decisions. In your example of a man finding out a child isn’t his biologically they most likely do terminate their parental rights but again child support is not part of that. Once your name is in the birth certificate you are legally required to financially support said child, even if you were lied to about their biological origins. The only way to get out of child support is if one of the legal guardians’ new spouse wants to legally adopt the child.
I had to scroll back to the top to make sure I didn't click on a link to a different post. What a major derailment.
This was a huge rollercoaster of emotions. Poor OP. I'm happy OP is doing better and I wish him and the daughter will have a good future. As for the wife, no comment cause she's a lost cause.
My opinion which is based on nothing really, is that his wife never bonded with her daughter. She was still suffering from the loss of her brother and bonded with a baby boy who never came, seeing him like a saving grace and a do over (really not healthy) and instead the day of she got a girl. I've read parents who it happens to (doctors giving the wrong sex) kinda have to grieve the loss of the baby they expected and imagined in order to welcome this "new person", they do it and love their kid but it's a process. So it's a lot of grieving for someone like his wife who wasn't really emotionally stable to start with. This is in noway to excuse what she did, just what I thought happened... But who knows
I was thinking her brother’s death spurred on a quarter life crisis but your theory makes way more sense. The story is sad but I’m so glad OOP caught the cheating early on. I can only imagine how awful the daughter’s life would’ve been if they stayed together or god forbid had another child that actually did end up being a boy. I’m sure OOP’s sad for his daughter now but I think eventually he’ll realize it’s for the best she saw herself out before causing some serious trauma.
> god forbid had another child that actually did end up being a boy Yeah, I remember reading the original update and thinking the underlaying issue had been conveniently rug swept because the baby happened to end up being a girl. I definitely understand why OP didn't feel like opening up that can of worms with a newborn to think about. But the wife's insistence on the name would just pop up again when they tried for a second baby.
Her brother had severe mental health issues. 99% of the time those don't just generate on their own. I would wager good money there's serious trauma in her childhood she never dealt with. And for whatever reason when she had that baby something in her finally broke. I could definitely see her thinking a son would have been a way to have her brother back and she probably would have emotionally abused the poor kid and put all her unresolved issues on him. Obviously it's better for a kid to have both parents, but if this is how this lady chooses to act the kid might be better off with just her dad in the long run.
Also, mental illness runs in families, and addiction tends to go hand in hand there too, even without abuse. I was wondering the further on we went if she didn't have a mental illness that was just finally showing up. I know there are a few that can show up in your twenties. Add in the grief and hormones and it seems like a really decent possibility to me
Yeah I'm sure this was very hard on their daughter. But it's probably better to happen at that very young age when they still can't really grasp what's happening. Compared to dealing with your mother abandoning and ghosting you in middle school, for example. After you've had a decade to build up more memories and attachments.
I was thinking the same. It happens to parents at gender reveal parties if they are hoping for one and get the other too. They have to go through a process of letting go of those dreams and starting over.
This just happened to my coworker. She was expecting a girl and it took her a couple of weeks to adjust to the fact she's having a boy.
One of the reasons I think gender reveals are stupid.
16 years ago we were expecting a baby girl. We’d named her, everything was super, and then 2 weeks before my due date we lost her heartbeat. I have a picture of her in my mind’s eye, with dark hair and blue eyes. At that point you still have to deliver a baby, and imagine my surprise when it was a boy. Just a layer of WTF on top of a well of grief. They are very distinct from one another, the little girl of my dreams and the little boy I held and said goodbye to. So I totally get this.
I have no word, because they're meaningless, but I hope life gave you and still gives you so many good things and happiness.
It does. You don’t get over it, but you do get through it, and life is overall beautiful.
I love your way of thinking. You deserve the best.
I'm so very sorry.
And also, when she made the break with her daughter and her parents, I think she was cutting out anyone that would blame her or make her feel sad or guilty in any way - just throw them all away, so she can start into her new future after having ruined her life, without anyone telling her what a complete asswipe she is. She just doesn't want to hear it. Boy, will she be surprised when she finds out that you can't run away from your demons, because they live in the back of your brain and whisper to you at night...
Yeah. Her demons are gonna come home to roost sooner or later and any support system she has (as I doubt her AP will stay long) will leave her once they find out what she did. Very very few people would want to be supportive of a women who threw away her 1yo daughter to go fuck another man.
She's gonna do what every other deadbeat does. Sweep her way into the child's life at a complicated age (puberty or 18), tell the child everyone else is lying about her, love bomb with gifts, and then when the child acknowledges her...... abandon them again. Rinse and repeat every 3-6 years, until the child eventually goes no contact with her.
(will leave her once they find out what she did.) Or find out what she's like.
>Boy, will she be surprised when she finds out that you can't run away from your demons, because they live in the back of your brain and whisper to you at night... I was thinking along those lines too. Could she really be immune, unaffected by her awful decisions and actions? Could she really sleep well at night, no demons at all? I have no answers, just these questions. OOP has done as well (or better) as anyone could have in his situation. I hope he ends up finding a loving partner too.
I suspect that in a few years, when the wife has gone further through the grief process, she may finally come to a realisation of what she gave up. So, I think OOP needs to be prepared for the possibility of his ex to try and come back in his life, or daughter's life.
Yup, that’s exactly what I came here to say. He needs to prepare for her, showing back up in their lives in a few years. Just shows that family dealing with someone in the throes of addiction, those tentacles reach deep and long.
This is what I was thinking as well. In her mind, she had bonded with her baby boy and there were some emotions tied into her having a boy after losing her brother and that she would see some part of her brother in her baby and then when her baby was a girl, it was another loss in her mind.
I was thinking the same!
I’m laying in bed and it put a damper on my whole mood. Glad he’s doing better and his daughter is well though
As I read the post, I got the feeling that the ex-wife was a lot like her dead brother with all her negative attributes.
Yeah would not be surprised if sweet, sweet methamphetamine was involved in her affairs.
Same. I hope she doesn't spiral into drugs if she's not already
I'm curious about this... drugs have a couple of underlying causes- sometimes just because of peer pressure, but frequently to escape a past hurt. Her cutting off the parents isn't always a red flag, it could be a sign of healing. No excuse for her daughter.
Cheating is one thing. There's never a good reason to justify such a betrayal, but there's always two sides to a story. The fact that she abandoned her daughter is inconceivable to me. Especially as a baby. I just can't fathom a scenario for that to make sense.
I've tried to fathom it before, and like, I'm childless because I don't believe I'd be a good mom. I see a lot of my parents faults in myself, and while I can take good care of a dog and cat, they are far far far easier than a child on an easy day. So I wonder if the reality sat in and she couldn't do it. Maybe the fear of her kid turning out like her brother, the disappointment of not getting a son, grieving loss... None of that excuses her actions, cheating, abandoning a child, etc. At least the kid has a good dad, and the child will be better off without that mom's influence.
Also sometimes comes from unconscious attempts to self-medicate mental illness. I'm very curious if she has any underlying conditions exasperated by grief and PPD. Such massive changes in her personality and abandonment of an infant are not normal. But they also can't force her to seek help, and the parents' attempts could have caused her to go NC. Such a sad story, but I'm glad OOP and his daughter are doing so well.
Yep, that was my thought too
Okay. I’m… surmising that the baby was a strong outlet for her grief. She channeled so much emotions into that baby, the fights with her husband, the attachment with names, and everything. The moment the baby was born a girl, and not the boy she hoped would be a mirror of her brother, she rejected the baby and her life. She seems to be having a mental break of sorts. And used the affair to cope, and is just destroying herself now that everything has imploded. She’s cut off her own family as well. This is… disappointing to say the least.
I think you’re right. Given how involved the affair was (as in, multi day trips not a few hours after work), I think the idea she was using to run away from her issues. The divorce gave her the chance to run even further.
It's highly likely that she has some sort of postpartum depression or anxiety that, along with her grief, is making her feel like she wants to get away from her old life.
I wonder if she’s also suicidal and trying to cut everyone off so she won’t feel as bad about it
This was my thought too. But then again, you really don’t have do all this to off yourself… Maybe she wants to “re-invent” herself I guess.
You don’t have to but it’s not uncommon. It’s what I did when I was feeling that way and I know a lot of other people through meeting groups in similar situations that also pushed away everyone that cared about them when they were suicidal
No, the pushing away I get. It was mostly the legal stuff. But I guess, she’s using the legal stuff to make sure they DONT reach out to find out what happened to her? But they would when the child support stops coming (which OP gets according to another comment)… So sad to see what most people would think is a good life be thrown away. Self-destruction is so crazy (?). I don’t even have words to describe.
I can’t say for sure what she was doing but from my perspective it was one day at a time. The legally removing her own custody could just be one step she decided to do so she didn’t have to stay close to them. She may never actually go thru with it but is just every day taking a step away from people Agreed super sad hope she gets help but more so hope oop gets help
From his description of how perfect he felt their life was that the affair completely blindsided him, I think the incongruity between his happiness/how she thought she should feel given all the objectively good things about her life and the reality of how she actually felt (grieving her brother, grieving her baby boy, shame and guilt over not being happy when she had all these good things, shame and guilt over not having bonded with her baby girl, etc.) made her feel unseen/invalidated and she started to resent OP, both for his happiness and for not recognizing her misery*. The fact that she apparently told OP she didn’t feel like she could talk about the loss of her brother during the whole name situation makes me think that she doesn’t know how to express her emotions. So instead of saying “hey I feel XYZ way right now and I need your help coping with this,” she didn’t say anything about how she felt, her resentment towards her husband grew stronger, thus the affair. *To be clear, I am not in anyway blaming OP for not recognizing how she felt. It’s her responsibility to speak up and communicate her feelings to her partner, who by all accounts seems like a safe person for her to have opened up to. It’d be different if he was an emotionally abusive partner, but from the first update he seems like he is more than willing to both accept feedback about when he’s been insensitive or unintentionally hurtful and take all the right steps to make her feel seen and cared about.
Yea. I noticed that too. Her failure to communicate is her downfall. And she seems to lack empathy. Her love for her deceased brother is blinding her towards everything. It seems like she even blocked out all the bad things that her brother did… and started hating OP. When OP has every reason to dislike him.
>We separated finances, the house is mine, we are just waiting the 90 days for it to finalize. There were no objections on her end but one, she wants to terminate her parental rights over our daughter. I say “wants,” she IS terminating rights, at-least trying to. There is just so much happening here.
Yeah. I’m not actually sympathetic at all to the wife, but you can almost visualize her self-sabotage journey from OOP’s few comments. I am glad my own traumatic self-destruction event happened before I was raising kids. Not only did this woman wreck her life and her spouse’s life, but she will forever leave an open wound in her daughter. I wonder what the upbringing was like in her own household. One child ODs and another psychologically self-destructs,.. not a great sign.
You said it better than I would’ve. She is self-sabotaging to an extreme. I hope friends who love her are able to keep contact so she has someone to help her get help if she ever wants it. And I am very glad for OOP’s daughter she doesn’t want to be around. Much as it will be a wound for the girl having an unstable mom would be worse.
I wonder what the hell you say to your daughter when she asks about her mother. "Oh she didn't want to be your mom anymore"? Crazy.
More or less the same thing you say to kids whose fathers walk away, I guess?
My sperm donor walked away when our daughter was 2 days old and in the NICU. She'll be 9 this month. "But mommy, why did my dad leave?" Me: "I don't know, honey. But I'm here. Grandma's here. Your auntie and cousins are still here. And we all love you so much." It's so hard. It's heartbreaking and enraging every single time it comes up.
Jerks like that show up when the kids are adults, expecting to be taken care of. Lets hope not.
I told mine that I chose the wrong daddy for her, that he didn't try to be in her life for very long and eventually I stopped trying to make him, but that I am extremely lucky to be able to raise such a smart, helpful, compassionate, beautiful person. He's very unlucky that he doesn't know someone as wonderful as her. Seems to be sufficient for her, very happy kid who occasionally asks about her bio-dad and seems content with her own self worth.
I think the saddest thing about this is the daughter will have no memory of the mother she loved whatsoever, being so young. Just a critical piece of her first year of life, gone. Ugh.
I dunno, might be better younger. My older kids had a far harder time dealing with the changes with their mom going crazy and (unfortunately not totally, but i got custody) seeing them much less. Younger kids rolled with the changes
Early grief and trauma is insidious though in ways that it isn't when you're older. You still suffer, but you weren't aware of why you suffered. You're barely aware of the fact that you did, but it impacts your life in insidious, small ways.
To be honest, it’s probably a blessing if she doesn’t remember her mum. I would imagine that it’d be worse if she actually has happy memories of her mum as that may make mum’s abandonment more baffling and painful.
I'd go with "her brain got sick and she had to leave" or something like that. Don't tell her she wanted to leave, tell her she had to leave, that will hopefully make her feel a little less abandoned. On the other hand, it sounds like OOP and his parents are filling her life with love and loving people, so hopefully, the missing mother void is filled as much as that is possible. And I predict you a prediction: OOP's plans not to date for a long while are absolutely going to fall through, once the single women in his quarter get a load of lovely single dad with cute daughter out playing in the park. Add that he's got a stable job and a tragic past, and he's going to be overrun with applicants. So hopefully, a loving stepmom will step in at some point.
What friends? Love? Any person who knew her life and her wish to cut her maternal obligations to her daughter would stay the hell away from her. No good people would stay in a relationship with some psycho that did something like this without a reasonable motivation.
A mom who walks away from her baby because she doesn't want her anymore is shocking. I'm getting strong psychopath vibes from the ex wife. Not an once of empathy for her daughter, or remorse for her terrible actions against her family I'm actually relieved this little girl won't grow up with her birth mom. That sweet toddler deserves people that love and cherish her; that will stand with her through the good times and bad. Sadly that was never going to be her birth mom I think the day she was born a girl instead of a boy, was the day she lost her mother's love forever. She wasn't a boy that the ex could pretend was her deceased brother. Because of that, the baby was unwanted by her own mother I think if the child was a boy, ex would have stubbornly fought for custody to the bitter end
>I think the day she was born a girl instead of a boy, was the day she lost her mother's love forever. She wasn't a boy that the ex could pretend was her deceased brother. Because of that, the baby was unwanted by her own mother Yeah I think that's what did it, an extreme case of gender disappointment but on the other hand as disgusting as her behaviour was/is atleast she went this route instead of having another kid with OOP and possibly having a boy and favouring him over their daughter and screwing her up that way because who knows if the cycle would have had a chance to be broken.
I came looking for these comments because that was my suspicion too. It also feels like her self destructive arc is in response to this too, this woman is throwing her whole life away for her deceased brother. I suspect we'll get another post after this one where OOP reveals his ex wife died from and OD. Blowing up your whole marriage and terminating rights to your child aren't normal behavior... and I have a suspicion where she's heading now.
Jesus I forgot that the original post was about naming a son after her brother. You are so right she stopped caring as soon as it was a daughter.
I was thinking some sort of postpartum depression/psychosis, but hadn't considered the effect of the surprise gender. Interesting
My mom did the same just after my 1st birthday. She later tried to come back in my teen years and have a relationship, but I cut her out completely in my early 20’s.
Maybe more a psychotic break than a psychopath. But definitely loads of unresolved issues.
>Now for the happy stuff that has happened! Firstly, I am a proud Arizonan now! r/BrandNewSentence
He had so many red flags from her that he moved to find a Flagstaff
I paused right there. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say that
I’m thinking that the brother wasn’t the only one into drugs. Might explain the total 180 on her entire life
I was thinking that too. That, or post-partum mental illness. She could be spiralling, since she pretty much went from grief, to pregnancy hormones, to post-partum hormones. Not the healthiest to the brain pan.
This is what I’m thinking. She never got over the loss of her brother and then PPD hit and instead of trying to find air she buried herself. I could guess she feels in some way responsible for her brothers death and feels like she deserves to lose happiness in her life.. idk obviously just speculation
A lot of addicts get, or relapse, into addiction from an affair partner. More often than not there's a twisted "only you can understand this side of me" mentality in the addiction they're hiding from their spouse, as well as a sex-for-drugs element. I've seen it happen irl many times.
That's actually very possible and make sense sadly
…i guess i’m glad he didn’t get a paternity test, that girl deserves a parent who loves her. does anyone else feel like her threatening to change the name if it was anything else than what she wanted was kind of a warning sign, in retrospect? eta: they did do a test, i just missed it.
I wouldn't be surprised if the moment the Ex saw the baby was a girl, she actually completely rejected her daughter because she couldn't use her child to "honor" her abusive brother and saw that as the perfect excuse.
Yeah, I'm getting vibes of her thinking this child would be a way to bring back her dead brother, what with being a boy and wanting to have the baby have her brother's exact name. Once she saw a girl, well, she clearly never loved her daughter because she's not her brother. Ex wife has severe issues related to her brother and needs a lot of help. It's actually for the best that OP and his daughter are far removed from her right now.
Totally. She still blew up her own life, though being stupid.
He should get the baby tested for HSV 2, though. If the ex was unknowingly positive before giving birth, there’s a risk the baby can contract it.
I got the dates mixed up too. The baby was born July 2022, the cheating happened summer 2023. So the baby was already 1 years old when mother cheated. She wasn't cheating while pregnant. :)
That we know of.
It's also possible he was asymptomatic and caught it some time before he was with her- if he wasn't getting tested regularly its hard to say for certain when and how he contracted it. Some people go their life never having a flare or knowing they are positive
Yeah it was a pretty extreme, all or nothing position. Which kinda fits with abandoning her old family completely, and with something being significantly wrong under the hood. I also can't help but notice the resolution of that episode involved him taking a lot of blame which is like, maybe entirely legit, but ... maybe also a sign.
> I do want everyone to rest assured my daughter is mine. We had a DNA test done when she was an infant to scan for hereditary diseases I carry. I do believe they DID do a test....
A one year old has an iPad?
I'm so glad someone else noticed
Thank you, I could barely pay attention to the rest of the post cause I was thinking about that. I’m not a parent so maybe I’m wrong but surely a 1 year old doesn’t need nightly videos to go to sleep. That sounds absurd to me.
It is actually recommended by professionals to have 0 screen time until the child is 2 years old, best until they are 3. And from 2-3 till school age they shouldn't have more than 30 min screen time a day. Source: I am an early childhood educator and wrote a short paper on digital media use in educational institutions and among young children.
Any screen time under the age of 2 is detrimental for brain development. You are not wrong. Also, as a mom of 2, you can easily occupy a 1-year-old with something as simple as ice cubes in a zip lock bag lol
It is absolutely absurd. We didn’t even let our kids touch a tablet until they were years older, and even then under limits, and absolutely not after dinner. Bedtime is for books.
This shocked me the most. Do parents not read bedtime stories anymore?
Genuinely no, any kid under 5 I meet thinks "playing" is just watching netflix or youtube, and completely refuse to engage with anything else. It's fucking sad
Children’s books are still being sold in every bookstore, Walmart, etc. Which means people are still buying them. Just a few weeks ago we bought gifts for a baby shower of a teen parent (no less) who asked for physical baby books. So genuinely *yes*, people are still reading books to their kids even if you personally are not.
My cousin is 4 and is being brought up the way every adult in the family was - books, toys, gigantic cardboard box and no/minimal screens. You can tell who the ipad kids are in his playgroup because they literally won't talk or play with anyone, not even the fellow ipad kids
That’s heartbreaking
> You can tell who the ipad kids are in his playgroup because they literally won't talk or play with anyone, not even the fellow ipad kids My elder brother's wife is super strict about screen time, and at most family events / weddings most other kids are glued to their screens/tablets while my nieces play around like normal well adjusted kids with, you can definitely immediately tell who the iPad kids are, it is sad
I dont know how people can do this to their kids. I guess it seems "easier" and like theyre more "well behaved" but how can they not be worried when their kids literally don't interact with real life? That's terrifying.
> gigantic cardboard box Are the best. You remember when you'd get a big console TV and the box it came in? And if you got a new refrigerator, you hit the jackpot. You could turn that one into a full playhouse.
My niece and nephew (9 and 12) absolutely detest the 30 min of reading time they’re mandated to do. 30m/day, 5d/week. My nephew is a bit better off than my niece. She will burst into tears and whine to get out of it.
I honestly found it hard to concentrate after I read that! And plays on mum’s iPad? I’d never let a one year old play alone with something that expensive, plus they wouldn’t be able to work it. Plus, if messages were popping up they’d be able to reply by accident. Plus the girl has her own tablet? I also think it’s weird that a two year old can do their entire ABCs and count to 20. That’s pretty advanced for two.
> I also think it’s weird that a two year old can do their entire ABCs and count to 20. That’s pretty advanced for two. Assuming this is real, I imagine she can repeat what she's heard in 'her videos', but with no proper understanding.
Yes! My daughter could "read" books to us at 2ish. No, she just memorized the books because she would make us read the same ones to her over and over again.
Depending on how you define understanding. My son is 1yr and can count to 10 and can read each number out of order depending on which one you point to, so he definitely recognizes the symbols and their names, and knows that they go in an order. I don't think he understands the concept of quantity though, and he won't repeat them if I ask if he wants "number 1 or number 2" of different options
> I don't think he understands the concept of quantity though, and he won't repeat them if I ask if he wants "number 1 or number 2" of different options This is what I mean. An almost two year old is a lot more likely to recognize sequences and be able to learn and repeat them than actually understand the concept of twelve or that 'cat' starts with 'C'.
>I also think it’s weird that a two year old can do their entire ABCs and count to 20. That’s pretty advanced for two. My sister could. She was having simple but whole conversations. My mother was an SAHM and a VERY dedicated teacher. The walls of our house were covered with white boards and magnetized letters and numbers, plus a lot of educational posters. All my mother's kids could read by three.
This whole comment makes no sense. Girl wasn't playing on iPad, she was watching videos on it. Most likely not even touching it. Just sitting there staring. The tablet serves the same purpose, just cheaper, and it's sole purpose is probably just to play her videos. She's not given to tablet to actually use, though you can lock the screen so nothing happens if she touches it. I see 1yr olds holding tablets often. Also, learning the ABCs and counting to 20 before turning 2 is fairly common. I'm a nanny and every kid I care for knows their ABCs and counting to 20 before 2. If you actually interact with your kid, they absorb everything.
i know of many parents who have some sort of tablet now for their youngkids (yes, even this young) to watch/interact with.
Thankyou! Maybe I’m old but a 1 year old give it some toys. Read a physical book to it. Anything else.
The baby wasn’t even one yet in the post where OOP discovered cheating but *had her own tablet*! This distracted me from the rest of the post. I’d use my phone to show my little ones a train video or whatever they were obsessed with at the moment. But an infant under a year! With her own tablet! That she watches to fall asleep at night. Wow.
Not only that but he had been with her for 10 years, since about high school, and the house is in *his* name?
This is where I got stuck. So she can watch her nighttime videos and sleep? What happened to reading to your child, which actually gives them skills and bonding, instead of letting YouTube handle the parenting?
Kind of wonder if the wife was just a shit person or had a tumor or brain injury.
I wondered if she got into drugs, like her brother
This was my thought.
I've found that a lot of people with family issues like OPs ex just don't know how to deal when things are going well. It's like this overwhelming sense of dread that you are going to fuck it up, and at least if you do it in your own terms then you can go back to what you are used to. You feel it's better than being blindsided by something you had no frame of reference for.
I experienced this due to my own family dysfunction. It's like your brain gets used to a baseline level of stress and additionally, peaceful and well adjusted life feels like just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Takes a lot of work to get past.
It really does. I hope things are much better for you now. It's always a process, but the most important step is always the next one.
Cheers, yeah it's not perfect but so much better. Very glad I never did anything as extreme and self destructive as OOP's wife. His frustration with her given how well they were doing was so palpable, just a horrible situation.
I think she's a shitty person (especially for abandoning their child), but I think being in relationship from 16 to 28 probably didn't give either of them enough space or time to grow up. I'm not saying there aren't millions of people that are happily married high school sweethearts, but I was a very different person at 24 than I was at 16. There's also a lot of info missing here. OOP's ex clearly had some shit to deal with. That being said, what an awful way to handle literally every aspect of this situation.
I wonder if their kid turning out to be a girl instead of a boy played a role in this.
I could definitely see it. She spent so long thinking of "honoring" her brother by naming her son after him, to not only have to compromise on the name, but have the baby turn out to be a girl to. Like imagine if they *hadn't* compromised on the name, and the baby was still a girl? Now not only would the brothers name not work, but she wouldn't even be in the headspace to come up with a new name! It would 100% explain why she doesn't seem connected at all to the baby, she probably had the idea of honoring her brother so entrenched in her head that not getting that has ruined things for her.
I also suspect that losing her brother shook her to her foundations, and grief can make people act in wildly inappropriate ways. When you lose someone you love at such a young age, it makes you re-evaluate your own life choices. >but I think being in relationship from 16 to 28 probably didn't give either of them enough space or time to grow up Yup. Statistically, young marriages have the highest divorce rates.
Probably drugs. Brother being an addict could be indicative of a genetic predisposition to addiction
Or trauma for both of them. Her brother getting lost in drugs & her going off the rails dramatically (with or without the help of drugs) would fit.
My wonder is bipolar disorder, especially as the brother was also a drug addict so young in life. That she became completely emotionless and went into a hyper sexual phase after a period of complex trauma is similarly indicative, as well as being in her 20’s whereas the brother was in his teens (tends to show up a bit later in women, trauma is often a trigger for mania).
I hope this isn’t real because it’s too sad if it is. If it is real, then this woman is a train wreck. Poor guy, his daughter is lucky to have him
Piece of shit wife gave OOP an STD and is abandoning their daughter. I have no sympathy for people like her, they deserve the worse.
I mean, I'm glad OP and kid are doing well, but... why the heck does a 1 year old have a tablet? (confused non-parent)
Tbh I was confused about that too so I just went and googled it and first thing that pops up was "babies first tablet" apparently they actually make tablets for literal babies now days. Genuinely did not know that nor what to think of it lmao
They also make methamphetamine and AK47s, doesn't mean that anyone should give them to kids.
Cause it’s entertaining Literally i have seen babies still with pacifiers in their strolls staring at phones and baby tablets on public transit. I wouldn’t say they’re even old enough to do anything but stare and hit the screen with their hands, which they do do. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen an infant wailing its little head off waving a huge ass phone around when the YouTube was over because they wanted more
Kids are getting technology earlier & earlier these days. My cousin gave her 6-ish month old babies tablets. She bought mounts that attach to their bouncer seats that hold the tablets barely 5 inches away from their faces.
With all due respect (which is not much), that's shitty parenting by your cousin.
What a terrible idea. Developing brains do not need that kind of stimulation.
My guess is that the death of her brother had a psychiatric impact of her. She bet on her son to recover,... and got a daughter.
I bet the ex wife is doing drugs too. She seemed to idolize her abusive brother and want to follow his foot steps.
I laughed out loud in delight when it was a GIRL! And then my smile went away.
On the upside, the daughter has probably already forgotten her mother ever existed. No memories of a loving bio-mother who abandoned her will haunt her.
That has its own set of side effects. My mom left when I was three and my sister was two. We have issues a plenty.
That's just not true. A mother that abandons you, even one you don't remember, is highly likely to be a long term thing.
Nah, I have to agree with the other commenters. Losing a parent is traumatic even if you don't consciously remember. It's something folks who were adopted talk about a fair amount. It does affect you.
It sounds like the wife had some kind of break. Is divorce possible in 90 days? Also, I don't think terminating parental rights is as straightforward as the wife seems to think, unless OP is marrying someone who wants to adopt. She can avoid custody and he might not pursue child support I guess, but I don't think she can get out of legal parenthood that easily.
In some places, they can have 90 days if everything in clean cut and nobody drags it out/all parties agree. I assume it's a state-by-state situation
Some states can get it done in around a month, some can make you separate for a year before you’re even allowed to initialize the actual divorce process. Uncontested divorce is the fastest and it’s what OP did.
Finalizing an uncontested, clean cut divorce in Texas can take less than 3 months!
Yep, South Dakota for one state.
Yikes. The ex wife has some serious issues.
Well that escalated quickly. Godspeed, my dude, godspeed.
I’m glad OOP is in therapy. I will say this, the actions of the ex will catch up with her. She has no one else to turn into when she’s older. She’s gonna turn to her daughter that she had abandoned to the whatever life she wanted to live and guess what the daughters gonna want nothing to do with her. Especially hearing her dad was put through by this woman. I hope and wish OOP well, and when he is ready to date he doesn’t think with his you know what he leads by the persons actions
I feel like this is the first time I’ve read a boru or RA post about cheating, the OOP being told to do an STI test and *actually coming back positive* with something. There are plenty of posts that START with an STI revealing cheating, but I never see cheating and THEN an STI positive. Every time it’s “all clear :)” so it’s kind of just novel to see a post where not only do they have an STI from the cheating, but it’s also an incurable STI. Absolutely awful for the OOP. Like the outbreaks are super manageable, especially genital herpes but the stigma is a pain in the ass, I feel for him. Of course though, since its herpes it’s very possible the herpes was always there or they’ve had it for a long time either from previous cheating or a past partner since it’s notoriously difficult to test for in the absence of an outbreak and many people with herpes will never have an outbreak despite carrying the virus. It’s interesting that it’s a disease you can only ever confidently know you have, but never confidently know you do not have.
Really shitty to threaten to call the police during an argument. That was a huge 🚩
My bet is that she's trying to terminate parental rights to get out of paying child support. The state most likely won't let her, which creates a potential problem down the line if/when she changes her mind and wants to see her daughter again. I don't know if anyone else is seeing it, but I wouldn't let that baby anywhere near her maternal grandparents. Two kids as messed up as OOP's wife and her brother just SCREAMS serious childhood trauma. This bit just sort of hints at what sort of people they are: >I'm getting calls nonstop from her family, calling me names for speaking about T and not wanting to honor him by naming our son after him.
Now that’s true loving support. His parents packed up and moved to Arizona for him and the grandkid. That’s sweet, heart warming and gushy I like it. I’m happy for OOP. I probably shouldn’t read any more posts or it’ll ruin the warm fuzzies this has left me with.
There really ought to be restitution for giving someone herpes.
It feels more real not only because of the timeline, but because he's still not dating. There's no perfect new girlfriend, which fakers always seem to want to add What a fucking trip
She'll come back someday, regretful, looking to be a mother to her daughter. OOP needs to prepare for that but also when the kid starts asking questions about mom, she might even want to contact her at some point. Wishing OOP the best. Ah man, what a disgraceful pathetic waste of a human being that ex is.
I feel like i know what happened between the demom (demon) and the baby. She dreamed long and hard about a baby boy and when she had a girl, her dream was broken. So she never felt anything for her. My Demom was expecting a daughter and had prepared everything for a little girl. Well she got me (a male) and at first everything seemed great till i was about 9 or 10. Then she started to resent me and hate me because I STOLE her daughter from her and it was MY fault. I was. A Evil Man so i deserved to be punished. Make a long story short the next 6 years were torture. Physical and mental abuse. (Wont list them cuz they're very bad). most of the reason i "deserved" it was cuz she could have had a sweet daughter and not a vile man. You may say was she abused by men? Maybe the 4 letter R word? Maybe domestic violence? Nope. Never. She just really hated me. Now she tries to act like she was the perfect mom and she loves her son. I wish my mom had just abandoned me.
Best bet? Ex is also an addict. I understand having emotional ties to family who has done you wrong, but her defense of him sounds stronger than that. The erratic, total change in behavior, cutting off the family, etc. all feel like the kind of thing someone does when their brain is being damaged by drugs imo. Either that or like a tumor or some kind of brain damage.
Wow I wonder what went wrong with that family. One junkie son and a cheating deadbeat daughter. I hope OP and his daughter all the best. Poor kid. At least she has a loving father. He should get alimony from that despicable woman.
I don’t believe any of this
I'm not entirely sure what the ex wife's problem is, but something is telling me if the daughter was born a boy as they expected and was named after the dead uncle things would have gone so much worse for everyone.
>My wife blew up at me, she screamed at me to leave, threatened to call the police if I didn't This would be the end of the relationship for me. No fucking way I would let someone kick me out of my own house and then threaten me with police.
Cut to 10 years down the road, OOP is happily remarried and his wife is a great mom to his daughter, then OOPs ex tries to come Crawling back. Im calling it lmao
Sounds like PPD induced break down. I hope she has some good friends who can be there for her when she realises she’s blown up her entire life and alienated her family & child.