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Q. My husband left me when I took in my nieces
Q. My husband left me when I took in my nieces: My older brother, “Cliff,” overdosed last year, leaving behind my two young nieces. Their mom is in prison and will remain there for, best-case scenario, the next decade. My elderly parents have health and financial issues that prevented them from taking my nieces, and their mom doesn’t have any family. If my husband, “Jake,” and I didn’t take my nieces in, there was a risk they’d go to foster care. I adore my nieces, and they get along wonderfully with our daughter, “Claire,” and we can more than afford to raise them. To me it was a no-brainer to take them in and give them all the love and support they need.
Jake felt differently. He did not want to raise my nieces, even if it meant they would go into foster care. Although this was devastating to hear, I respected his decision. When I said I would be taking in my nieces, he asked for a divorce. That’s where we’re headed. And Jake is furious with me. He believes I chose my nieces over him and Claire. I accept my responsibility for ending our marriage, but I also refuse to abandon my nieces. Jake keeps saying I chose “a junkie” over our child, by which he means Cliff. I love and miss Cliff, and even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t punish my nieces for his mistakes. It broke my heart, but I accepted why raising two more kids was a deal-breaker for Jake. That’s a huge decision, and you have to be all in for it to work. Is it fair for me to want him to accept the decision I made? Or at least to understand the impossible decision with which I was faced?
A: It’s perfectly fair to want something—as it happens, I think the particular thing you want, which is for your soon-to-be-ex-husband to stop characterizing your decision to take in your nieces as a decision to choose “a junkie” (!) over him, is fair on its own merits. I don’t know if you’ll ever get it, unfortunately, and I don’t think there’s much you can do to convince Jake beyond what you’ve already tried. You’ve explained your position more than once, and whether out of stubbornness, resentment, or simple misguidedness, he’s sticking to his position. It’s possible that with time he may come around and can look on the end of your marriage with a greater degree of open-mindedness and respect for your conflicting interests; if only for your own daughter’s well-being, I hope that he does. But I don’t think repeating yourself now, after what sounds like a number of clear conversations, is going to make that difference. If the best you can do for now is to decline to have a 30th version of the same conversation, to simply say, “I think we’ve both gotten as far on this subject as we’re going to get for now; let’s focus on figuring out how to make this as easy as possible for Claire,” that may just have to be good enough. I hope you have a great deal of support as you help bring up your nieces—I’m so glad they have you to look after them.
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My worry from this letter is that if Jake's anger continues they may end up in an awful situation where Claire picks up on that anger and ends up blaming the nieces for making her daddy have to leave and I feel like LW should be aware of that kind of risk and take measures to head it off before it becomes an issue.
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Also, from the headline I was thinking that hubby wasn’t interested in having kids. That he happily has one but is tarring these doubly abandoned girls with the “junkie” brush is horrifying. What a classist AH.
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