Wow, this dude....

[conuly]

Dear Care and Feeding,

I had a marriage with my first wife that was cold, sexually unfulfilling, and controlling for years. I discreetly found a woman outside our marriage who was interested in ways my ex wasn’t. When my ex found out, she told our kids and created a messy divorce. My girlfriend got unexpectedly pregnant, and I had to move out of state for her and adjust custody. I saw my kids for holidays and vacations but my ex badmouthed me to them all the time and encouraged them to be bratty and badly behaved when they visited. They never were kind to my girlfriend and never gave her any flexibility about adjusting to becoming a stepmom. I always believed it would get better when they became adults, recognized my ex’s toxic behavior, and understood that adults have sexual needs. This fall, my younger daughter had my first grandchild. I planned to visit at Christmas, but she has announced she’s inviting her mom and sister, that I have to pick a different day, and that my son and girlfriend are not welcome. This is my first grandchild and I haven’t even met him yet. How do I talk her out of this?

—Grandfather

Dear Grandfather,

I don’t want to negate the possibility that your ex-wife was a stone-cold bitch towards you during your marriage, but I’d like you to consider the situation from your daughter’s perspective: You entered a relationship outside of your marriage to her mother, which led you to divorce. You then moved out of state to take care of your new child, only seeing your first set of kids for holidays and vacations. Sir, you should be grateful that your daughter talks to you at all. You take virtually no responsibility for the demise of your marriage, blaming your ex for making it messy, boasting about your discretion and wanting your children to understand your sexual needs. You chose to cheat instead of asking your wife for a divorce in the first place, and again, you moved away from your kids! You expect your children to understand that? Give me a break! It’s unfortunate that they never accepted your girlfriend, but it’s not hard to fathom, considering that you cheated on their mother with this woman. What’s sadder is that your daughter doesn’t seem to have much of a relationship with your other child, but that’s also not surprising, considering that you moved away from her to raise him. Ask your daughter when is the best time to visit, bring a good gift, and be happy that you were even allowed to come.

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Comments

[conuly]

I hope it's fake, but I worry it's not.

[jadelennox]

I admit I'm wracking my brain for the movie or book this is the plot of.

[matsushima]

He sounds like the straight version of the guy who's being blackmailed by the man he was having an affair with from a few weeks ago.

I can believe him when he says his wife was unkind and controlling and that their libidos were mismatched but that doesn't change the fact that he had an affair and moved out of state to play happy families with his girlfriend and new baby.

Did your ex "encourage [your children] to be bratty and behave badly" or were they angry with you for leaving them behind for your new wife and child?

[lokifan]

I can believe him when he says his wife was unkind and controlling and that their libidos were mismatched but that doesn't change the fact that he had an affair and moved out of state to play happy families with his girlfriend and new baby.

Did your ex "encourage [your children] to be bratty and behave badly" or were they angry with you for leaving them behind for your new wife and child?

You're kinder than I am tbh. She "created a messy divorce" (!!!) and the stuff about her encouraging the kids to be bratty (!!!) means I find it hard to believe his ex was controlling. It's just SO MUCH unreliable narrator or weird blame-y POV. Even the "never gave her any flexibility about adjusting to being a stepmom" is so weird and blame-y. Like, I can believe that's true, but they were kids and their dad cheated with her then left them to have a baby with her - blaming them for not managing that level of maturity is so so weird.

[mrissa]

Yeah, I am often appalled at how much people forget who the actual children are in a situation. You literally have to be the adults here, because the actual children physically cannot.

[matsushima]

Honestly, I thought about it later and I don't think I believe LW's version of events at all. The more I sat with it the more it sounded/felt like DARVO.

[lomedet]

Everything everyone has said, but I got stuck on "...got unexpectedly pregnant." Like...you had other children? I'm sure you know the basics of human reproduction?

Jackass.

[lilysea]

Everything everyone has said, but I got stuck on "...got unexpectedly pregnant." Like...you had other children? I'm sure you know the basics of human reproduction?

Contraception can and does fail sometimes, even when used properly

and

a) not everyone can access legal abortion in the US at the moment (which is a deep injustice)

b) not everyone want to have an abortion

[lomedet]

all those things are true, and

the phrase 'got unexpectedly pregnant,' as if his girlfriend was suddenly and spontaneously with child without any involvement on his part, made my eyes roll so hard they fell out of my head.

[full_metal_ox]

You can add “sometimes people have been convinced they can’t reproduce and then find out otherwise”; consider the phenomena of conception following an adoption, and change-of-life surprise babies. That doesn’t seem to be the case in this soap opera, though—-the man’s fertility at least was empirically demonstrated.

[conuly]

Contraception can fail, which means that if two apparently fertile adults are having regular PIV sex it's not all that unexpected if the one with the V becomes pregnant eventually.

[matsushima]

There's definitely lots of ways this could've happened (birth control method(s) failed, girlfriend had reason to believe she was infertile, etc.) but since LW sounds like an unreliable narrator and is oddly passive in his own life story… well, I'm less inclined to believe it was "unexpected" as much as "unintended."

[nineveh_uk]

I would bet substantial cash that he wasn't using condoms.

[minoanmiss]

Yes, this

[topaz_eyes]

How much do we want to bet that "created a messy divorce" means LW didn't get his way in it? LW takes no responsibility for his actions here, and now he wonders why his older kids aren't friendly to him or his 2nd family.

[castiron]

I definitely read "my ex was controlling" as "my ex was willing to express her opinion, which differed from mine".

[oursin]

I discreetly found a woman outside our marriage.

There's 'I met someone who gave me the warmth and affection I was missing in my marriage' and there's 'I deliberately went out looking' and those are different things, ducky. This is positively Victorian: 'While my wife was closing her eyes and thinking of England, I set up my mistress in a cosy establishment in St John's Wood'.

[feldman]

Am I reading too much into it, or is anyone else curious if he'd be as motivated to meet/introduce his whole new family to a granddaughter?

[matsushima]

It definitely crossed my mind. Do we know if his children with his first wife was all girls? He didn't specify but he did say he had a son with his new girlfriend (wife?)…

It's also not even like his daughter won't let him meet the grandbaby at all. She'd be well within her rights to say that but she didn't, she just said, "Sorry, Mom's coming for Christmas day and you and your new wife are not welcome here at the same time."

[mrissa]

This strikes me as such an important point. She hasn't said, "You're not welcome here." She's said, "We have other plans that day, pick a different day." Sure, he had a plan, but you don't get to unilaterally plan other adults' day. If he wanted to do that with this person he should have stuck around when she was his minor child, over whom the law if not kindness or common decency gives a great deal of leeway for dictation of what they must endure and when they must endure it. Too late now.

[conuly]

It's also not even like his daughter won't let him meet the grandbaby at all.

And for this, he's throwing a tantrum!

[castiron]

Having been the high-libido partner in relationships with low-libido people, I would sympathize with this man's initial situation if he weren't so clearly an entitled irresponsible twit.

But this letter isn't "Despite lack of affection I had decided to stay married so that my kids would grow up in a stable home, but I wasn't sufficiently discreet in seeking an occasional partner" or "when my girlfriend got pregnant, I had a difficult choice to make between staying near my children from my first marriage or moving to be near my new child; I decided to move, but in retrospect that harmed my older children"(1). It's "I deserve to have sex and I'm annoyed that I'm experiencing consequences from having sex". To which I say, tough shit, sir; one can live without sex even when one is so horny that one's thinking "I want to do them" about anyone remotely attractive.

(1) "I had to move out of state for her"??? Yeah, I'm not buying that without more detail.