“We’ve Been Married Three Years and I Haven’t Met His Kids”
Last year, my husband took our two boys to meet them at his son’s football practice. And now, recently, he has mentioned he wants to plan a boys’ weekend (without me). He has allowed me to say hi to his kids on FaceTime, but I still have not met them. WTF is going on? I’m ready to honestly give up on this marriage. When I bring it up, he says he doesn’t want to confuse the kids. I desperately need advice. — Mom of three boys
Why did you marry a guy who refused to introduce you to his children and who prioritized his ex’s feelings over your own? What do you say to him when he says that meeting you will confuse his children with his ex? It would only confuse them if they believed he was still in love with their mother. Is he? Do you feel like he’s in love with you? Besides this craziness, do you feel otherwise supported and valued and appreciated and like your marriage is on strong footing? Or is this rejection of you — and let’s be honest, rejection is exactly what this is when he refuses to introduce you to his children and integrate you into that very important part of his life — sort of par for the course? If it’s the former, get some marriage counseling to work through this. If it’s the latter — and I think it probably is — you might want to save your money, skip the counseling, dump his ass, and let every weekend be boys’ weekend from here on out.
P.S. 17 Things Every Couple MUST Discuss Before Getting Married (check out number 2).
The question about whether a weekly date night is “enough” is a question only you can answer. I’m not sure if you want more from this relationship or if you think you “should” want more. You don’t need permission to conduct this relationship in whatever way feels best to you, whether that means continuing as is or pushing for more. If you want more – like integrating your families and/or seeing each other more frequently – you should be discussing this with the man you’re seeing. If you feel like that’s something you want in a relationship but not with the current guy, then yeah, maybe it’s time to move on. If you and he aren’t exclusive, you can also continue seeing him once a week while you look elsewhere for someone who might better meet your needs and then move on if/when you find someone you’d like to be exclusive with.
There really aren’t any rules here except being open and honest with both yourself and the person/ people you’re dating. If you are satisfied with what you’ve got, it doesn’t matter whether it’s conventional or not. If you want more or something different, you don’t need to explain that to anyone but the person you want to move on from.
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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
Why the heck would you marry a this man to begin with. Think then do. There are no words.
WWS on both
LW#1- something is really really wrong that your husband never even introduced you to his school aged children. Why weren’t they part of the wedding? Why would they not be there for the celebrations with their siblings ( I don’t use “half” terms – they are family). Your husband is making excuses and they don’t make sense. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the two of you were to separate he’d tell his new girlfriend that you’re jealous and crazy and he couldn’t bring the four children to meet the new girlfriend. Too crazy for my taste.
LW #2 – this is not about your brother. You were estranged for decades and now you’re finding a lot of reasons to uproot you and your husband and move elsewhere. What do you hope to find? Do you feel that your husband is spending too much time caring for his elderly parents? Is it that he and his parents have a good loving relationship and you don’t have that with your family of origin and you’re feeling out of sorts about it? Why do you want to move away from your kids? Do you feel that they won’t care for you as you get older so you’re going to move away now so that you never confirm your suspicion?
I’m making a lot of assumptions / leaps here – many of which are probably wrong. But I think you have to do some really hard work to figure out why you’d want to pick up and leave everything you’ve created with your family, for someone who wasn’t in your life for a long time and reminds you of bad times. I’m not saying your brother doesn’t deserve your love, I’m just saying, you’re glomming on to an idea that is questionable given the circumstances you’ve shared.
LW 1: I disagree with Wendy. “Besides this craziness, do you feel otherwise supported and valued and appreciated and like your marriage is on strong footing?” It is impossible for this to be true. I can’t believe you married a man—and HAD TWO CHILDREN WITH HIM—without meeting his sons. You are an absolute fool.
LW 2: Think really hard about what is making you unhappy and what you DO want. You should probably see a therapist. Your husband is not going to move away from his family, children, and job. And that is absolutely understandable. If you want a cooler climate, you’ll be shivering in the snow by yourself, post-divorce. If that’s what you want, then be honest about your reasoning.
I posed a rhetorical question for the LW to answer for herself in the first letter. Not sure what you are disagreeing with me about.
I disagree that this is a scenario which is fixable through marriage counseling.
Wendy I think we all assume that he is a shit husband in all other respects. But you can’t just say that to the LW. You have to let her answer it for herself because maybe she is okay with him otherwise. I like this solid introspective question as I think its gonna be helpful for her.
I don’t either Wendy. And is it necessary to call a person “a fool”?
LW2, no state in the US is a days travel. 6 hours at most. If you can’t afford a plane ticket once a year what makes you think you can afford a cross country move?
If he lives in the middle of Montana and she’s in a small town in a southern state, it could actually take a full day to get there, counting up all the travel time (driving).
Ok fine but the point was the LW suddenly must move to be near a brother she barely yet knows and isn’t at all considering the logistics or her husband. Also, apparently she doesn’t consider her four grown children her family?
She said a day’s travel via plane. Maybe Canada?
LW: Honestly? If you’d written in five years ago, we’d all have said that you need to meet his kids before you get married and that your husband needs to suck it up and stop letting his ex-wife’s feelings dictate his relationships. Yes, even if she tries to use the kids as emotional chips. We’d have said, don’t get married and for the love of god, don’t have kids with this man while he’s still so emotionally entangled with his ex. (And, yes, not disclosing your marriage or insisting that you meet his kids, ffs, is emotional entanglement, even if the emotion is fear or stress or whatever.)
But, coulda, shoulda, woulda, here we are. You have a marriage and two kids with this man. So, now you’ve got to deal with a much larger mess. Insist that he go to counseling with you to address these issues and any others in your marriage.
Even, or especially, if the marriage cannot be fixed, because you’re going to have to co-parent with this guy and his conflict avoidance – or whatever this is – will be an impediment to that. Best of luck to you. You’re going to need it.
LW1: I’m shocked you would get married and have kids under these circumstances. You knew he was keeping you separate from the rest of his life, now you know it will never change. Have you combined finances? Do you have full transparency about anything in your relationship? Marital counseling, STAT. Ugh.
LW, listen to Wendy . Red flags should have been waving high in the air a long time ago. Your instinct to leave is correct. That he would get married without his sons even knowing his new wife and vice versa tells you everything you need to know about what kind of person and father he is. Something is very, very wrong here. Marrying him was a huge mistake. Cut your losses.
LW: Lots of gaps in your story. I don’t think the husband is still in love with his ex-wife. I bet more on a lame avoidance of costs and responsibilities. If he wanted to avoid child support by hiding your wedding, I am glad his ex-wife asked for it (I am more reserved about the request of full custody: why?). He created this mess. You say (he says) that this is a revenge by his ex. But he managed very badly the situation. He should have informed his ex, of course, this is a major change in their children’s life. And he should have introduced his children to you – and to her, too. He acts like a coward, but you somehow enabled it – acknowledge it.
Summon him to organise such a meeting with his children, with a mediator if needed. But you seem to check out of your marriage. Wendy is right: all this should have been discussed and handled before a wedding. If you are fed up: Ok, get a divorce. BUt for your babies, I would first take the summon/mediator/couple’s counselling road.
I’m confused. How did you not meet his kids? I understand for the first couple of months of dating, you don’t introduce your kids until the relationship is established. But you guys should have met and see how that was going to work out before he popped the ring and ask you to marry him.
LW Was your husband still married when you got together? Did he need to hide your marriage because he wasn’t actually divorced? Do you know for a fact, like you’ve seen divorce papers, that he is divorced? I’ve known someone in this situation and he wasn’t divorced. He was being secretive for a reason. Even if you didn’t know the reason it should have made you back away from the relationship when he actively hid that you were together. Did you get married because you were pregnant? That’s what happened with the woman I knew who married a guy who was still married to his first wife. She was pregnant and they went to the courthouse and got married. It turned out he wasn’t actually divorced and so they weren’t legally married. Something to think about. Look up the court records and see if you can find a divorce. Ask where their divorce happened. Which county and in which court and which year. Most states have those documents online.
LW#1 this is all too suspicious. Are you sure you’re not the secret second family? Or, you were and she found out they finally divorced? Are you sure you’re even legally married? I would start asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of investigating, because this isn’t honest behavior from him. In one way or another, you’ve been duped by this man. Maybe you and the ex both have.
Why did she get full custody? Most courts don’t do that unless there is a solid reason. I think there is more going on here.
Depends on the state. In my state, for example, joint custody is only granted if both parties agree to it. If even just one person no longer wants to share custody, it will revert to a sole-custody situation. And almost always that person with sole custody will be Mom. This is according to multiple lawyers and a judge who outright said he always gives custody to the mom unless there’s something like an active indictment against her, regardless of how great Dad is. 🙄 In OP’s case though, I suspect there was not yet a legal case to establish custody, parenting time, or child support, so the husband avoided child support but in exchange his ex controlled when he could see their kids so he was at her mercy until courts got involved.
What doesn’t make sense is that once all that became legalized, why is he STILL keeping everybody separate? That’s extremely sus.
LW 1#
Isn’t it MORE confusing for the kids to meet their younger siblings, but never their siblings mother? Surely at 6 and 9 they can connect the dots that their siblings have a different mom.
What have they been told happened to you? Do they think dad is single and co-parenting those children with the ex (you)?
Have they not questioned why they’ve never been to the house where dad lives with those siblings?
This is so bananapants. In no way can this be a healthy situation for you or your children. The whole thing smells rotten.
Mom of three boys,
When did you find out about his kids? This detail is important. If it was after you got married, then he was hiding them from you. Either way, you deserve better. You’re ready to give up for a good reason. Please trust your gut. 💕
Look. My husband’s previous wife is a lunatic. I met the children after we’d been together for a year, and from the minute she found out he and I were dating until the kids were 18 she did everything possible to make his life a living hell. She did not allow them to attend our wedding unless she came too, which given everything else was out of the question.
But you know what he did? He fought her every step of the way to have more time with the kids and also to demonstrate that I come first in his romantic life and that he wasn’t going to exclude me from things because she might be uncomfortable (think school plays, etc where we wouldn’t be anywhere near one another but all there to support the kids). This whole situation is bizarre to me. I’m not going to pile on, but I will say that for me regardless of how it got here this would be a dealbreaker if he refuses to do a complete 180.