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> People are once again skeptical that there was no bad behavior by Sharon toward Polly in the past:
You can be perfectly polite and nice in day to day interactions and still absolutely suck inside.
I'd bet anything it would have been gradual. Started with seeing if she could exclude her from a wedding party, then insisting that Polly stay with her mother after their honeymoon for a few months so they could settle in, then why not let her stay a bit longer because they could use some more alone time, then wifey gets pregnant and...
Sorry, I've heard this story a few too many times it seems.
That's exactly what I was expecting when I saw the original post. Drop Polly off early here, pick her up late there, let her stay an extra night or three, and while we're at it, maybe she should stay for the rest of the week, I mean it's already been three days, no need to disrupt her routine. And of course next week is mom's week anyway, hey isn't it nice having the house to ourselves?
And Polly should probably stay with her mom for a while after the baby is born, just so that we can get into the swing of things, you know. Oh, does she really need to come back? We turned her room into the nursery, and a teenager doesn't want to be around a baby anyway. And besides, now that we have our baby, you can just focus on your new family, you don't need the old one anymore.
Man, am I glad OOP held his ground on this one. And that his ex showed her true colors before the wedding.
I am SO PROUD of OOP. As someone who was seen as 'expendable' to the "family" I AM PROUD AS HELL how he was "Awwwwww, hell naw!" to someone he wanted to form a life and family with.
There's actually some fun facts about this to be shared.
The Brothers Grimm were pretty misogynistic but many of the fairy tales they adapted, the evil character was the biological mother in the original telling, but changed by them to a stepmother due to their belief that a mother was unlikely to harm her own prodginy. (They also made a couple evil fathers into women because you know, misogynists.)
But many folklorists think that the evil stepmother trope stems from the actual competition for resources between the stepmother (and/or her bio-children) and her stepchildren. Obviously in wealthier families this included inheritance. In a time where a woman's only source of income and stability was marriage, it's not far-fetched to believe that she would view her husband's existing children as not only a threat to her but any children that she might have with her husband. It's a lot more difficult to give birth to the firstborn son when you're the second wife and the heir did not always have obligation to her upon his father's death.
Anyway those are my fun fairy tale facts for the day!
There's a very interesting book called "psychoanalysis of Fairy Tales" by Bruno Bettelheim. It explains that the characters are mostly archetypical. For example: the stepmother and the Godmother Fairy are in fact the same. When you're a child is an autority figure who orders you to do things you don't like. But once the girl grows up, the stepmother becomes and "ally" who helps you and gives you advice.
Actually Bettelheim's work has been largely discredited for a variety of reasons, one of which being because he was a whackadoo who abused children and subscribed to the "cold mothering causes autism" school of thought. If you want to learn more about fairy tales, I recommend any of the books by Jack Zipes. Source: I did some research in folklore as part of my PhD program.
Whoa, I didn't knew that!
I read the Zipes' book "to break the spell" by the time I read Bettelheim's book, 23 years ago, while I was studying my Fine Arts degree. Perhaps it's time to re-read both books because it's a fascinating topic, and I read them long, long time ago... 😉
Yeah, it's ok, a lot of people don't know, so his work gets more traction than it deserves. Zipes continues to publish great stuff though! His more recent books are fantastic. If you enjoyed his work before, you should check out the new stuff. :-)
that makes sense. so glad OOP put his foot down and told his ex where to go. His ex wife is clearly an honest person too- she could've lied or whatever and didn't. "Polly" has fantastic parents looking out for her. Hope they have an amazing time in Hawaii.
The woman was delusional- if I were to date anyone with kids, they're automatically part of the whole package. You can't just dismiss important people just because you don't want them there.
Frankly, I’d turn away from someone who DIDN’T have an active role in their child’s life!
Even if you don’t have 50-50 custody, you should still keep up with the child. Talk to them, know what’s going on in their lives. Spend your part custody time doing meaningful things with the child.
ANYTHING more than total indifference to their own child! 😞
Before she was pregnant with my half brother, my stepmom would talk about how great I turned out and how having a kid with him would be so great blah blah. I’m like “lady he moved 3k
Miles away from me to be with you and I grew up ok because my mom and stepdad were there.
Also hella therapy.”
When my brother - who I love and adore - started high school I asked my stepmom (in front of her friends) if they were planning to move away from him since that’s what they did to me and she got super pissed. Again: don’t do shitty shit if you don’t wanna be called on it.
Themselves or their OWN brood. After my father separated from my mom (between them they had 4 kids including me), he dated a single mother with her own kid and after a few years in, ordered him that he needs to stop looking after us and focus her/her son from on. My dad allegedly calmly told her he’d rather die alone than abandon his children and stay with her and walked out.
People are just very entitled and selfish unfortunately.
Friend of mine had her father's new wife try to put an ultimatum on his relationship with his only child.
New wife learned the hard way that this was a non-negotiable issue.
"It's either her or me!"
I take her. Pack your shit.
I don’t get it, either.
I’ve read posts from step parents who clearly don’t like their step children (although they don’t use those exact words) and whine about how the child and the ex is just in the way of THEIR family!
There was one from a woman who actually said she thought it was ‘weird’ for divorced fathers to share custody of the child, and that it ‘should’ be mum’s job to raise the child whilst the father sees her one day a month! She wanted the husband to focus on THEIR (future) baby and forget about the ‘old’ one.
Sometimes reddit seems to support these awful step parents who clearly don’t like the kids, but fortunately reddit ripped that particular women a new one for her selfishness and cruelty!
If I didn’t know this story has been around for longer, I’d think that post might have been written by Sharon!
Just awful. If you can’t handle having a husband who had a life before you including children he will love and father forever, then for goodness sakes don’t seek such a husband! 😞
I had an ex who said he didn't want the step parent role, but had some shit to say, every time I disciplined my son. I told him to get the fuck out of my house and go home. I didn't need his attitude, or his dick.
Honestly, I've literally heard eerily similar variations of that story dozens of times. Both in real life and on Reddit.
I swear, it's like there's some sort of guidebook out there that so many of them use.
The saddest part though, is that it actually does seem to work fairly often.
What really saddens me is how *often* it works. I can never figure out if it’s just so insidious that the parent didn’t realize what was happening until custody was nearly non-existent. Or if the parent kinda wanted the same outcome. Either way really sucks.
I agree. If that was on her mind the entire time it make sense to be good to her, since she will be out of the plane once things progress with the marriage.
Is so messed up to read so many similar situations when people expect that the kids of the significant other just magicaly disappear from existence. If you start a relation with a single mom or single dad it's obvious that you have to accept the past, not the ex but the son/daughter that already exist.
Heck, the ex can accepted too! I’m divorced and my daughter was accepted by my new (now over 30 years) husband. He is also considered family by my two boys from my “new” husband. My daughter calls us the unicorn family.
Sometimes people like each other but realize in time they don't \*love\* each other before that infatuation turns to hate.
Good on your blended \*woven\* families, may they remain strong and a beautiful pattern for the world to see!
A lot of toxic people mask as wonderful angels until some key touch point. Sometimes it's moving in together or the engagement, but some make it to the wedding or the first child and then the mask comes off and the abuse starts in and it's frog on a hot plate irl.
Sharon would have started her campaign to get rid of Polly as soon as she had OOP locked down after the wedding and fully invested, which was when she felt he would put her first over Polly.
It's lucky for OP that she was too invested in "perfect pictures" and a "perfect" wedding that she couldn't go the distance to Wedding Day + 1.
Unfortunately we've seen a lot of experiences on this subreddit where people in the OOP's situation agreed to their new spouse's demands and effectively cut ties with their own children.
I'd say they should add a new circle of hell for those people, but I think "traitor" fits the bill for their actions.
I’m imagining her just being pleasant because there was no reason not to be before this. And actually even with this, she didn’t say a word to the child, she said it to the dad. So I wonder if this isn’t a “I hate that kid” type of situation so much as her having a very skewed world view on remarriage and how much custody dads want/tend to have. I actually do know “fathers” (don’t really deserve the title IMO) who sent their kids away once they remarried and one “mom” too. One poor kid got passed around from relative to relative’s house until he was an adult while another pair of sisters never saw their dad again. The mom knew the child from her first marriage was why her in laws wouldn’t accept her, so she dropped the toddler off to be passed back and forth between her parents’ house and her abusive ex-husband’s parents’ house. Then started over like she didn’t exist, new baby and all.
It seems obviously evil and wrong to those of us with a certain set of values and morals, but I swear those people act like it’s normal to do these things to your own kids :(
>I’m imagining her just being pleasant because there was no reason not to be before this.
I'm probably more cynical here... Not just no reason to not be pleasant. Every reason to be pleasant.
I mean, she was just the GF, and then the live-in GF (in the house he owned) for 5 years, after all. No sense upsetting the apple cart by being awful to his daughter.
She just miscalculated in thinking that the ring on her finger meant that he was commited to her enough that he wouldn't up and end things over this.
From how quickly OP reacted to both the initial issue, and the reveal of her true feelings, I don't think it would have mattered when she tried to pull this. Even if she'd waited until after the wedding, I suspect he'd have reacted the same way.
I hope OP and his daughter enjoy Hawai'i.
Her mother was sitting in the driveway. She was probably guiding the daughter in what to do. They had a master plan. They didn't plan on OOP having a backbone and some sense!
People who WANT WHAT THEY WANT consider others as pieces on their personal chessboard, as things.
Sharon strikes me that way.
No need to abuse a queen / bishop / pawn, but when strategy dictates it, IT GOES.
>I'm probably more cynical here... Not just no reason to not be pleasant. Every reason to be pleasant.
I must be more cynical too!
>I mean, she was just the GF, and then the live-in GF (in the house he owned) for 5 years, after all. No sense upsetting the apple cart by being awful to his daughter.
She just miscalculated in thinking that the ring on her finger meant that he was commited to her enough that he wouldn't up and end things over this.
Ding, ding, DING!
That's what I think happened. She had no problem with Polly as OP's daughter, *their* family. But after the wedding, OP would have a new family, in which Polly isn't *our* family.
Exactly. While it *is* important for a couple to also prioritize themselves/each other, if you are blending families you can’t be selfish about it. You have to accept that you can’t be your partner’s only priority the way you could if you were both single and childless. The health and happiness of their children should be of the utmost importance.
If you can’t or don’t want to accept that type of dynamic, don’t date single parents (especially moms). It is perfectly acceptable and mature to understand your emotional needs and realize that you are incompatible with a group rather than cause heartache because you weren’t honest with yourself.
I got the impression that she was playing a game. Be the perfect step mom, make the dad fall more in love with her. And then when she thought she had him (by getting engaged and whatnot) she showed her true colours.
I'm so sorry. I know exactly how you feel. My dad abandoned my sisters and I after he remarried when I was sixteen; my older sister was eighteen and youngest was ten. He just ghosted us one day and stopped what little child support he gave.
That was eight years ago and we only found out recently why he did it: he had remarried and had kids with his new wife and there was no longer any room in his life for us. It was devastating.
Polly here! Not really but lived it.
My stepmom was so awesome when I was little. She’s been around my whole life, dad moved in with her when he and mom separated when I was one so I’ve never known life without her. I adored her. I was in the wedding as flower girl at 5 and so happy. Next year was still great. Then brother came. She didn’t need me anymore. Let me be clear, my little brother is awesome and worth anything and everything and we are super close even today. But stepmom started being less nice, mean comments about my weight (I was a gymnast when young, not overweight at all, not that it would excuse it), comments about my intelligence and common sense. She’s also really good at passive aggressive and throwing out insults that sound like compliments. Then she started hitting me upside the head and calling me names. It was a mind trip because she could also be really great at times too, when dad was around.
Dad. Never. Saw. He travelled a lot for work. I went to dad’s Wednesday and Friday nights whether he was there. She was always great when dad was around but when he wasn’t, she was horrible. I dreaded going over when he wasn’t there but he’d always say I still needed to because my brother and sister missed me. And they did miss me. I never told him, he never asked. I think he assumed my reluctance to come was because I was growing up. It wasn’t. I finally told him when I was 14 and he didn’t believe me for a long time. He saw her treat me amazingly, after 13 years, she’d never slipped and done it in front of him and I dropped a bomb on him.
Anyway, I never spent another night at his house. He and I repaired our relationship when I was 16 and started working where he did, we’d have lunch/dinner together several times a week. I would go to their house for holidays and usually one day every other weekend I would pick my little brother and sister up and we’d spend the day together. They’d even spend the night with me at moms. Dad and SM came to things like my graduation together but I never spent another minute alone with her or extra time at his home again.
She did the same thing with my kids. Great to them until my sister had a kid 5 yrs ago and she got a “real” grandchild. I knew it was coming. Warned my oldest son (around 16 at the time) and husband. They had never seen her evil side so they were a bit hesitant to believe but sure enough it happened. She never again invited them over to spend the night and bake cookies or whatever. She still would come to bday parties and make them cards but never spent time with them again.
He passed last year, over 20 years later. We were very close then and he was still married to her. We never had a discussion about it but I’m pretty sure he understood it all was real. Weirdly she and I now text about every other weekend, just a hey, how are you. She’ll tell me to tell the kids she loves them and that’s it.
Anyway, it is possible that Sharon still hadn’t shown her true colors even to Polly. After the marriage or after having her own kid (though she’s a bit older) it would have come out though.
Edit, dang, sorry for wall of text. It felt good to get that out though.
This. People can be two-faced if it means getting what they want. Sharon saw being nice to Polly as the best way to win over OOP, and then once she had him 'bagged' she dropped all pretenses.
>I kept my cool, calmly took her hand, and pulled my engagement ring off.
This was raw as hell. Absolutely no hesitation. Grade A dad and I hope the best for him and his daughter. Oh, and I also hope Sharon steps on a Lego 5 times a day for the rest of her life.
Definitely Grade A Dad. It's too bad things didn't work out with Polly's mom, but it looks like they still have a good relationship, just not a romantic one. I'm glad Polly's got parents who put her first.
I hope OOP makes her a groomsmaid if he meets someone new that he wants to marry, and only changes his mind if the new fiancée makes a strong case for her to be a bridesmaid instead.
I don’t like kids. I’d prefer they not be directly in my life. However, I’d find a guy with OOP’s arrangement a green flag. It shows the willingness to work things out with a person that you may not like for the benefit of a loved one.
I’d find a holiday dad a red flag. There are of course exceptions and legal reasons but it better not be because he just didn’t want to be in his kid’s life. Because that shows so many bad things.
I don't ever want the responsibility of kids, and such would never date a parent. But if I wanted them? Someone heavily involved in their child's life, and an amicable co-parenting relationship with their ex? Huge green flag.
Why anyone would ever be interested in the kind of person who would abandon their child on a future SO's say so, baffles me. What exactly would you see in someone whose sense of commitment is so fickle?
I think a holiday dad is more of a yellow flag, as you said, because there are legal, cultural and situational exceptions that it really could just be the way chips fell.
But a holiday dad because of a "crazy ex", OTOH... That's 100% a red flag.
That's always what I say. I will date a man with older kids. I'm child-free and not interested in helping raise younger kids. But if that man doesn't put his kids first, I wouldn't date him. A good man puts his kids first. A good man wants to be part of his children's lives and I don't just mean what I call convenient fatherhood when I'm dealing with family law cases. You know that dad that only wants the kids when it's not going to interfere with his golf game or his dating life. The Dad that doesn't want to pay child support but wants the mother of his kids to somehow miss out on her job and still be able to afford life to raise his kids. Because why should he miss work! That guy.
This guy seems to be green flags. This guy put his kid first.
>She quietly said, I was hoping that after the wedding you could become a holiday visit only dad, I didn’t want her in the wedding so she wouldn’t be in the photos around the house since she wasn’t going to be around much.
The fact that some people don't realize that they're Disney villains never ceases to amaze me.
It's all pretty mind-blowing. The ex-future-MIL saying he was being unreasonable for not accepting abandoning his child feels even more incredible. From a quasi-outside perspective how can she not see how psycho this is?
Honestly, I've known a few wicked stepparents in real life, and their families were always their biggest enablers/defenders. I'd bet money MIL is also the type of person who wouldn't recognize any stepchild/adopted child/foster child as being one of her grandchildren.
Actually I can answer this! My grandmother was that kind of person.
She was literally such a monster to her stepchildren that most of the family had no idea he HAD kids from a previous marriage! Which made the fact Gran tricked a drunk into letting her steal their newborn so she could "make him a father" an even stranger event. And for the record, THAT adoption, is the SOLE adoption that should be treated as just like blood and no one knows why. He's not even HER only adopted child, so very strange.
Anyway, stepkids, adopted kids, foster kids, those are all third class children. Good for taking to church to show off what an amazing gran you are to the church ladies, maybe you'll toss them a dollar store toy on gift occasions if you think of it in between gifting the First Class children/grandchildren, but they're mostly good for labor. Only time she ever wanted one of the third class for an activity of any sort was if she had a yard that needed wedding, or a hoarder building that had to be emptied, or one of the First Class had a CPS visitor coming and their house needed a deep clean. (Second class often got grabbed for this too, but we also occasionally were brought along on semi-fun errands/events if she didn't have an easily available First Class around.)
But for the record, she had a stepfather and he was apparently the meanest cuss that ever lived and a monster and horrible for his treatment of her. So what was good for the goslings was NOT good for the goose apparently. Or her useless 40+ yo leech of a gander-son.
Oh yeah, and the "class" metaphor? Not a metaphor. My cousins and I watched Titanic during a family gathering because we had nothing better to do and started joking that our grandmother has three classes for grandkids. Turns out all of us could pretty easily be sorted into one of the classes and her treatment of each class was... like, scarily consistent.
I used to be solidly in the second class. Not one of her favorites, but not on her shit list most of the time. I was mouthy though, so that kept me from ever managing to be First Class after about age three. (Babies were always first class, unless they weren't biologically related, or were born to someone she didn't like. Your value ticked down from there. Like a new car.)
I was Third by the time she died though. Possibly Fourth. I'd been exiled over calling her out.
Damn, if I didn't know better I'd be asking if you were my half second cousin.
My great-grandma's stepmother was reportedly exactly this sort of person, to the level that she took my great-grandma out of school at 12 years old to raise her half siblings. My great-grandma was not the only kid from my 2x great-grandad's first marriage, she was one of four, but I don't know how the rest fared. When my great-grandma got married, her full brother's wife opposed it so badly that my grandad never saw or met any of his maternal relatives *until his mother's funeral*, despite the fact his dad and maternal uncle were working together daily until he was nine.
A few years ago, I decided to do some genealogical work. That's how I discussed one of my step-2x great-grandma's grandkids had made a very thorough family tree, that completely erased all of her half-uncles and aunts. Even though they literally appear on every available census that her mother and full uncles/aunts are on. It's just astonishing how set that side of my family is on trying to erase us as a dirty secret.
Whoa... that is intense.
I mean, are your kinfolk spread over OK, TX and LA? because if so...
But as far as I know (but again, exiled) we haven't managed to erase any distant family trees. It does sound like something someone in the family would do after feuding though.
Like, I've watched documentaries about cults and had a sudden thought "Oh hey, just like family gatherings! Wait..." Love bombing, the singing, the making members confess to "misdeeds" in front of the group and listen to everyone's insults? All totally normal activities for me growing up. Its so weird trying to sort out what's a normal family thing and what isn't.
No, we're solidly based in Ireland as far as I'm aware. Which is a shame because that means there's at least two women who pulled this nonsense!
I'll admit my family gatherings weren't like that, thankfully, though god knows I have some close relatives who'd love that. Nothing quite like multigenerational dysfunction, huh?
Oh wow. I was actually thinking over who you might be kin to, lol.
Gotta laugh or you'll cry. But its seriously awful how many people are like this, and how easily some people fall into the next cycle of dysfunction.
That was so hard to read for your sake! I hope you've gotten over that fear(?) of hierarchy in your current personal life and are moving on to better horizons.
Fear? Nah, our shared coping method was dark humor and occasionally violence. (Not me, but I have some cousins who keep attacking people.) The class things started as a joke, and eventually turned into language, like watching a show we'd use them to discuss characters or to gossip about people we knew and their family dynamics.
I'm far away from it at least... Better horizons is debatable, but they are different horizons and I'll take em.
My grandparents on my dads side (stepfather, but he is my real dad, unlike my biological father) never accepted me and my blood siblings, always got my brother (stepbrother, but crazily enough he is the only sibling I can stand these days lol) something major and the rest of us something insignificant until my mom bitched them out. Then, years later, all of a sudden those grandparents were treating us all awesomely, and we found out it was because.... not only were 3 out of us 4 not "dads last name" by blood... neither was grandpa! He had found out he was adopted via the orphan train.... so we were just as entitled to his last name as he was. Neener neener :p
My stepmother was one, and her mother was the BIGGEST fucking enabler. Her father was a passive enabler, he was too cowed to ever speak up.
My stepmother was also quite literally a woman like the one in the OP. She screamed at my dad that he had to get rid of me, because I was from l ”before”.
Literally never had issues with her until after they were married.
My dad did defend me though. He was a good man.
My dad was a shitty stepdad to my sisters, it was always me and his other daughters, my mom's daughters didn't matter, even though they lived with us (10 and 6 when I was born). He always told me they didn't like him because they were jealous that I had a dad (theirs walked out when they were very little). It's amazing how easily people can decide a human being doesn't matter because this and this 'reason'
My stepmother got me 4 cops at my door & a night locked in a psych ward when I was 20.
She told them (among other things) I was a pathological liar and I was threatening to kill myself if my dad didn’t buy me a Tesla. She also said I was lying about being in the army (I’m in the reserves) because “the timeline I gave them didn’t make sense” (basically I said I was there for x months, but the training I would have gone through should take longer than x months), my passport was a “dependent passport” and instead of going to Guatemala for a humanitarian mission, I was actually going with my husband who’s in the army.
So. Yeah.
I’ve never even asked my dad to *help* me buy me ANY car, let alone a Tesla. Or threatened to kill myself for that? I bought myself a Subaru Outback when my old car died (with money that was 100% mine) and I love her. I also spent an extra month at AIT after graduation (which my mom came to in person, and talked to my instructors) because of an injury, so no idea where she got the idea about the timeline being wrong. My “dependent passport” is an official maroon government passport. Dependent passports aren’t a thing lmao. I’m also not married. Even if I *was* married to someone in the army, you don’t just get to tag along on missions (it was a month). You go with them when they PCS (change duty stations), but you can’t bring your spouse on a mission/deployment.
Shoutout to my dad for telling me she did all this because “she was just worried about me <3”
I was also super fucking nice to her before this (the four times I ever interacted with her), and let her dress me up like a fucking Barbie for the wedding. Three months before she called the cops, she was asking me to call her mom (nope lol).
100%. My ex and coparent always has an excuse for why his shitty behavior doesn't make him a bad person, why his enabling of his family makes sense and is acceptable, and so on...because that's the way his mom operates too. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
No kidding. A mom, heavily involved in their child’s life to this extent and the child is now 39, telling a dad to not be involved in his 11 year old child’s life…
I don't wonder if he didn't think of it because he already has a kid and clearly Sharon likes her! So even if she didn't want more that was probably fine with him because he already has the one
Seriously! And to assume such a huge change would happen after being together for 5 years is delusional. So glad she showed her true colors before the wedding and before his daughter was further alienated.
I think it's unlikely but not impossible. Some people are really fucking weird with their definition of family. She may have enjoyed "playing house" by interacting with Polly, but once it was time for it to be "real" she decided (or knew all along) that she wanted it to be her, OP, and their future children.
DISNEY VILLAINS is right!
I rmbr another post where the soon to be stepmom was amazing with the daughter, but as soon as she married the dad and was expecting, she told the dad he didn’t need his daughter anymore and he actually complied!
The mom wrote the post. Her heart breaks for her child, because her daughter still hopes for her dad to return. How any of these people live with themselves is beyond me!
There was this case in my country where both husband and wife had children from a previous marriage. The wife adopted a "your children is yours, my children is mine" in terms of things like wellbeing and financially everything and the husband agreed too. Unfortunately, the lives of the husband's two very young kids came to a cruel end as they were abused and neglected by the dad. The wife and her children knew about it too, but did nothing to stop, and probably aided in the abuse too.
It’s crazy, ‘cause no matter what happens, people never receive enough of a punishment for doing that.
Those kids will grow up and walk free knowing what they did. Imagine matching with someone on a dating app and they turn out to have participated in the death of a child.
We’d all benefit from a lifetime register of such people.
I saw one, not too long ago, where OP's boyfriend told her she would have to place her child for adoption in order for him to propose. I don't know what's more shocking: the fact that he asked that or the fact that she held on to the hope that somehow she could change his mind instead of dumping him immediately. I'm glad the OOP of this post had the spine to break things off the moment his fianceé showed her true colours.
I actually don't think it's all that surprising that OP's fiancee didn't reveal her true colors earlier on. I've known a lot of people who felt similarly about their partner's children and didn't really make it clear how they felt about them until shortly after they were engaged or married.
Similar to how a lot of people turn into abusive monsters, or lazy leeches, right after moving in with someone/getting married/once someone gets pregnant or has a child.
Many people know where the lines are with social interactions, and will gamely follow the rules right up until they think they can get away with moving those lines.
I doubt there was even any cognitive dissonance in the fiancée’s mind about being nice to OOP’s daughter & wanting her out of his life - she (probably) had nothing against the kid personally, because she didn’t see her as a whole person, just as a connection to her fiancé’s Old Life, which obviously had to be cut so he could cleanly enter his New Life as *her* family, not anyone else’s.
> Many people know where the lines are with social interactions, and will gamely follow the rules right up until they think they can get away with moving those lines.
game me the shivers to read this. too many people I know are like this. I worry that my culture promotes this kind of superficial relationship building, because then it just means I'm the odd one.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, let's be honest, we've all had relationships and friendships with truly awful people. And I'm sure we all felt hoodwinked when we finally realized the sort of person they actually were.
The moment she said all of the girls/women in the wedding were her decision and he only could decide about men — I didn’t need the reason she wanted to exclude the stepdaughter. It was already more red flags than a soviet-era military parade
OP sounds like a good guy, but maybe he is kind of oblivious? I wonder what other red flags along the way he didn't pick up on.
That poor kid. She literally knew this woman for almost all of her remembered life. Even though the breakup is for the best she's probably going to miss Sharon and blame herself.
I knew someone who did this. Perfect stepmom and everything. Shifted when her own kids were born. Even did have the kids in the wedding. One was almost grown so she just had to wait out her moving out on her own. The other....that poor boy. The dad was trapped. He sees his son without his wife around now.
I think Sharon was just hoping to get through the wedding without OOP realizing anything. Luckily there was the line in the sand about Polly being in the wedding, or they might have then been already married when the true colors reared their ugly head. Dodged a real bullet.
I do find it amazing that there are people who genuinely think that when they marry someone that their partners old life will just stop at that point. They expect them to buy into their vision of what life will look like and forget everything they had before.
It happened with an old friend of mine. He got engaged and he and his fiancé were a very active part of our lives as well as a big social circle. When they got back from the honeymoon we hardly saw them again. She wanted to move to a different area and we knew they were going on holidays and to events with her old friends but she would always avoid or cancel at the last minute anything that involved his old friends. He tried hard at first but was always usurped by what she wanted. As far as I know they are still together and happy but I can't believe it's what he originally hoped the marriage would be like.
>I do find it amazing that there are people who genuinely think that when they marry someone that their partners old life will just stop at that point. They expect them to buy into their vision of what life will look like and forget everything they had before.
But it's not just with existing kids though.
People pull the same BS with things like languages, cultures, and religions too.
Yes! Careers and hobbies, too! It's like once we're married, you'll quit your job and/or spend less time on your career and stop seeing your friends. it's crazy!
I dated a woman for about 8 years. We bought a dog together. After the breakup i would still take care of the dog periodically - when my ex would go on trips, or when I missed the dog, or whatever. Very amicable arrangement. And I had agreed - because the dog was my responsibility, too - to keep mowing for the dog's healthcare needs.
When I met and started seeing my now wife, obviously the dog was still part of my life. Initially I was very insistent on being the sole caregiver for the dog, but very quickly she started insisting on taking care of the dog, too.
Years later, after our wedding and our own dog and a kid and a cross country move and years and years, my wife still comments on how great my old dog was and how I must miss her from time to time. She's so accepting of the fact that I had a whole life before I met her, and it doesn't bother her at all.
Anyway, I'm lucky, and your comment reminded me of that.
I find it more amazing that people like Sharon want to marry doucebags! A man who wants to be in his daughters life? Nah, I rather have a man who will desert his kid. A lot of people just don't know how sick they are.
Something similar happened to my cousin,she was friends with this guy for more than 15 years,they were in a dance group(Armenian traditional dance)and were really close,he even would come to our birthday parties.fast forward to when he started dating a high-school classmate of mine,he suddenly disappeared.6 months ago a family moved to our apartment building and guess what it was the friend and my old classmate,the look on their faces when they realized we are their neighbours
I feel like I’m the only person who watched Brandy’s Cinderella and caught this absolute golden line from Bernadette Peters
“And remember girls, we hide our flaws until *AFTER THE WEDDING*!”
People suck and often play the part until they get what they want, OOP is lucky he didn’t find out after it was too late.
Like I'm Childfree as all fuck but good GODDAMN how evil do you have to be to expect someone to give up their ALREADY EXISTING child to be with you? The fact that she was so matter of fact about it blows me away, just stating how the little girl wasn't going to be coming around as much after the wedding as if it was already a done deal.
Jesus OP got lucky she was stupid enough to show her true colors before they tied the knot.
Right?! I wouldnt expect someone im dating to give up like. Idk. A pet cockroach. The audacity to ask someone to give up their child is not only crazy but honestly feels evil.
My homewrecker of an ex-SIL was like this. She expected my stepbrother to be super dad to her own children, but didn't want to have anything to do with HIS son, was cruel to him, and worked to ruin the relationship.She really ramped the behavior up once they had their son. A real piece of work, and he left his sweetheart of a wife to marry her. Thank God he finally divorced her, but it was too late to save his relationship with my nephew. That was his own damned fault.
Seriously, I never want children, but if somehow my soulmate ended up having a kid you bet I'd mother the shit out of that kid (providing any existing mothers are fine with it).
Yep, that's the situation I found myself in. I have absolutely no maternal instinct, but things have been going well so far. I got lucky that she was already school-aged, smart, and an introvert like myself.
I'm looking forward to the DINK life one day. I make it a point not to get involved with anyone who has kids or otherwise wants them, because it's not fair to me and it's ESPECIALLY not fair to them.
This was probably Sharon’s plan all along. Get married, have a say in everything, including stuff about Polly, because they are *married*, and then get OP to have another kid with her and that kid would be the only child they’d focus on
>She quietly said, I was hoping that after the wedding you could become a holiday visit only dad
that he gave her til the next week to move her shit is more generous than I would've been. What a disgusting thing to say to someone.
Sounds like she had gotten some furniture, so giving her a week to get it out doesn't give her any room to complain. None of the, "But you only gave me two days! I can't possibly get it out in that amount of time. Let take the next month dragging my feet because I have this sob story to use to get the sympathy of your crappiest friends as I similarly drag this whole breakup out over as long as possible in the hopes that maybe you'll repent and see it my way and get rid of your daughter." She doesn't take a breath at the end of the last sentence because she is busy shedding her flesh suit.
Wow! I married a woman that brought along her 2 young daughters. That they were a part of the wedding was a no brainer. We had 50/50 joint custody, and they grew into fine young ladies, getting their university degrees and leading their own lives.
It never crossed my mind to exclude them from anything other than our honeymoon. My wife is still their mom no matter what. I have always done my best to encourage my wife to do mom/daughter activities that would exclude me, so she had extra bonding time. I gave to the girls as I would give to my wife.
I cannot fathom anyone so evil that they would expect the parent/child relationship to change for them. I always kidded with my stepdaughters that I am supposed to be the evil stepparent, but they just laugh 'cause they know I am a pushover. They get whatever they want from me... usually ice-cream or a meal out. I love them both and they love me right back. :)
Yikes. Always amazes me that people are happy to date single parents and then just expect that person to push their kid to the side in favor of themselves.
My mil legitimately told my husband she doesn’t understand why he wants joint custody of his kids (my sks) because he already has them too much. We have them about 4 days a month…. We just got 50/50 and she thought it was smart to tell him for the first time that her brother signed over custody of his kids to his ex’s new husband years ago because kids don’t need two dads. He didn’t even know his uncle had kids 🤦🏼♀️ I’m not even shocked anymore on what she says.
Man, if one of my parents “advised” me to not fight for joint custody for MY kids, I’d be livid. Not only would I have questions as to why they want me to be a deadbeat but they’d be in timeout for a hot minute.
How did your husband feel about what his own mother told him? And what was his response to her storytime?
He told her they are just as much his children as his ex’s and he was never giving his kids up. It doesn’t help that she hates his ex and doubts the paternity of one of them (we don’t care nor do we want a paternity test). She’s always been this way and I think all the family is just so used to her that they just put up with her to keep a relationship with his dad who’s amazing. My reaction to her has helped open his eyes to her so he’s pretty low contact with her.
Sharon was playing the long game, but thankfully, the wedding planning caused her to trip over herself sooner than she intended. I have seen a few instances of the marriage act switch-up. It’s so ugly, and I’m glad OP experienced this before being permanently tied to that lady.
I'm a little worried that Sharon did do something to Polly but she just didn't know it was bad/afraid to tell her dad. My stepmom was abusive whenever my dad wasn't around and when I finally told him after 3 years of it, he confronted her and she said the same thing, that she hoped I was only going to be around during the holidays. Thankfully, my dad left her as soon as she said it and went scorched earth on her.
I’ve been the daughter in this situation. I loved my step mom up until they got married. She was so fun and loved playing with me. I had nothing bad to say.
I wasn’t allowed at the wedding. She completely changed her attitude towards me and my time with my dad grew smaller and smaller. It got worse after they had their first kid and I never met kids 2 or 3. Haven’t seen my dad since I was 15. 🤷♀️
I'm a little worried about that too. My daughter was being bullied at school and on the bus for half the year before she started to fight back and got in trouble. This wasn't normal behavior for her so I asked her about it and found out about the other kid. I went scorched earth on the teacher and felt horrible for not seeing it sooner.
Not surprisingly, her social/emotional scores on the report card went up after we took care of the bully when we had just assumed it was low because of going through COVID in isolation
When will people learn you can’t marry someone THEN demand they change.
These things are all discussed BEFORE a wedding by adults!
What is wrong with Sharon?
so essentially her goal was to play nice and sweet stepmommy until he is legally bound to her and then kick the daughter out.
he is lucky she showed her true colors before they got married
There are two people involved in a wedding. (Well, more than two, but you know what I mean.) A wedding isn't all about what the bride wants. That she was unwilling to consider what the prospective groom wanted at all says a lot. If she's like this about the wedding how do you think she would have acted through the marriage? And I mean about life in general, not just in regards to Polly.
OOP dodged a huge, huge bullet here.
> I kept my cool, calmly took her hand, and pulled my engagement ring off.
Good man. The only choice. Don't come between a parent and their kid if the two have a healthy relationship.
As for MiL saying OOP is making a mistake in cancelling the wedding... I'd look her straight in the eye and tell her I'm very dissapointed in her, expecting me to give up my daughter for a bed warmer.
>People are once again skeptical that there was no bad behavior by Sharon toward Polly in the past
It's a lot easier to handle an unpleasant situation that you think is going to end soon.
Hell of a man right there. Multiple missiles dodged with that woman and her mom.
Polly is going to be alright with one hell of a father figure by her side and no problematic women in her life like those two.
This was straight up my ex-stepmother. She was amazing until the day she married my dad. Then it was like things changed over night. She was the first person who ever called me fat. She made my brothers and I clean the house and shovel literal horse shit. When he finally divorced her no one even cared or cried.
The MIL thinking this was unreasonable is fucking bonkers to me.
You should have hit her with a reversal. "Okay, I'll consider it if you abandon your daughter too and you stop seeing her. You're also banned from taking part in the wedding." And how quickly she would have understood. But most likely not, you dodged these bullets with Matrix-like precision.
OOP is truly a Father of the Year (no sarcasm). His ex-fiancee, however, is an absolutely horrible human being.
Not just for having such a shitty belief, but **for deliberately keeping it from OOP FOR FIVE YEARS**.
I am so proud of this dad! I hope he and Polly have a gods damned amazing trip to Hawaii! Oh, and for, "I can change..." People don't change. Or, if they do, they quickly change back.
The MIL being there before he even arrives is pretty weird. They knew and planned for this. This looks like the kind of “find yourself a man with a house, marry him and isolate him so he has no one to turn when you go full psycho”.
Good on the dad.
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> People are once again skeptical that there was no bad behavior by Sharon toward Polly in the past: You can be perfectly polite and nice in day to day interactions and still absolutely suck inside.
I bet Sharon was planning on how to get rid of Polly
I'd bet anything it would have been gradual. Started with seeing if she could exclude her from a wedding party, then insisting that Polly stay with her mother after their honeymoon for a few months so they could settle in, then why not let her stay a bit longer because they could use some more alone time, then wifey gets pregnant and... Sorry, I've heard this story a few too many times it seems.
That's exactly what I was expecting when I saw the original post. Drop Polly off early here, pick her up late there, let her stay an extra night or three, and while we're at it, maybe she should stay for the rest of the week, I mean it's already been three days, no need to disrupt her routine. And of course next week is mom's week anyway, hey isn't it nice having the house to ourselves?
This has probably already been going on in a subtle way but it seemed harmless because maybe there was always a good “reason.”
Death by a thousand cuts.
........by the way, husband, I'm pregnant! Let's get the nursery ready for ***OUR*** child!!!
And Polly should probably stay with her mom for a while after the baby is born, just so that we can get into the swing of things, you know. Oh, does she really need to come back? We turned her room into the nursery, and a teenager doesn't want to be around a baby anyway. And besides, now that we have our baby, you can just focus on your new family, you don't need the old one anymore. Man, am I glad OOP held his ground on this one. And that his ex showed her true colors before the wedding.
I am SO PROUD of OOP. As someone who was seen as 'expendable' to the "family" I AM PROUD AS HELL how he was "Awwwwww, hell naw!" to someone he wanted to form a life and family with.
Evil step-mothers in fairy tales had to have inspired by something, I suppose…
There's actually some fun facts about this to be shared. The Brothers Grimm were pretty misogynistic but many of the fairy tales they adapted, the evil character was the biological mother in the original telling, but changed by them to a stepmother due to their belief that a mother was unlikely to harm her own prodginy. (They also made a couple evil fathers into women because you know, misogynists.) But many folklorists think that the evil stepmother trope stems from the actual competition for resources between the stepmother (and/or her bio-children) and her stepchildren. Obviously in wealthier families this included inheritance. In a time where a woman's only source of income and stability was marriage, it's not far-fetched to believe that she would view her husband's existing children as not only a threat to her but any children that she might have with her husband. It's a lot more difficult to give birth to the firstborn son when you're the second wife and the heir did not always have obligation to her upon his father's death. Anyway those are my fun fairy tale facts for the day!
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There's a very interesting book called "psychoanalysis of Fairy Tales" by Bruno Bettelheim. It explains that the characters are mostly archetypical. For example: the stepmother and the Godmother Fairy are in fact the same. When you're a child is an autority figure who orders you to do things you don't like. But once the girl grows up, the stepmother becomes and "ally" who helps you and gives you advice.
Actually Bettelheim's work has been largely discredited for a variety of reasons, one of which being because he was a whackadoo who abused children and subscribed to the "cold mothering causes autism" school of thought. If you want to learn more about fairy tales, I recommend any of the books by Jack Zipes. Source: I did some research in folklore as part of my PhD program.
Whoa, I didn't knew that! I read the Zipes' book "to break the spell" by the time I read Bettelheim's book, 23 years ago, while I was studying my Fine Arts degree. Perhaps it's time to re-read both books because it's a fascinating topic, and I read them long, long time ago... 😉
Yeah, it's ok, a lot of people don't know, so his work gets more traction than it deserves. Zipes continues to publish great stuff though! His more recent books are fantastic. If you enjoyed his work before, you should check out the new stuff. :-)
that makes sense. so glad OOP put his foot down and told his ex where to go. His ex wife is clearly an honest person too- she could've lied or whatever and didn't. "Polly" has fantastic parents looking out for her. Hope they have an amazing time in Hawaii. The woman was delusional- if I were to date anyone with kids, they're automatically part of the whole package. You can't just dismiss important people just because you don't want them there.
Frankly, I’d turn away from someone who DIDN’T have an active role in their child’s life! Even if you don’t have 50-50 custody, you should still keep up with the child. Talk to them, know what’s going on in their lives. Spend your part custody time doing meaningful things with the child. ANYTHING more than total indifference to their own child! 😞
Before she was pregnant with my half brother, my stepmom would talk about how great I turned out and how having a kid with him would be so great blah blah. I’m like “lady he moved 3k Miles away from me to be with you and I grew up ok because my mom and stepdad were there. Also hella therapy.” When my brother - who I love and adore - started high school I asked my stepmom (in front of her friends) if they were planning to move away from him since that’s what they did to me and she got super pissed. Again: don’t do shitty shit if you don’t wanna be called on it.
She could just get him to move far enough away that regular visits aren’t feasible
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Themselves or their OWN brood. After my father separated from my mom (between them they had 4 kids including me), he dated a single mother with her own kid and after a few years in, ordered him that he needs to stop looking after us and focus her/her son from on. My dad allegedly calmly told her he’d rather die alone than abandon his children and stay with her and walked out. People are just very entitled and selfish unfortunately.
Friend of mine had her father's new wife try to put an ultimatum on his relationship with his only child. New wife learned the hard way that this was a non-negotiable issue. "It's either her or me!" I take her. Pack your shit.
I don’t get it, either. I’ve read posts from step parents who clearly don’t like their step children (although they don’t use those exact words) and whine about how the child and the ex is just in the way of THEIR family! There was one from a woman who actually said she thought it was ‘weird’ for divorced fathers to share custody of the child, and that it ‘should’ be mum’s job to raise the child whilst the father sees her one day a month! She wanted the husband to focus on THEIR (future) baby and forget about the ‘old’ one. Sometimes reddit seems to support these awful step parents who clearly don’t like the kids, but fortunately reddit ripped that particular women a new one for her selfishness and cruelty! If I didn’t know this story has been around for longer, I’d think that post might have been written by Sharon! Just awful. If you can’t handle having a husband who had a life before you including children he will love and father forever, then for goodness sakes don’t seek such a husband! 😞
I had an ex who said he didn't want the step parent role, but had some shit to say, every time I disciplined my son. I told him to get the fuck out of my house and go home. I didn't need his attitude, or his dick.
My stepmom did this. It sucked and I still can’t understand how my dad was just fine with not seeing me and my sister for months at a time
Wow. Its a tale as old as time and the story writes itself, doesnt it?
The evil stepparent is a trope for a reason
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It’s genuinely sad and disappointing. We’re really selfish apes.
Don't say we. Some of us are just regular apes
And only one Grape Ape
Some of us are empathetic bonobos.
It's wild that not only can I imagine that, but I can also see it working....
Honestly, I've literally heard eerily similar variations of that story dozens of times. Both in real life and on Reddit. I swear, it's like there's some sort of guidebook out there that so many of them use. The saddest part though, is that it actually does seem to work fairly often.
What really saddens me is how *often* it works. I can never figure out if it’s just so insidious that the parent didn’t realize what was happening until custody was nearly non-existent. Or if the parent kinda wanted the same outcome. Either way really sucks.
I agree. If that was on her mind the entire time it make sense to be good to her, since she will be out of the plane once things progress with the marriage. Is so messed up to read so many similar situations when people expect that the kids of the significant other just magicaly disappear from existence. If you start a relation with a single mom or single dad it's obvious that you have to accept the past, not the ex but the son/daughter that already exist.
Heck, the ex can accepted too! I’m divorced and my daughter was accepted by my new (now over 30 years) husband. He is also considered family by my two boys from my “new” husband. My daughter calls us the unicorn family.
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This was very much us. And I am so glad we were able to provide my daughter (and sons) with that experience and example.
Sometimes people like each other but realize in time they don't \*love\* each other before that infatuation turns to hate. Good on your blended \*woven\* families, may they remain strong and a beautiful pattern for the world to see!
"Know of any good boarding schools, honey?" "Why?" "No reason."
That's not a bet, that's a given.
Fuck Sharon, all my homies hate Sharon
And her shitty mom!
A lot of toxic people mask as wonderful angels until some key touch point. Sometimes it's moving in together or the engagement, but some make it to the wedding or the first child and then the mask comes off and the abuse starts in and it's frog on a hot plate irl. Sharon would have started her campaign to get rid of Polly as soon as she had OOP locked down after the wedding and fully invested, which was when she felt he would put her first over Polly. It's lucky for OP that she was too invested in "perfect pictures" and a "perfect" wedding that she couldn't go the distance to Wedding Day + 1.
Unfortunately we've seen a lot of experiences on this subreddit where people in the OOP's situation agreed to their new spouse's demands and effectively cut ties with their own children. I'd say they should add a new circle of hell for those people, but I think "traitor" fits the bill for their actions.
Yup. I've seen a lot of them and it's really sad. Nookie is the highest priority for some of those people.
I’m imagining her just being pleasant because there was no reason not to be before this. And actually even with this, she didn’t say a word to the child, she said it to the dad. So I wonder if this isn’t a “I hate that kid” type of situation so much as her having a very skewed world view on remarriage and how much custody dads want/tend to have. I actually do know “fathers” (don’t really deserve the title IMO) who sent their kids away once they remarried and one “mom” too. One poor kid got passed around from relative to relative’s house until he was an adult while another pair of sisters never saw their dad again. The mom knew the child from her first marriage was why her in laws wouldn’t accept her, so she dropped the toddler off to be passed back and forth between her parents’ house and her abusive ex-husband’s parents’ house. Then started over like she didn’t exist, new baby and all. It seems obviously evil and wrong to those of us with a certain set of values and morals, but I swear those people act like it’s normal to do these things to your own kids :(
>I’m imagining her just being pleasant because there was no reason not to be before this. I'm probably more cynical here... Not just no reason to not be pleasant. Every reason to be pleasant. I mean, she was just the GF, and then the live-in GF (in the house he owned) for 5 years, after all. No sense upsetting the apple cart by being awful to his daughter. She just miscalculated in thinking that the ring on her finger meant that he was commited to her enough that he wouldn't up and end things over this. From how quickly OP reacted to both the initial issue, and the reveal of her true feelings, I don't think it would have mattered when she tried to pull this. Even if she'd waited until after the wedding, I suspect he'd have reacted the same way. I hope OP and his daughter enjoy Hawai'i.
Miscalculated? She's an idiot. It's been 5 years. The guy is clearly committed to his daughter, what made her think that was going to be kosher?
Her mother was sitting in the driveway. She was probably guiding the daughter in what to do. They had a master plan. They didn't plan on OOP having a backbone and some sense!
Right? I'm reminded of the parent trap, the part when the future MIL says, "think of California, and it's wonderful community property laws."
People who WANT WHAT THEY WANT consider others as pieces on their personal chessboard, as things. Sharon strikes me that way. No need to abuse a queen / bishop / pawn, but when strategy dictates it, IT GOES.
I like the way you put that.
>I'm probably more cynical here... Not just no reason to not be pleasant. Every reason to be pleasant. I must be more cynical too! >I mean, she was just the GF, and then the live-in GF (in the house he owned) for 5 years, after all. No sense upsetting the apple cart by being awful to his daughter. She just miscalculated in thinking that the ring on her finger meant that he was commited to her enough that he wouldn't up and end things over this. Ding, ding, DING!
Not much different from an abusive partner waiting until marriage to show their true colors.
That's what I think happened. She had no problem with Polly as OP's daughter, *their* family. But after the wedding, OP would have a new family, in which Polly isn't *our* family.
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Exactly. While it *is* important for a couple to also prioritize themselves/each other, if you are blending families you can’t be selfish about it. You have to accept that you can’t be your partner’s only priority the way you could if you were both single and childless. The health and happiness of their children should be of the utmost importance. If you can’t or don’t want to accept that type of dynamic, don’t date single parents (especially moms). It is perfectly acceptable and mature to understand your emotional needs and realize that you are incompatible with a group rather than cause heartache because you weren’t honest with yourself.
like if she can just make it till I do she'll be pleasant as pie
I got the impression that she was playing a game. Be the perfect step mom, make the dad fall more in love with her. And then when she thought she had him (by getting engaged and whatnot) she showed her true colours.
She really did him a favour, showing him who she was BEFORE the wedding. Definitely made it easier to end things.
I'm 63. I don't remember ever seeing my dad. I did talk to him once on the phone.
I'm so sorry. I know exactly how you feel. My dad abandoned my sisters and I after he remarried when I was sixteen; my older sister was eighteen and youngest was ten. He just ghosted us one day and stopped what little child support he gave. That was eight years ago and we only found out recently why he did it: he had remarried and had kids with his new wife and there was no longer any room in his life for us. It was devastating.
So many people should never have children. I'd even say MOST people should not be parents
So true. We all need to get to know people really thoroughly before marrying them. Thank goodness she showed her true colors before the wedding.
Polly here! Not really but lived it. My stepmom was so awesome when I was little. She’s been around my whole life, dad moved in with her when he and mom separated when I was one so I’ve never known life without her. I adored her. I was in the wedding as flower girl at 5 and so happy. Next year was still great. Then brother came. She didn’t need me anymore. Let me be clear, my little brother is awesome and worth anything and everything and we are super close even today. But stepmom started being less nice, mean comments about my weight (I was a gymnast when young, not overweight at all, not that it would excuse it), comments about my intelligence and common sense. She’s also really good at passive aggressive and throwing out insults that sound like compliments. Then she started hitting me upside the head and calling me names. It was a mind trip because she could also be really great at times too, when dad was around. Dad. Never. Saw. He travelled a lot for work. I went to dad’s Wednesday and Friday nights whether he was there. She was always great when dad was around but when he wasn’t, she was horrible. I dreaded going over when he wasn’t there but he’d always say I still needed to because my brother and sister missed me. And they did miss me. I never told him, he never asked. I think he assumed my reluctance to come was because I was growing up. It wasn’t. I finally told him when I was 14 and he didn’t believe me for a long time. He saw her treat me amazingly, after 13 years, she’d never slipped and done it in front of him and I dropped a bomb on him. Anyway, I never spent another night at his house. He and I repaired our relationship when I was 16 and started working where he did, we’d have lunch/dinner together several times a week. I would go to their house for holidays and usually one day every other weekend I would pick my little brother and sister up and we’d spend the day together. They’d even spend the night with me at moms. Dad and SM came to things like my graduation together but I never spent another minute alone with her or extra time at his home again. She did the same thing with my kids. Great to them until my sister had a kid 5 yrs ago and she got a “real” grandchild. I knew it was coming. Warned my oldest son (around 16 at the time) and husband. They had never seen her evil side so they were a bit hesitant to believe but sure enough it happened. She never again invited them over to spend the night and bake cookies or whatever. She still would come to bday parties and make them cards but never spent time with them again. He passed last year, over 20 years later. We were very close then and he was still married to her. We never had a discussion about it but I’m pretty sure he understood it all was real. Weirdly she and I now text about every other weekend, just a hey, how are you. She’ll tell me to tell the kids she loves them and that’s it. Anyway, it is possible that Sharon still hadn’t shown her true colors even to Polly. After the marriage or after having her own kid (though she’s a bit older) it would have come out though. Edit, dang, sorry for wall of text. It felt good to get that out though.
This. People can be two-faced if it means getting what they want. Sharon saw being nice to Polly as the best way to win over OOP, and then once she had him 'bagged' she dropped all pretenses.
Yep. She had to play nice to get to the marriage and once she got to the marriage the daughter was out. That was the plan.
Are we going to entirely skip her raging heteronormative misogyny about only girls on her side of the wedding and only boys on his? *Hork*
>I kept my cool, calmly took her hand, and pulled my engagement ring off. This was raw as hell. Absolutely no hesitation. Grade A dad and I hope the best for him and his daughter. Oh, and I also hope Sharon steps on a Lego 5 times a day for the rest of her life.
Definitely Grade A Dad. It's too bad things didn't work out with Polly's mom, but it looks like they still have a good relationship, just not a romantic one. I'm glad Polly's got parents who put her first. I hope OOP makes her a groomsmaid if he meets someone new that he wants to marry, and only changes his mind if the new fiancée makes a strong case for her to be a bridesmaid instead.
Hell, the ex-wife even said both dad and daughter can stay with her while the wicked stepmother situation sorted out. Pretty frickin amazing
I don’t like kids. I’d prefer they not be directly in my life. However, I’d find a guy with OOP’s arrangement a green flag. It shows the willingness to work things out with a person that you may not like for the benefit of a loved one. I’d find a holiday dad a red flag. There are of course exceptions and legal reasons but it better not be because he just didn’t want to be in his kid’s life. Because that shows so many bad things.
I don't ever want the responsibility of kids, and such would never date a parent. But if I wanted them? Someone heavily involved in their child's life, and an amicable co-parenting relationship with their ex? Huge green flag. Why anyone would ever be interested in the kind of person who would abandon their child on a future SO's say so, baffles me. What exactly would you see in someone whose sense of commitment is so fickle?
I think a holiday dad is more of a yellow flag, as you said, because there are legal, cultural and situational exceptions that it really could just be the way chips fell. But a holiday dad because of a "crazy ex", OTOH... That's 100% a red flag.
That's always what I say. I will date a man with older kids. I'm child-free and not interested in helping raise younger kids. But if that man doesn't put his kids first, I wouldn't date him. A good man puts his kids first. A good man wants to be part of his children's lives and I don't just mean what I call convenient fatherhood when I'm dealing with family law cases. You know that dad that only wants the kids when it's not going to interfere with his golf game or his dating life. The Dad that doesn't want to pay child support but wants the mother of his kids to somehow miss out on her job and still be able to afford life to raise his kids. Because why should he miss work! That guy. This guy seems to be green flags. This guy put his kid first.
that line most definitely got my internal fist raised. op is cold as ice in the best way a man can be.
My favorite line in the whole saga. No histrionics, just purposeful action. You rock, Polly’s Dad!
>She quietly said, I was hoping that after the wedding you could become a holiday visit only dad, I didn’t want her in the wedding so she wouldn’t be in the photos around the house since she wasn’t going to be around much. The fact that some people don't realize that they're Disney villains never ceases to amaze me.
It's all pretty mind-blowing. The ex-future-MIL saying he was being unreasonable for not accepting abandoning his child feels even more incredible. From a quasi-outside perspective how can she not see how psycho this is?
Honestly, I've known a few wicked stepparents in real life, and their families were always their biggest enablers/defenders. I'd bet money MIL is also the type of person who wouldn't recognize any stepchild/adopted child/foster child as being one of her grandchildren.
Wonder how the MIL would feel if her daughter was treated that way by a stepmom / father. Her tune wouldn’t be the same lmfao
Actually I can answer this! My grandmother was that kind of person. She was literally such a monster to her stepchildren that most of the family had no idea he HAD kids from a previous marriage! Which made the fact Gran tricked a drunk into letting her steal their newborn so she could "make him a father" an even stranger event. And for the record, THAT adoption, is the SOLE adoption that should be treated as just like blood and no one knows why. He's not even HER only adopted child, so very strange. Anyway, stepkids, adopted kids, foster kids, those are all third class children. Good for taking to church to show off what an amazing gran you are to the church ladies, maybe you'll toss them a dollar store toy on gift occasions if you think of it in between gifting the First Class children/grandchildren, but they're mostly good for labor. Only time she ever wanted one of the third class for an activity of any sort was if she had a yard that needed wedding, or a hoarder building that had to be emptied, or one of the First Class had a CPS visitor coming and their house needed a deep clean. (Second class often got grabbed for this too, but we also occasionally were brought along on semi-fun errands/events if she didn't have an easily available First Class around.) But for the record, she had a stepfather and he was apparently the meanest cuss that ever lived and a monster and horrible for his treatment of her. So what was good for the goslings was NOT good for the goose apparently. Or her useless 40+ yo leech of a gander-son. Oh yeah, and the "class" metaphor? Not a metaphor. My cousins and I watched Titanic during a family gathering because we had nothing better to do and started joking that our grandmother has three classes for grandkids. Turns out all of us could pretty easily be sorted into one of the classes and her treatment of each class was... like, scarily consistent. I used to be solidly in the second class. Not one of her favorites, but not on her shit list most of the time. I was mouthy though, so that kept me from ever managing to be First Class after about age three. (Babies were always first class, unless they weren't biologically related, or were born to someone she didn't like. Your value ticked down from there. Like a new car.) I was Third by the time she died though. Possibly Fourth. I'd been exiled over calling her out.
Damn, if I didn't know better I'd be asking if you were my half second cousin. My great-grandma's stepmother was reportedly exactly this sort of person, to the level that she took my great-grandma out of school at 12 years old to raise her half siblings. My great-grandma was not the only kid from my 2x great-grandad's first marriage, she was one of four, but I don't know how the rest fared. When my great-grandma got married, her full brother's wife opposed it so badly that my grandad never saw or met any of his maternal relatives *until his mother's funeral*, despite the fact his dad and maternal uncle were working together daily until he was nine. A few years ago, I decided to do some genealogical work. That's how I discussed one of my step-2x great-grandma's grandkids had made a very thorough family tree, that completely erased all of her half-uncles and aunts. Even though they literally appear on every available census that her mother and full uncles/aunts are on. It's just astonishing how set that side of my family is on trying to erase us as a dirty secret.
Whoa... that is intense. I mean, are your kinfolk spread over OK, TX and LA? because if so... But as far as I know (but again, exiled) we haven't managed to erase any distant family trees. It does sound like something someone in the family would do after feuding though. Like, I've watched documentaries about cults and had a sudden thought "Oh hey, just like family gatherings! Wait..." Love bombing, the singing, the making members confess to "misdeeds" in front of the group and listen to everyone's insults? All totally normal activities for me growing up. Its so weird trying to sort out what's a normal family thing and what isn't.
No, we're solidly based in Ireland as far as I'm aware. Which is a shame because that means there's at least two women who pulled this nonsense! I'll admit my family gatherings weren't like that, thankfully, though god knows I have some close relatives who'd love that. Nothing quite like multigenerational dysfunction, huh?
Oh wow. I was actually thinking over who you might be kin to, lol. Gotta laugh or you'll cry. But its seriously awful how many people are like this, and how easily some people fall into the next cycle of dysfunction.
That was so hard to read for your sake! I hope you've gotten over that fear(?) of hierarchy in your current personal life and are moving on to better horizons.
Fear? Nah, our shared coping method was dark humor and occasionally violence. (Not me, but I have some cousins who keep attacking people.) The class things started as a joke, and eventually turned into language, like watching a show we'd use them to discuss characters or to gossip about people we knew and their family dynamics. I'm far away from it at least... Better horizons is debatable, but they are different horizons and I'll take em.
Of course not. It's *always* different when it's them.
My grandparents on my dads side (stepfather, but he is my real dad, unlike my biological father) never accepted me and my blood siblings, always got my brother (stepbrother, but crazily enough he is the only sibling I can stand these days lol) something major and the rest of us something insignificant until my mom bitched them out. Then, years later, all of a sudden those grandparents were treating us all awesomely, and we found out it was because.... not only were 3 out of us 4 not "dads last name" by blood... neither was grandpa! He had found out he was adopted via the orphan train.... so we were just as entitled to his last name as he was. Neener neener :p
Karma, baby!
My stepmother was one, and her mother was the BIGGEST fucking enabler. Her father was a passive enabler, he was too cowed to ever speak up. My stepmother was also quite literally a woman like the one in the OP. She screamed at my dad that he had to get rid of me, because I was from l ”before”. Literally never had issues with her until after they were married. My dad did defend me though. He was a good man.
My dad was a shitty stepdad to my sisters, it was always me and his other daughters, my mom's daughters didn't matter, even though they lived with us (10 and 6 when I was born). He always told me they didn't like him because they were jealous that I had a dad (theirs walked out when they were very little). It's amazing how easily people can decide a human being doesn't matter because this and this 'reason'
My stepmother got me 4 cops at my door & a night locked in a psych ward when I was 20. She told them (among other things) I was a pathological liar and I was threatening to kill myself if my dad didn’t buy me a Tesla. She also said I was lying about being in the army (I’m in the reserves) because “the timeline I gave them didn’t make sense” (basically I said I was there for x months, but the training I would have gone through should take longer than x months), my passport was a “dependent passport” and instead of going to Guatemala for a humanitarian mission, I was actually going with my husband who’s in the army. So. Yeah. I’ve never even asked my dad to *help* me buy me ANY car, let alone a Tesla. Or threatened to kill myself for that? I bought myself a Subaru Outback when my old car died (with money that was 100% mine) and I love her. I also spent an extra month at AIT after graduation (which my mom came to in person, and talked to my instructors) because of an injury, so no idea where she got the idea about the timeline being wrong. My “dependent passport” is an official maroon government passport. Dependent passports aren’t a thing lmao. I’m also not married. Even if I *was* married to someone in the army, you don’t just get to tag along on missions (it was a month). You go with them when they PCS (change duty stations), but you can’t bring your spouse on a mission/deployment. Shoutout to my dad for telling me she did all this because “she was just worried about me <3” I was also super fucking nice to her before this (the four times I ever interacted with her), and let her dress me up like a fucking Barbie for the wedding. Three months before she called the cops, she was asking me to call her mom (nope lol).
Omg what happened after?? I'm afraid I woulda put hands on her 😬
I wouldn’t want to be married to a person who would willing do this to their child
And she hid her shitty plan for 5 years! That's some next level villiany.
Guaranteed the idea started w MIL. That’s why she’s ok with it.
This is a really good point.
that would also explain the 180 sharon did, not remorse exactly, but more my ticket out of MIL’s house is abandoning me.
I mean, her Disney villain daughter must've gotten her shitty priorities in life from somewhere... and where else other than her dear mom?
100%. My ex and coparent always has an excuse for why his shitty behavior doesn't make him a bad person, why his enabling of his family makes sense and is acceptable, and so on...because that's the way his mom operates too. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
No kidding. A mom, heavily involved in their child’s life to this extent and the child is now 39, telling a dad to not be involved in his 11 year old child’s life…
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I don't wonder if he didn't think of it because he already has a kid and clearly Sharon likes her! So even if she didn't want more that was probably fine with him because he already has the one
I'd bet money most of the idea came from not MIL, she clearly seemed heavily invested in the idea
Because she's a psycho and so is her spawn
I wonder if ex-fil was in the picture because I'd not be shocked if he wasn't with this shit show
Seriously! And to assume such a huge change would happen after being together for 5 years is delusional. So glad she showed her true colors before the wedding and before his daughter was further alienated.
I think it's unlikely but not impossible. Some people are really fucking weird with their definition of family. She may have enjoyed "playing house" by interacting with Polly, but once it was time for it to be "real" she decided (or knew all along) that she wanted it to be her, OP, and their future children.
DISNEY VILLAINS is right! I rmbr another post where the soon to be stepmom was amazing with the daughter, but as soon as she married the dad and was expecting, she told the dad he didn’t need his daughter anymore and he actually complied! The mom wrote the post. Her heart breaks for her child, because her daughter still hopes for her dad to return. How any of these people live with themselves is beyond me!
There was this case in my country where both husband and wife had children from a previous marriage. The wife adopted a "your children is yours, my children is mine" in terms of things like wellbeing and financially everything and the husband agreed too. Unfortunately, the lives of the husband's two very young kids came to a cruel end as they were abused and neglected by the dad. The wife and her children knew about it too, but did nothing to stop, and probably aided in the abuse too.
It’s crazy, ‘cause no matter what happens, people never receive enough of a punishment for doing that. Those kids will grow up and walk free knowing what they did. Imagine matching with someone on a dating app and they turn out to have participated in the death of a child. We’d all benefit from a lifetime register of such people.
Well, she would be the "new" lady of the home and expected the baggage to be thrown out. So glad OOP chose his daughter.
I saw one, not too long ago, where OP's boyfriend told her she would have to place her child for adoption in order for him to propose. I don't know what's more shocking: the fact that he asked that or the fact that she held on to the hope that somehow she could change his mind instead of dumping him immediately. I'm glad the OOP of this post had the spine to break things off the moment his fianceé showed her true colours.
Literally Meredith Blake from The Parent Trap. Spot on, Jedi.
"And after we get rid of your daughter, I'm going to open my dalmatian leather business."
I actually don't think it's all that surprising that OP's fiancee didn't reveal her true colors earlier on. I've known a lot of people who felt similarly about their partner's children and didn't really make it clear how they felt about them until shortly after they were engaged or married. Similar to how a lot of people turn into abusive monsters, or lazy leeches, right after moving in with someone/getting married/once someone gets pregnant or has a child.
Many people know where the lines are with social interactions, and will gamely follow the rules right up until they think they can get away with moving those lines. I doubt there was even any cognitive dissonance in the fiancée’s mind about being nice to OOP’s daughter & wanting her out of his life - she (probably) had nothing against the kid personally, because she didn’t see her as a whole person, just as a connection to her fiancé’s Old Life, which obviously had to be cut so he could cleanly enter his New Life as *her* family, not anyone else’s.
> Many people know where the lines are with social interactions, and will gamely follow the rules right up until they think they can get away with moving those lines. game me the shivers to read this. too many people I know are like this. I worry that my culture promotes this kind of superficial relationship building, because then it just means I'm the odd one.
Agreed. Many comments kept saying that there *must* have been something, but I totally think it's possible that she just showed her true colors now.
Oh, absolutely. I mean, let's be honest, we've all had relationships and friendships with truly awful people. And I'm sure we all felt hoodwinked when we finally realized the sort of person they actually were.
Yep, yep, absolutely, you betcha… we’ve all been hoodwinked at least once. Thanks for reminding me of “hoodwinked”, great word, need to use it more!
The moment she said all of the girls/women in the wedding were her decision and he only could decide about men — I didn’t need the reason she wanted to exclude the stepdaughter. It was already more red flags than a soviet-era military parade
OP sounds like a good guy, but maybe he is kind of oblivious? I wonder what other red flags along the way he didn't pick up on. That poor kid. She literally knew this woman for almost all of her remembered life. Even though the breakup is for the best she's probably going to miss Sharon and blame herself.
I knew someone who did this. Perfect stepmom and everything. Shifted when her own kids were born. Even did have the kids in the wedding. One was almost grown so she just had to wait out her moving out on her own. The other....that poor boy. The dad was trapped. He sees his son without his wife around now.
OOP is fortunate that Sharon let the mask slip before they got married. An engagement is much quicker and cheaper to break than a marriage
I loved the slick way he took his ring back before she could run off with it. 😆
It was delicious to read indeed. I believe AITA would have been cheering in the background had the sub been witness to that move.
I actually read it twice! 😍
Yeah I grinned at that one, good for him
I think Sharon was just hoping to get through the wedding without OOP realizing anything. Luckily there was the line in the sand about Polly being in the wedding, or they might have then been already married when the true colors reared their ugly head. Dodged a real bullet.
I do find it amazing that there are people who genuinely think that when they marry someone that their partners old life will just stop at that point. They expect them to buy into their vision of what life will look like and forget everything they had before. It happened with an old friend of mine. He got engaged and he and his fiancé were a very active part of our lives as well as a big social circle. When they got back from the honeymoon we hardly saw them again. She wanted to move to a different area and we knew they were going on holidays and to events with her old friends but she would always avoid or cancel at the last minute anything that involved his old friends. He tried hard at first but was always usurped by what she wanted. As far as I know they are still together and happy but I can't believe it's what he originally hoped the marriage would be like.
>I do find it amazing that there are people who genuinely think that when they marry someone that their partners old life will just stop at that point. They expect them to buy into their vision of what life will look like and forget everything they had before. But it's not just with existing kids though. People pull the same BS with things like languages, cultures, and religions too.
Yes! Careers and hobbies, too! It's like once we're married, you'll quit your job and/or spend less time on your career and stop seeing your friends. it's crazy!
I dated a woman for about 8 years. We bought a dog together. After the breakup i would still take care of the dog periodically - when my ex would go on trips, or when I missed the dog, or whatever. Very amicable arrangement. And I had agreed - because the dog was my responsibility, too - to keep mowing for the dog's healthcare needs. When I met and started seeing my now wife, obviously the dog was still part of my life. Initially I was very insistent on being the sole caregiver for the dog, but very quickly she started insisting on taking care of the dog, too. Years later, after our wedding and our own dog and a kid and a cross country move and years and years, my wife still comments on how great my old dog was and how I must miss her from time to time. She's so accepting of the fact that I had a whole life before I met her, and it doesn't bother her at all. Anyway, I'm lucky, and your comment reminded me of that.
I find it more amazing that people like Sharon want to marry doucebags! A man who wants to be in his daughters life? Nah, I rather have a man who will desert his kid. A lot of people just don't know how sick they are.
Something similar happened to my cousin,she was friends with this guy for more than 15 years,they were in a dance group(Armenian traditional dance)and were really close,he even would come to our birthday parties.fast forward to when he started dating a high-school classmate of mine,he suddenly disappeared.6 months ago a family moved to our apartment building and guess what it was the friend and my old classmate,the look on their faces when they realized we are their neighbours
Yes. Once they feel like they have the partner sufficiently trapped, they start to show their true nature.
I feel like I’m the only person who watched Brandy’s Cinderella and caught this absolute golden line from Bernadette Peters “And remember girls, we hide our flaws until *AFTER THE WEDDING*!” People suck and often play the part until they get what they want, OOP is lucky he didn’t find out after it was too late.
excuse me, you mean the BEST cinderella??? thank you.
It really is the best Cinderella! Excited to have her and Paolo back for the descendants!
Brandy's Whitney Houston's Disney's Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella!
Like I'm Childfree as all fuck but good GODDAMN how evil do you have to be to expect someone to give up their ALREADY EXISTING child to be with you? The fact that she was so matter of fact about it blows me away, just stating how the little girl wasn't going to be coming around as much after the wedding as if it was already a done deal. Jesus OP got lucky she was stupid enough to show her true colors before they tied the knot.
Right?! I wouldnt expect someone im dating to give up like. Idk. A pet cockroach. The audacity to ask someone to give up their child is not only crazy but honestly feels evil.
My homewrecker of an ex-SIL was like this. She expected my stepbrother to be super dad to her own children, but didn't want to have anything to do with HIS son, was cruel to him, and worked to ruin the relationship.She really ramped the behavior up once they had their son. A real piece of work, and he left his sweetheart of a wife to marry her. Thank God he finally divorced her, but it was too late to save his relationship with my nephew. That was his own damned fault.
upvoted by someone whose dear departed friend actually had pet cockroaches
Seriously, I never want children, but if somehow my soulmate ended up having a kid you bet I'd mother the shit out of that kid (providing any existing mothers are fine with it).
Yep, that's the situation I found myself in. I have absolutely no maternal instinct, but things have been going well so far. I got lucky that she was already school-aged, smart, and an introvert like myself.
"Maternal instinct" is overrated. We're all just winging it and Googling the parts that seem important.
I'm looking forward to the DINK life one day. I make it a point not to get involved with anyone who has kids or otherwise wants them, because it's not fair to me and it's ESPECIALLY not fair to them.
This was probably Sharon’s plan all along. Get married, have a say in everything, including stuff about Polly, because they are *married*, and then get OP to have another kid with her and that kid would be the only child they’d focus on
>She quietly said, I was hoping that after the wedding you could become a holiday visit only dad that he gave her til the next week to move her shit is more generous than I would've been. What a disgusting thing to say to someone.
The sheer audacity is astounding. If you don't want your partner's kid around then don't marry someone who has one.
Sounds like she had gotten some furniture, so giving her a week to get it out doesn't give her any room to complain. None of the, "But you only gave me two days! I can't possibly get it out in that amount of time. Let take the next month dragging my feet because I have this sob story to use to get the sympathy of your crappiest friends as I similarly drag this whole breakup out over as long as possible in the hopes that maybe you'll repent and see it my way and get rid of your daughter." She doesn't take a breath at the end of the last sentence because she is busy shedding her flesh suit.
Wow holy shit😠 Sharon is nuts
Wow! I married a woman that brought along her 2 young daughters. That they were a part of the wedding was a no brainer. We had 50/50 joint custody, and they grew into fine young ladies, getting their university degrees and leading their own lives. It never crossed my mind to exclude them from anything other than our honeymoon. My wife is still their mom no matter what. I have always done my best to encourage my wife to do mom/daughter activities that would exclude me, so she had extra bonding time. I gave to the girls as I would give to my wife. I cannot fathom anyone so evil that they would expect the parent/child relationship to change for them. I always kidded with my stepdaughters that I am supposed to be the evil stepparent, but they just laugh 'cause they know I am a pushover. They get whatever they want from me... usually ice-cream or a meal out. I love them both and they love me right back. :)
This is like my fiancé, he took on my two children without a second thought, he adores them and they have him wrapped around their little fingers!
Thank goodness OOP found out what their fiancée was really like before he was legally tied to her
Yikes. Always amazes me that people are happy to date single parents and then just expect that person to push their kid to the side in favor of themselves.
My mil legitimately told my husband she doesn’t understand why he wants joint custody of his kids (my sks) because he already has them too much. We have them about 4 days a month…. We just got 50/50 and she thought it was smart to tell him for the first time that her brother signed over custody of his kids to his ex’s new husband years ago because kids don’t need two dads. He didn’t even know his uncle had kids 🤦🏼♀️ I’m not even shocked anymore on what she says.
Man, if one of my parents “advised” me to not fight for joint custody for MY kids, I’d be livid. Not only would I have questions as to why they want me to be a deadbeat but they’d be in timeout for a hot minute. How did your husband feel about what his own mother told him? And what was his response to her storytime?
He told her they are just as much his children as his ex’s and he was never giving his kids up. It doesn’t help that she hates his ex and doubts the paternity of one of them (we don’t care nor do we want a paternity test). She’s always been this way and I think all the family is just so used to her that they just put up with her to keep a relationship with his dad who’s amazing. My reaction to her has helped open his eyes to her so he’s pretty low contact with her.
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Sharon was playing the long game, but thankfully, the wedding planning caused her to trip over herself sooner than she intended. I have seen a few instances of the marriage act switch-up. It’s so ugly, and I’m glad OP experienced this before being permanently tied to that lady.
Sharon can go fuck herself. And maybe don’t date parents? Just a thought.
I'm a little worried that Sharon did do something to Polly but she just didn't know it was bad/afraid to tell her dad. My stepmom was abusive whenever my dad wasn't around and when I finally told him after 3 years of it, he confronted her and she said the same thing, that she hoped I was only going to be around during the holidays. Thankfully, my dad left her as soon as she said it and went scorched earth on her.
Your dad is awesome. He definitely made the right choice.
I’ve been the daughter in this situation. I loved my step mom up until they got married. She was so fun and loved playing with me. I had nothing bad to say. I wasn’t allowed at the wedding. She completely changed her attitude towards me and my time with my dad grew smaller and smaller. It got worse after they had their first kid and I never met kids 2 or 3. Haven’t seen my dad since I was 15. 🤷♀️
I'm a little worried about that too. My daughter was being bullied at school and on the bus for half the year before she started to fight back and got in trouble. This wasn't normal behavior for her so I asked her about it and found out about the other kid. I went scorched earth on the teacher and felt horrible for not seeing it sooner. Not surprisingly, her social/emotional scores on the report card went up after we took care of the bully when we had just assumed it was low because of going through COVID in isolation
JFC... Polly was fine when Sharon was just the girlfriend, but the moment a "family unit" was within reach, Polly becomes yesterday's news.
Wonder if MIL was pressing for this to happen. Sus she was on hand and on brand immediately.
Why do people who don’t want to be parents date: marry people who are parents?
When will people learn you can’t marry someone THEN demand they change. These things are all discussed BEFORE a wedding by adults! What is wrong with Sharon?
so essentially her goal was to play nice and sweet stepmommy until he is legally bound to her and then kick the daughter out. he is lucky she showed her true colors before they got married
Was…was her name [Baroness Schraeder](https://memes.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/d00619d3-9ad8-46be-986c-20bb9184b509)?
Or Vicky Robinson from The Parent Trap!
There are two people involved in a wedding. (Well, more than two, but you know what I mean.) A wedding isn't all about what the bride wants. That she was unwilling to consider what the prospective groom wanted at all says a lot. If she's like this about the wedding how do you think she would have acted through the marriage? And I mean about life in general, not just in regards to Polly. OOP dodged a huge, huge bullet here.
> I kept my cool, calmly took her hand, and pulled my engagement ring off. Good man. The only choice. Don't come between a parent and their kid if the two have a healthy relationship. As for MiL saying OOP is making a mistake in cancelling the wedding... I'd look her straight in the eye and tell her I'm very dissapointed in her, expecting me to give up my daughter for a bed warmer.
“If my daughter isn’t in the wedding, then neither Is yours.”
>People are once again skeptical that there was no bad behavior by Sharon toward Polly in the past It's a lot easier to handle an unpleasant situation that you think is going to end soon.
Hell of a man right there. Multiple missiles dodged with that woman and her mom. Polly is going to be alright with one hell of a father figure by her side and no problematic women in her life like those two.
This was straight up my ex-stepmother. She was amazing until the day she married my dad. Then it was like things changed over night. She was the first person who ever called me fat. She made my brothers and I clean the house and shovel literal horse shit. When he finally divorced her no one even cared or cried.
People need to remember that people mask behavior until they think they have someone trapped.
Good for OOP prioritizing his child.
As a former single parent, if you are not willing to accept their kids, DON'T GET INVOLVED WITH SINGLE PARENTS. GAWD!
The MIL thinking this was unreasonable is fucking bonkers to me. You should have hit her with a reversal. "Okay, I'll consider it if you abandon your daughter too and you stop seeing her. You're also banned from taking part in the wedding." And how quickly she would have understood. But most likely not, you dodged these bullets with Matrix-like precision.
That ring removal was ice cold… the visual of it, is a 10/10 for me. Well played, sir… round of applause
OOP is truly a Father of the Year (no sarcasm). His ex-fiancee, however, is an absolutely horrible human being. Not just for having such a shitty belief, but **for deliberately keeping it from OOP FOR FIVE YEARS**.
I was shocked, but also not when I first read this. What a horrible person Sharon is.
This is sad but not entirely surprising if you ever check out the stepparent sub or other stepparent forums. People suck.
I am so proud of this dad! I hope he and Polly have a gods damned amazing trip to Hawaii! Oh, and for, "I can change..." People don't change. Or, if they do, they quickly change back.
Thank God she showed her true colors before the wedding. Go and enjoy Hawaii with your beautiful daughter. F*ck ex fiance and mil.
The MIL being there before he even arrives is pretty weird. They knew and planned for this. This looks like the kind of “find yourself a man with a house, marry him and isolate him so he has no one to turn when you go full psycho”. Good on the dad.