“My ex-husband and I share custody of a 17-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son. We divorced 12 years ago and have had a hard time raising the kids together since then. My ex-husband is remarried and there has been tension between the three of us for most of that time. His wife had huge expectations from the beginning about her role in the children’s lives and how involved I would be.
She expected her ex-husband to raise the children and me to be a “mom one weekend a month” myself. When that didn’t happen, she expected everything related to her mother to be shared equally: taking turns celebrating Mother’s Day, taking turns participating in school events or activities, even changing who was listed as mom on paperwork. She really believed that I would go along with it and that it wouldn’t cause any problems at schools or with doctors.
She expected the children to start calling her mom as soon as she married their father and thought I would “encourage” (ie force) them to do so. It was a long-standing expectation that never materialized.
She also hoped to have the same legal power as my ex-husband and I: she hoped to make decisions about the children without our consent—like where they would go to school, what doctors they would see, what summer camps they would go to, and even what religion they would follow.
She wanted to change the children’s surnames to double names – with her, mine and ex-husband’s surname. She was sure it would happen. When I opposed the idea, she threw tantrums about it for over a year.
The ex-husband’s wife is from a rich family and is used to having everything done according to her wishes. Therefore, when her expectations were not fulfilled, she began to hate me even more. She rejected my children because she tried to control them and change their lives according to her imagination. For example, she tried to transfer them to a private school and pressured them to ask my consent. She wanted my daughter to attend dance and music lessons up to 6 times a week, and my son to attend soccer and boxing also 6 times a week. The kids weren’t interested, but she forced them anyway, telling them that “that’s what girls and boys do.”
The kids don’t like her because of all this. The children dreamed that their father would divorce his new wife – I know they asked him at least twice. When she found out, she blamed me.
Children try to spend as little time with her as possible. They don’t appreciate her and it annoys my ex husband and his wife. We talked about it with him, but he says they should appreciate her and it’s my fault because I don’t make them do it. He insists that his wife has made the children’s lives better, regardless of what the children think or say.
They didn’t have a child together until last year, so this Mother’s Day will be her first as a mother. This day has always been painful for her because the children are with me and only my ex-husband considers her a mother.
Now my ex-husband came up with what I thought was an absurd idea – that we should all spend that day together. He says it’s his wife’s first Mother’s Day and our kids should be there too. And there will be no children if there is no me.
I flatly refused, I definitely wouldn’t spend Mother’s Day with his wife. He tried to argue but I just left and haven’t returned his calls since. He sent a few messages but I ignored them. Finally, he sent his sister who said that I was rude and the kids don’t like their stepmom just because of me,” the woman who got into the predicament wrote on Reddit.
