'AITA for disowning my wife's daughter after she chose her mom's affair partner over me?' UPDATED

"AITA for disowning my wife's daughter after she chose her mom's affair partner over me?"

BraveExplanation2530 writes:

I 35M met my now soon to be ex wife 33F during Uni 12 years ago. She already had kid when she was 19 but the dad left as soon as she started university. We were dating for 3 months before I met her daughter Lisa. I remember seeing her family for the first time, I was nervous meeting her parents, but when I saw a little girl beside her mom I was confused.

I asked her if that was her little sister or a cousin of hers and her answer shocked me. When she told me that she was her daughter I thought I misheard her or something. At first I wanted to dump her for hiding something so crucial from me, but she kept on begging for me to stay and eventually I relented. Soon enough, I started to fall in love with her daughter and wanted to be her father figure.

Our bond grew stronger over the years and in early 2019 (before the pandemic hit) we got married, in late 2021 I adopted Lisa and In early 2022 my wife gave birth to our son Marc. After my son was born my wife made the choice to stay at home for the time being and I was completely fine with that.

Everything was going perfectly until a few months ago. I started noticing my wife increasingly spending time with her "friends". At the time, I didn't say anything since, in my mind, being at home all day was probably eating at her, and I didn't want to seem controlling.

The thing that made me suspicious was her constant texting and going out of the room for calls. She never did that for anyone besides this one "friend" of hers. I asked her about it but she gave me some vague answers about gossip.

The moment that took it too far though, was when I came home last week and saw her outside talking on the phone, this wasn't out of the ordinary. I remember seeing my son on the floor crying alone. I was pissed at my wife for just leaving him alone in the house, but when I went to pick him up I smelt this horrible stench coming from him.

His diaper seemed like it hadn't been changed since that morning. I quickly changed his diaper and rushed outside with him in my arms. I was beyond pissed. I snatched her phone from her hand and bolted back inside. I locked my wife outside to have a talk with this friend of hers alone.

I had my suspicions about who it really was and when I heard a male voice calling out her name and asking who was there. I immediately knew what was going on. He ended the call as soon as he heard my voice.

I then proceeded to lock the front door to make sure my wife couldn't enter the house at all. I then proceeded to screenshot as much of their chat as I could and sent the screenshots to myself before deleting them on her phone.

About 5 minutes later, she was still banging on the glass door leading to the backyard. I reluctantly opened it and was met with a smack in the face. (Remember all of this is happening while I'm holding my toddler in my arms).

As soon as she realized what she just did she apologized profusely, started crying and tried to hug me. I pushed her away and told her to meet me at the dining table. I told my "daughter" to quickly take care of the baby so me and her mom could have a quick chat.

I just kept it simple. I told her this was her only chance to even have a sliver of chance of getting me back. If she f^#$ed up this talk it was over on the spot, no lies nothing. She kept on trying to apologize and to say it wasn't that serious.

I reminded her that she not only f^#*ed me over, she could also have easily done serious harm to our son by leaving him alone in the house like that. I then simply asked who it was, for how long, and did she cheat? She replied, that it was her ex boss Daniel, for 6 months, and she didn't answer the last one so I remindes her that this was her last chance.

She then just simply nodded. I then asked her If they used protection. To this she started crying and started begging me for forgiveness. She said she would block him then and there, would never contact him again, I could do anything with any woman I want from now on yada yada.

I guess Lisa heard the commotion and came downstairs. I told her to go back up but she just walked to my wife and asked her if I knew about Daniel. Up to this point I was calm but upon hearing this , I swear even I started tearing up. I asked Lisa if she knew all along and she said yes.

At this point I'm full on crying and I asked her why she didn't tell me. She responded with "Because unlike YOU, Daniel buys me the things I want without having to beg." I then asked her how she could possibly do this to her dad.

She responded with the you're not my real dad. My wife screamed at her upon hearing what she said. At that point I couldn't bear any of this anymore. I just grabbed my son and got into the car.

Me and my son are currently staying at my parents house. Thanks to the saint of a mother I have, my son is being taken care of right now. I'm beyond hurt. I've cancelled my ex daughters private school tuitions, all her extracurricular activities and I've contacted a divorce lawyer.

He´s going to serve my wife this Friday. My wife and Lisa have been blowing up my phone non stop with apologies. I simply responded with "Get a lawyer and tell that ungrateful thing of yours to start calling Daniel her dad. I'm disowning her" before I blocked my wife. I didn't respond to Lisa, I just simply blocked her.

I guess my wife told our friends, what her and Lisa did and now they have been texting me nonstop. They understand how I feel but believe im going too far by divorcing my wife without hearing her out.

They also keep telling me that disowning Lisa is definitely going too far and she's only a kid and didnt understand what she was doing. I just cant get over the things she told me. I've worked my butt off to give my wife and daughter luxuries, I could have only dreamed off as a kid and this is how I get paid back?

Lisa (13 years old) is old enough to understand that hiding her moms affair is bad and definitely purposely used those words to hurt me. But a part of me believes that there is still hope. After a few family counseling sessions perhaps we can go back to living the life I once considered a fairytale?

I'm beyond destroyed by this whole situation. A part of me just wants to never see them again but the other part of me believes there is still hope. Am I really going too far? Is there still hope?AITA for disowning my daughter and divorcing my wife?

Here are the top comments from the post:

Fit_Work4558 says:

I would get a DNA test on your son just in case.

Careless_Welder_4048 says:

NTA (Not the A^&#ole), but you need to stop drinking. It’s game time and you need to be at your best. I’m sorry about your daughter’s behavior. Honestly screw the friends who want you to listen to your cheater wife. I would have one more conversation with Lisa and tell her why you are leaving her and how her actions hurt you.

5hellz says:

Just remember this neither your wife nor your daughter was sorry when you didn't know.

Bigpare says:

You have done no fault, your wife is the one at fault here and a divorce is reasonable. Your daughter seems to act a bit odd to me, i feel like your wife might have trash talked you to her behind your back.

The hard thing is that she is in her teenage years which will build resentment towards the parents, and if she cant be taught what is wrong and right, you probably wont hear from her until when she realizes it during her 20s.

But you dont have sway anymore unless you wanna push for custody. All you can do is to stay the kids fatver and say youre there to talk to her when she wants, and hopefully she will realize it and gravitate towards you.

OP says:

Thank you. I hope this happens. As for my wife trash talking me. Definitely possible.

A month later OP came back with this update:

First off al I just want to thank you guys for the support you guys have shown me. This past week has been the hardest period of my life. Seeing the love you shared with the woman you considered your partner for life just vanish, hit me worse than anything else.

To those who have privately messaged me. Thank you and please be patient with me. I have over a hundred unread messages to date and will need a bit of time to respond to all of them.

I just want to update you on the things that have happened since i posted.

First of all Im happy to report that ive quit the alcohol. It was tough but seeing how my life was basically falling apart due to my constant drinking, really was a wake up call for me. As someone kindly suggested, I asked my mom to throw out all the alcohol in her house. The first couple of days were tough with me being more depressed than ever but im doing much better now.

As for my wife. Ive had a brief conversation with her and I have halted all divorce proceedings for the time being. There is still a lot to navigate and a ton of logistics involved and my decision for divorce seemed a bit in the heat of the moment. Im not saying that im going back to her, im just saying I need to reevaluate everything again.

What she did was beyond hurtful and irresponsible. If I were to get back with her, she has to do a lot to make up for this mess. I have removed half of the money in our joint account and have stopped paying the Lease on my "Wife's" car.

I asked her the following questions:

Has she been in contact with Daniel since our falling out?

• She said she has completely cut off contact with her ex Boss and is willing to do anything to make our marriage work.

Why did she go to him/meet him in the first place?

• She said, she honestly doesn't know. She met him at a get together her old company held and in her words they just "clicked". They started hanging out as friends and soon things grew out of hand and she started bringing him over to the house when I was at work.

Did she have feelings for him while they worked together?

• She said she found him cute but left it at that. They never did anything or said anything outside of work.

I then started asking her questions about our daughter Lisa. Some of you guys rightly pointed out that she probably poisoned her against me.

Why did she bring Daniel around our daughter.

• Lisa once caught them making out on the couch and when she threatened them to tell me they quickly shut her up with gifts and a new phone etc. And soon enough Lisa started actually started to like having Daniel around because of the gifts etc.

Did she badmouth me to Lisa?

• To this she just she just went silent and started crying. I then pressed a bit more and she finally blurted out that she started telling Lisa that Daniel was her bio dad.

Ngl after this I myself started crying and just hung up. I did see a change in my daughter around the same time but I just chalked it up to her being a teenager but hearing this just broke my heart even more.

I also want to thank you guys for telling me that it wasn't right to put all the blame on my 13 year old daughter. I wasn't thinking straight at the same and when I started sobering up I did sort of realize the mistake I made.

I have unblocked my daughter and have been texting with her since yesterday. She has apologized to me and it seems like my wife (in desperation to get me back) has confessed the truth to my daughter.

My daughter told me that she has stopped talking with her mother since she confessed. I apologized to her for the comments I made about disowning her and we have planned to meet up tomorrow at the local park.

I again just want to sincerely thank you guys for the support and the advice. Honestly I couldn't have navigated this mess alone while being intoxicated. Only god knows what would happened If i didn't reach out. I also want to apologize for the drunken rant I went on in the comments. Im beyond embarred at the things i said. Again thank you all for the support and wish you all a wonderful weekend😊

Edit:

I forgot to mention the DNA Test ting on my son. I do definitely acknowledge it being a possibility but neither am I mentally in a place to be able to cope with the stress of something like that nor am I ready to face the reality that I might look at him differently if the test turns out negative. Ill do it eventually but not now during this mess.