'AITA for not letting my ex's wife 'save my son from hell' because he chose Judaism.' UPDATED 2x
'AITAH For allowing my son to disinvite his stepmother from his bar mitzvah?"
Acrobatic_Donut4745 writes:
My ex and I have been divorced for seven years. We have three children: "Amy" (17), "Tom" (16), and "Ben" (14). Our divorce was amicable, and we co-parent well for the most part. I am a non-observant Jew, and my ex is a non-practicing Catholic.
We decided to teach our children to be decent people and allow them to decide what faith, if any, they wanted when they were old enough. My ex remarried two years ago, and they have a six-month-old daughter. His wife is a devout Christian (nondenominational).
Since she came into their lives, she has actively tried to convert them. I wouldn't have an issue if she were just inviting them to church, but she is constantly telling them that if they do not "accept Christ as their savior," they will go to hell—as will I and my family.
After this, my children refused to see their dad unless it was outside of his home and without her. Their dad finally put his foot down and put an end to it. Now, onto the problem. My parents went to Poland a few months ago to visit family and took my children with them.
While there, my dad took them to Auschwitz, and Ben was very moved. When he came home, he started attending temple with my father and has been working with his rabbi to prepare for his bar mitzvah. He is having a small party afterward at my parents' house.
When his stepmother heard this, she really ramped up the crazy. She waited until my ex was not home, invited a bunch of people from her church over, and they ambushed Ben. They tried to "lay hands" on him to "save him from the fires."
My daughter physically intervened, called an Uber, and took her brothers home. My ex stopped by a couple of hours later and apologized profusely for what had happened. My son accepted his apology but stated that his stepmother was no longer welcome at his bar mitzvah or the party afterward.
My ex got very upset by this and stated that this was disrespectful and that he could not go somewhere where his wife was not welcome. My son said, "Well, I guess you're not invited either, then."
He then locked himself in his room. My ex, his parents, and his wife have all been texting and calling, berating me. When my parents found out what had happened, they stated that his wife was not welcome in their home, but they told my son that he should still allow his father to come.
My ex is adamant that he will not come without his wife, and my son is adamant that his wife is not invited. I refuse to intervene on his wife's behalf, and my ex says I am an a%#$ole. Am I?
Here are the top comments with OP's responses.
princess_veronicaa
NTA. Your son has been subjected to religious harassment and an attempted "exorcism" by his stepmother and her friends. This was a traumatic event for him, and it's entirely reasonable for him to not want her present at his Bar Mitzvah.
OP responded:
Thank you. I feel partially at fault because, in the past I told them to just ignore it when she made comments or to decline politely when she Invited them to church. I should’ve been a lot more forceful, but tried to be respectful of her faith. I never expected her to go this far.
Real_Morning_5442 says:
You need to get your lawyer involved to legally put a stop to his psychotic stepmom.
OP responded:
Right now, none of our children are talking to him and they refuse to go back to his house. I told him that they are of the age that they can make there’s decisions and I will not force them to do anything they don’t want.
They have all blocked her and her family. I really don’t want to go to court as I don’t have the money- especially with the oldest going to college in the fall, but I support them 100% on staying away from her.
OP posted a clarification based on all the questions they received.
Just a few things for clarification. I'm trying to respond to all comments, but there are too many, so thank you, everyone, for your input! I plan on showing this to my ex. No, she wasn't like this when he married her.
She went to church, but it wasn't until they got married that she became more involved. I was actually surprised that she was with him, knowing that he was not religious, but I figured opposites attract.
In the beginning, she was great with our kids. They liked her and spent a lot of time with her. Her pushing my kids toward Christianity started with little things, like insisting they bow their heads for grace at meal times, buying them books by religious authors, not allowing what she deemed inappropriate movies (e.g., Harry Potter or anything with profanity), hanging up religious pictures and signs with Bible verses in the house, etc.
Once she started with the "you're going to hell if you don't" nonsense, I got their dad involved, and it ended—at least for a while. Their dad is VERY supportive of our son's embracing Judaism. He is paying for private Hebrew lessons and has offered to send him to Israel the summer after high school, provided it is safe to go.
My ex and I met our freshman year of college. We were together for a few years before getting married and only got married because our first was on the way, and both of our sets of parents were very insistent that we do so. My parents especially were very big on the legal aspect of it for my protection.
We separated after almost 20 years of being together because we had started to become unhappy. Despite counseling, we could not resolve some of our differences. There was no infidelity or anything like that.
We only got divorced when he met his current wife so that they could marry. We had no formal custody agreement in place. My parents have me seeing a lawyer next week to put some parameters into place and protect everyone involved.
He promised that the kids don't have to be around his wife until they are ready to be. I asked, then, why is it a big deal that he doesn't want her at the ceremony and party? His response is that he wants the invitation extended, but he will make sure that she won't go. He says it's disrespectful and a snub not to invite her. I told him that that sounded like a big bunch of BS and that she was not going to be there no matter what.
OP posted an update a few days later.
Sunday, my ex asked if I would be willing to come over and discuss what happened. He said he felt there were some "misunderstandings" that needed to be resolved. I went, along with my daughter and oldest son. They asked to go.
Anyway, when I got there, there was another couple there who I was introduced to as her pastor and his wife. I was immediately on guard. My ex's wife stated that all she and her church group had wanted to do was pray for my children.
She stated that she felt raising them with no religion had done them a great disservice and that I didn't understand all of the consequences of doing this. She said that, since she had her daughter, she realized how horrible it would be to be separated in heaven from "the people she loved more than anything in the world."
I said I did not believe that would happen, as I believed if there were any type of afterlife, one of the perks would be that you would be reunited with people you loved. She then stated that it would have to be this way as my children had not "accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior."
Then she started to cry. I gently suggested to her that she was still postpartum and that it was possible her hormones and emotions were heightened and that she was not seeing things clearly.
That was obviously the wrong thing to say because then she and my ex both became angry with me and told me that I was trying to make her out to be a crazy person. Her pastor quoted a few Bible verses and attempted to expand on what she had said. The whole time, my ex just sat there silently.
I finally asked him what he thought about all of this, and he said that his wife meant well and that she was only concerned with our kids' souls. I asked him when he had become so religious, as during our 20 years together, he had not so much as stepped inside of a church outside of a few weddings we'd attended.
He stated that having their daughter had made him realize how important choosing a faith was. I told him that our son HAD chosen—it just happened to be Judaism instead of Christianity.
I also said it was my understanding that it was the same God for both. The pastor then chimed in again, stating that Jesus was the true Messiah and that Jews would be punished both in this life and in the afterlife for denying that.
At that point, my daughter stood up and stated that this whole discussion was making her sick. My older son said that he was tired of dealing with all of his stepmother's bulls%#t and that he would never step foot into their home again.
He said over the years he had ignored a lot, as both myself and his dad had encouraged him to be tolerant of people's beliefs, but as nobody was being tolerant of his or his siblings' beliefs, he was done dealing with their hypocrisy. He told his dad that he had no desire to talk to or see him or his wife for the foreseeable future. We then left.
Today, I met with the family lawyer that my parents had found for me. He said that tomorrow we are going to go to the courthouse for a temporary restraining order and to ask for an emergency custody order. He says we'll get both.
He also had me go to the police department today and make a report with all three of my children about what happened last week. I am so sick that it has come to this. I never wanted my children to have to be put in the middle of battling families. I am aware, as so many of you pointed out, that I underreacted.
To be honest, this is the first time in my life I have really ever dealt with anything like this. I grew up in an incredibly diverse community where everyone was tolerant of everyone else. When my ex and I were married, we returned and lived in that community, as we felt it was a fantastic place to raise children.
So, that's that. I want to thank everyone for all of their support and for those who pointed out that I was being naïve for being kind about it. I'm sorry I could not respond to everyone personally, including all of the private messages I was sent. There were just so many. I never expected this to blow up so hard.
OP posted a second update several months later.
Hello, everyone. I posted on here a couple of months ago after my ex’s wife staged a religious intervention when my son decided he wanted to embrace Judaism and be Bar Mitzvahed. The post is still under my profile if anyone wants specifics. My ex and I share three children: "Amy" (18), "Tom" (16), and "Ben" (15).
The people responding to that first post helped me to see that I was underreacting, and I met with a lawyer for a custody order, as we had just been doing our own thing. I now have full decision-making authority for our children's religious upbringing and full custody.
My ex has visitation every other weekend. I have been incredibly flexible and let him take them pretty much whenever he or the kids want. On his weekends, I stay with my parents, and he stays in the house. The ONLY rule I made was that the stepmother is not to be around them at all—ever.
My kids are very close with their paternal grandparents (GPs). They know that the stepmother is not to be around them, but twice when I picked them up, she was there. The excuse was that she had just popped in quickly to drop off the baby.
I asked them to let me know when they were babysitting, and we would plan a different day, but they said that it was a last-minute thing. OK, fine. They want the kids to come for a five-day visit over Christmas break (not on the 24th/25th), and I cannot trust that this woman will not come over.
Ben still gets incredibly anxious around her (yes, he is in therapy). My in-laws refuse to tell her that she cannot come over because they say they do not want to "be put in the middle" and that it’s "making them choose between their grands."
I reached out to my ex, who said that since she isn’t coming over for long, he’s not stopping it. He also said that there is nothing in the order stating she can’t be around and that, as his wife and the mom of their sibling, there’s no reason she should have to "tiptoe around."
He was incredibly dismissive, and I went nuclear on him. I told him that I have been letting him see them whenever despite only having two weekends a month, that he was married to a sociopathic zealot, and that if she continued to come around, I would go back to court and ask for supervised visits and a restraining order against her. He hung up.
Then I asked the kids what they wanted. Come to find out, the woman has been coming around a lot. Amy said their grandparents asked them not to say anything to "not upset me." I told my daughter that as an adult, she can go, but her brothers would not be. Ben's look of relief broke my heart. Amy said she felt weird when the stepmother showed up. Tom said he’s with Ben.
I called xMIL and told her that the children would not be coming back until they chose to. I said they were welcome to come over to see them. I also said they were SO wrong to ask the kids to keep secrets. They called my ex, who berated me for "punishing his parents." Stepmom sent me a text saying I was unfair. I think I'm right, but everyone else thinks I'm TA. Am I?