AITA for not letting my daughter’s stepdad of 8 years see her?
I’m gonna shorten this as much as possible, so if there is questions, I will do my best to answer in the comments.
I (33N) was married to my ex-husband (28M) for about 8 years. My daughter (11) was only about 4 months old when he came into our lives, so he is the dad she grew up with. Her bio dad disappeared for two years, then came back and decided to be a part of her life. When my ex-husband and I separated, I was still letting him have her whenever he wanted. I do not enjoy conflict. So it was not until her bio dad came to me (they had become buddies after we separated) and told me that ex-husband planned on filing for emergency custody, that I decided to stop letting him see her. I had him sign a notarized document stating the days he would return her and let them start visitation again. After this, my daughter came to my best friend (her godmom, 32F) and I, asking us to look at the messages between her and her stepdad. When we looked, there was quite a few messages of him cussing and being nasty with her. The main conversation that stood out was a morning he was at work and daughter was home with his new gf. She was asleep and he told daughter to wake gf up. When she did, gf told her “daddy can kiss my butt”. Most likely in a joking manner, but when my daughter told him this, he got angry. He got in a fight with his gf and then scolded my daughter and cussed at her, asking why she would say that and cause a fight between them. It ended with my daughter sending a photo of herself nearly in tears and saying “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience”. After seeing these, I decided to remove him from her life again. For context, this was the cherry on top of his insane behavior after our separation. He had also been sending unprompted confrontational message to both her bio dad and I, as well as my best friend and multiple other family members/friends on my side. And he had given out my number, so I had his friends harassing me and sending me unhinged messages. I explained to him that until he could work as a cohesive parental figure in her life and stop trying to start fights and stop talking badly about the people she loves in front of her, he would not be allowed around again. Instead of changing the behaviors, he became irate and has been blasting lies about me all over social media and blaming me for everything he did. Not to say I don’t have some blame in this, our relationship falling apart is on both of us. But the things he is saying are just straight up lies. One of the worst things he is claiming is that I am a groomer, because he was 17 when we first met. I have many witnesses who can attest to the fact that he pursued me (we weren’t together until after he was 18) and that our friendship and relationship developed naturally. There was no coercion, or convincing or conning. In fact, many times, I told him that he shouldn’t worry about my daughter and I, that we would be fine, even after her father left. He insisted upon being in our lives and wanted to take the role he did, no matter what I, nor anybody else, said. These kinds of allegations could cause me serious issues, and I don’t feel safe letting my daughter go with him anymore. It breaks my heart, because they love each other and I never wanted to do this in the first place. I just can’t trust him to not be confrontational and to stop treating her that way, as well as talking about everybody she loves negatively. He would literally tell her things her biodad did when she was 2, that she couldn’t even remember and then she would be mad about something she had no business even knowing about. If it wasn’t him or someone he had brought into her life, they were all worthless piles of crap and him talking this way and treating her and her loved ones this way started causing her serious emotional and mental damage. She didn’t know who to trust or who really loved her, and it was always her telling me “stepdad said this happened, stepdad told me that”. She started having severe mood swings and lashing out at people she was normally very loving and happy with. I feel awful and I just want to protect her from more damage. It’s just hard to know if I’m doing the right thing. He was a great stepdad in a lot of ways, I just can’t accept the way he talks to her and the way he kept trying to twist the whole situation up. I have done my best to stay off of social media about it, I’m a pretty private person in general, so I’m not even retaliating. I’ve made maybe two posts to clear up some of the lies, because I started getting a lot of messages and screenshots, but I don’t feel the need to defend myself from things I know are simply not true. So, I’ve really just been focused on helping my daughter thrive. She has been asking about him and I told her idk if or when she will see/speak to him again. She says she doesn’t want to see him until he can stop being mean because she doesn’t like his mean side. And now I just need advice and to know if I’m an asshole for making the choice I did. Thanks in advance for any advice, I’ll accept my judgement. AITA?
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