Search the Community

Hello, There are so many details to my story I'm about to share, but I'll try to make it somewhat short. My life has become very challenging the past couple of years. I am 25 years old now, when I was 17 I started dating Sarah. It was a very dysfunctional relationship, and I finally officially broke up with her when I was 22. Several months after the break up I made a big mistake and had sex with her, and she got pregnant. I'm almost positive she impregnated herself on purpose to try and trap me in a relationship with her (she was very clingy, when we were dating I found holes in condoms we used, after my official break up it seemed like a desperate attempt to trap me for good, and many other reasons). She was opposed to adoption and abortion, so I established half joint/physical custody before the child was born. About 5 months before the child was born, I started dating Emily; she is about 9 years older than me and worked as a therapist at the time. She knew Sarah and how crazy she was from prior interactions with her, and she understood the situation I was in. Emily and I had a lot in common and we had a really great time together; months later we moved into my house together, then we got engaged, and then we got married. After we got married, my parents started acting oddly towards us and ever since then their behaviors have become more and more bizarre (e.g. not coming to my wedding reception and telling all of my family and their friends not to come either, reporting a picture of my daughter on Facebook as pornography, calling my mother in law via telephone and accusing me of being a pothead and gambling addict, coming over unannounced to my house and pounding on my door for a half hour, calling me nasty names behind my back to Sarah, inviting Sarah to all of their family gatherings and holidays, and that's just scratching the surface). My dad, who is a psychologist, told me that he knew Sarah was crazy from day 1, but he never bothered to mention that to me until after I had a kid with her (that information would have been useful on day 1, not after I already figured it out on my own several years later). Very long story short, I ended my relationship with my parents a year ago because they were causing too much stress and damage in my life for many various reasons. I think that made them mad and now they're funding Sarah and basically by proxy finding ways to still cause damage and stress in my life. Sarah is bringing me into mediation, and I think her next step is court to maybe go for full custody. They have an endless supply of money, and it's causing an enormous amount of stress in my life and marriage. We are great parents and have done nothing wrong, but all of this havoc they're creating is driving us to a bad place; we're considering just giving up custody and moving away so we don't have to deal with them, but we'd feel so horrible leaving the child behind. Do we stick it out for another 16 years and go broke in doing so (also take years off our lives due to stress and maybe even destroy our marriage)? Keep in mind that Sarah brings the child around my parents very often, so she could easily be manipulated by them. Also a final note, I have tried to work things out with my parents multiple times, but they won't be accountable for anything they've done. There hasn't been a single shred of accountability from them throughout this entire time. I'm kind of at a loss of what to do at this point. We can barely get by as it is financially, but with all the lawyer fees, plus the mediation and court fees on top of that, it's getting to be too much. I know that's a lot of information to take in, and sadly that's only about 25% of the context (but enough to have a decent understanding of the situation). There are so many details that I left out because I don't want this to be too long for people to read. If you have any questions or need further explanations on anything, I'd be happy to provide that. Thank you for taking the time to read this. I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback if you have any.