She Cancelled A Weekend Trip With Her Husband Because He Won’t Let His Daughter Stay Home Alone, And She Can’t Understand Why He Doesn’t Trust The Teen
Six years ago, this 30-year-old woman married her husband, 41, and they’ve been together for eight years. Her husband has a 16-year-old daughter named Ava from a previous relationship. Ava lives with them all the time because she hardly ever sees or hears from her biological mother.
From the moment she and her husband married, she has been a maternal figure for Ava, and she’s grateful they have a close bond. Ava will be 17 in less than half a year, and she’s always been a wonderful teenager. She feels like Ava could be viewed as the kid every parent hopes to have someday.
“She’s sweet, smart, studious, careful, and calm. My husband can be a bit strict with his rules for her, but I honestly don’t see the need most of the time. She makes good choices on her own, so I try to let her be more independent. This leads to conflicts between him and I. Subconsciously, he sees himself as her only real parent while still wanting me to behave fully as one,” she said.
Even though her husband expects her to parent Ava, he only wants her to enforce his rules without allowing her to have any say. Over the years, she’s picked up on this and knows it’s true because she pointed it out to him during an argument.
When she did this, he was angry but owned up to it, telling her that she was correct. He added that he would do his best to allow her room to parent how she sees fit so that they are more balanced in their parental roles. For the most part, he’s been better about this but occasionally slips up.
At the beginning of February, she and her husband are going on a trip for a weekend, and they’re excited. Ava suggested that she spend the weekend at the house by herself, but her husband rejected this idea.
“He is insisting she got to her grandparents’ for the weekend because she’s a minor, two nights is too long, and thinks that her putting up a fight about it is ‘suspicious.’ I offered the compromise of her grandparents coming by to check in on her a couple of times and us setting up the old pet camera by the entrance so she would still have some supervision,” she explained.
Ava loved this plan, but her husband turned down the idea. Then, Ava was sad and sobbed, and her husband claimed that she was only reacting this way because she was plotting to throw a huge party while they were away. However, this wasn’t logical because Ava would never do something like that, so she had no idea where her husband came up with that theory.
“I’ve talked to Ava, and she just wants to feel like she’s trusted and capable. She feels ready and doesn’t understand why her dad doesn’t trust her enough. I don’t either, and I told her so. I’m frustrated enough with the situation and seeing him damage his relationship with Ava long-term, so I told my husband that I didn’t even want to go anymore,” she shared.
Comeback Images – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
She expressed to her husband that she didn’t think it made any sense that he was willing to risk fracturing the relationship he had with Ava by parenting her as if she were a criminal despite the fact that she has always been so well-behaved.
Her husband was furious and said that she was undercutting his decisions as a father, adding that she undercuts his choices all the time.
He then questioned why she wouldn’t stand by the way he chose to parent Ava. She argued back that Ava needed more support from him than he needed right now, and she told him that this argument solidified her decision not to go away for the weekend.
After the fight, her husband hardly spoke to her besides passive-aggressive comments about how he’s the one who makes the final parenting decisions.
She’s been thinking about it, and while she believes it’s possible that she overstepped, she thinks it was right for her to weigh in on the situation and show up for Ava as a supportive parental figure.
What advice would you give her?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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