Hello,
After vowing to never get married again after the pummeling I took from my first divorce I took the plunge again. After six months of dating, I made the mistake of getting married again (we met in Jan 09). My new wife and I have been arguing over something that was long an issue even before we got married - my 5 year old son who is slighly learning disabled and has verbal apraxia. I didn’t introduce her to my son until about a month after dating. When I did introduce her to him, she seemed receptive and loving to him. However, as the number of weekends passed that she was able to see my son, the more I began getting a strange vib from my wife (girlfriend then) whenever she was around him. It took me some time to put my finger on it but I realized that she was feeling resentment towards my son. Well, I brought this up to her and she shrugged it off. After more weekend visitations with my son (who is from a previous marriage) I began noticing it more and more. It got to the point where every weekend that I had with my son we argued about her not accepting him. Her solution was to just leave the house the weekends that I had him (we were living together before our marriage).
Finally, after about four months of dating, she admitted what I knew all along - that she had a problem with my son. We decided to get counseling to help us resolve the issue before marriage and my wife even told the counselor that she was the one that had the problem. Nothing was resolved in the counseling sessions as we pretty much resolved that we loved each other and that she would try harder to correct her insecurities. Well, we decided to go ahead with our marriage (despite my reservations). To help momoralize the moment she decided she wanted to read a marriage vow that stated she would accept my son as her own. Obviously, I was touched and thought this was a turning point. Unfortunately, two months after our wedding date in July, my weekends with my son are now absolute h*ll because of my new wife. Here are some of the things I get to enjoy during my visitation weekends with my son:
- She continously criticizes me for “not being a good father” to my son. My new wife thinks that being a friend to my son is not the roll of a father.
- She refuses to accept her role of a step-mom. In fact, she goes out of her way to tell me she is “not his mother.”
- She has been trying to instigate things with my ex over child support, alimony, medical expenses etc and now my ex is pissed off and tries to use my son against me by withholding visitations.
- She does not want to accept my son for who he is and what he is. Instead, she only looks for the bad in what he does.
- She thinks that I should not spend any money on him as my ex is already getting plenty for him through alimony and child support. In fact, even $5 is too much for what I should be spending on him for a weekend.
- But, the real sad part is that I introduced her to my son months ago and now he would probably not even recongize her as she makes a point to either work the weekends that I have him or to just not be here for the weekend.
I can’t take this anymore. I feel like my new wife lied to me just so that I would marry her. She told me she would change and she hasn’t. I feel that if I stay in this relationship any longer that my son will be hurt emotionally and just as important my life will be shortened due to the constant emotional stress. I know there is only a narrow definition for an annullment but I would rather go this route then to say I was actually married for two months to a woman that I should have never married to begin with. Would my situation qualify for an annullment?
Thanks for your help.