My [31] wife [27] is trying to convince me to let our son spend every other weekend with her ex [28].

My wife and I have been together for 6 years, married for 5. She has an 8-year-old son Jake from a previous relationship. Her ex was very irresponsible, got arrested multiple times, and was involved in shady activity, basically leaving her as a single mother. She moved an hour away from the city to where she met me. Jake was just one years old. I basically took in her son as my own and I am very close to him. We have our own son Matt who is 4 years old and Jake was a great big brother to him. They have gotten very close.

2 years ago her “baby daddy” came back into the picture. He had some sob story about how he nearly died and had an epiphany and turned his life around. He had a decent job, cleaned himself up and apologized for everything and said he wanted to be part of his son's life. My wife is a very trusting and forgiving person so after determining he had really "changed" she didn’t really pose any objection to giving him partial custody despite him abandoning her for years and said it was best for Jake. (I thought it was a bad idea but she insisted) As of now Jake sees his dad every other weekend (he’s picked up Friday evening and dropped back at our house Sunday evening. We have had some issues with his father not ensuring that he does his homework and occasionally cancelling meetings last minutes but for the most part he’s been pretty committed to the task.

The issue is that Jake's father has committed to doing “fun tasks” with his son. He often takes them to the movies, to sports games, amusement parks, bowling, family parties, etc.. I honestly don’t know where he gets the money to do this but it seems like EVERY TIME they go out he takes him to do something. It’s gotten to the point where Jake is so incredibly eager to hang out with his dad since he is the “fun and cool parent” while his mom is the strict boring mom and I am the corny loser that’s “technically not even his real dad” (his words). This kind of hurts since I practically raised the kid but it is what it is. What’s a bigger issue is that Matt, our son has become jealous of Jake’s trips and expressed desire to go with his brother when he gets picked up by his dad.

2 days ago my wife brought up the possibility of letting Matt go with Jake when his dad picks him up. She said that she and her ex had talked about it and he was very willing to bring him along and she thought it was a great idea that would allow Matt and Jake to bond more and would remove any "jealousy" in their relationship. Obviously I was completely against this and thought she was crazy. No way, was I letting another man act as a “fun parent” to my kid.

I told her this and she said she had already talked to Matt about the possibility and he was really excited about it (I thought this was manipulative and immature to talk to him without consulting with me). I argued that her ex wasn’t exactly the most responsible guy and I didn’t want my son to spend time with him. She then got REALLY offended and accused me of preferring Matt over Jake and that if her ex is good enough to spend time with Jake why isn’t he good enough for Matt? She then said she thought I viewed Jake as a son,This made me angry because it’s not as if I agreed for her ex to have partial custody of Jake. It was her idea and I objected to it but it’s impossible to change her mind so I didn’t put up much of a fight. To turn that against me was just ridiculous. She is still insisting on me allowing this and thinks I'm being selfish and immature

I’ve talked to some of my friend about this and some think my wife is crazy while some think I should just give in and that we would enjoy the time without kids. I just wanted some advice from reddit. Should I just give in for the sake of keeping the peace or should I put up a fight?

TL:DR- My wife has a kid with her ex and they share custody. My wife wants to allow her ex to take our son together out when he picks up his kid. I object to this.

Submitted July 28, 2018 at 05:29AM by Rlshp_Throwaway https://ift.tt/2M13rTK