My ex called me heartless for not sympathizing with his infertile wife. But she didn’t want to be a stepmother; she wanted to be the only mother.
Co-parenting with my ex-husband, Dan, was manageable until he married Becca. Becca was sweet at first, but she had a tragic backstory: she was unable to have children of her own.
When they got married, Dan sat me down. “Becca really wants to be involved,” he said. “Since she can’t have kids, this is her only chance to be a mom. Please, just let her do the ‘mom things’ sometimes. Don’t be territorial.”
I tried to be empathetic. I really did. I let her do the school drop-offs occasionally. I smiled when she bought them clothes. But “sharing” quickly turned into “shoving me aside.”
The Erasure
It started small. My 7-year-old daughter, Mia, came home one weekend wearing a completely different wardrobe. “Becca said my clothes were ‘tacky,'” Mia whispered. “She bought me these and said I look like a ‘real princess’ now.”
Then, my 10-year-old son, Leo, told me Becca had signed him up for soccer. “But you hate soccer,” I said. “You love robotics.” “Becca said robotics is for loners,” Leo replied, looking down. “She wants me to be a ‘cool kid.'”
When I confronted Dan, he gaslit me. “You’re just jealous that she has the time to invest in them. She’s just trying to bond. You know how hard this is for her.”
The Discovery
The breaking point came two weeks ago. The kids had spent the weekend at Dan’s. When Leo dropped his backpack on the floor, a folder spilled out. It wasn’t his homework.
It was a thick packet of legal documents. I picked it up. My hands started shaking. They were step-parent adoption forms. Becca had filled them out entirely. Under “Mother,” she had written “Deceased / Rights Terminated” and penciled in her own name.
Attached to the forms was a notebook. I flipped through it. It was a delusional script she was practicing with the kids.
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Script for Mia: “I love you, Mommy Becca. You are my real mommy.”
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Plan: “Change legal names by August. convince Dan that [My Name] is unstable.”
Then I checked Leo’s phone. There was a text thread with Becca. Becca: “Don’t call her Mom anymore, sweetie. It hurts my feelings. Call her by her first name. I’m the one who takes care of you now.”
The Confrontation
I didn’t call Dan. I drove straight to his house. I threw the folder at his chest. “She is filling out adoption forms listing me as DECEASED, Dan! She is telling our son to stop calling me Mom!”
Dan looked at the papers, pale. But before he could speak, Becca came out of the house. She didn’t look ashamed. She looked furious.
“You don’t deserve them!” she screamed, her face twisting into something unrecognizable. “You treat them like burdens! I would cherish them! I am supposed to be their mother!”
“You are not their mother!” I yelled back. “And you never will be.”
The Meltdown
I turned to leave, but Becca lost it. She threw herself onto the hood of my car. “You can’t take them!” she shrieked, pounding on the windshield. “They’re mine! I bought them! I fixed them!”
Dan had to physically drag her off my car while the neighbors watched in horror. She was screaming about how God “promised” her my children and that I was just an incubator who had served her purpose.
It wasn’t just infertility grief. It was full-blown psychosis.
The Aftermath
I filed for an emergency protective order that afternoon. The judge granted it immediately after seeing the “Deceased” adoption forms and the police report from the driveway incident.
Dan is currently fighting for supervised visitation, but I am petitioning for full custody. He claims he “didn’t know” how bad it was, but he allowed a woman to psychologically manipulate our children because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
My kids are in therapy now, unlearning the scripts she tried to force on them. Becca is legally barred from coming within 500 feet of us. She wanted to erase me. Instead, she erased herself from their lives completely.
