"AITA for setting boundaries between my daughter and my ex-husband's partner?"

My ex-husband Dan and I have a 10 year old daughter, Emily. We divorced 8 years ago after Dan came out as gay and he effectively left me for one of his friends from work, Jim. They didn't have an affair but there were definitely feelings there before we separated. They now live together. I remarried 4 years ago to my husband Nick. Dan and I share custody of Emily pretty much 50/50.

One source of tension has been Emily's relationship with Jim. Dan, Nick and I all come from very conservative Christian backgrounds, whereas Jim is from a very left wing Jewish-Italian family. Emily has always been something of a free spirit and she and Jim get on like a house on fire. She and Nick have a good relationship but Nick is more of a typical stepfather.

She respects Nick but she's obsessed with Jim. She always wants to be doing what he's doing. She's developed a bad habit of walking around the house without shoes or socks because he does, she only eats her eggs hard boiled because that's how he eats them, she always talks about how funny he is. I had to put my foot down last year when she started calling Dan and Jim her 'dads' but didn't call Nick her dad.

It all came to a head last month when she came home from a week at theirs and proudly showed us some of the Italian that Jim has been teaching her. It turns out that she asked him to teach her Yiddish and Italian. I asked her why and she said that not only was it fun to have 'secret conversations' with Jim, she was the 'only child' who could 'carry it on.'

This really annoyed me because she isn't Jim's child and she doesn't have an ancestral language to 'carry on'. Our family only speaks English and always has. I also felt like this made her relationship with Nick even more unequal as he doesn't have another language to teach her and bond with her over.

I immediately phoned Dan and expressed that I felt Jim was stepping over the line and getting too involved. Dan got uncharacteristically angry at me. He said that if I had a problem with Emily being closer to Jim than Nick, then it was up to Nick to build up his relationship with Emily, not up to Jim to tear his down.

I said that Nick couldn't do that as he didn't get to just be the fun parent like Jim does, because Nick has to be the only father figure in our household whereas Jim can just be Emily's friend. Dan told me that I was being ridiculous and accused me of being a bigot, which is ludicrous.

He must have said something about it to Emily as she's stopped talking about Jim in our house, which I'm glad about, but she's been very frosty with us. Nick has tried to get her involved in things they can do together but she's not showing any interest.

I feel like I did have to say something but I'm worried I went over Nick's head and made things worse and should have left him to handle it. I just want Jim to stop overstepping.

What do you think? AITA? Commenters weighed in and they did not hold back:

Workhardgymharder said:

YTA. I don’t understand at all why walking round the house without shoes or socks on is a ‘bad habit’. “She always talks about how funny he is”. Oh the horror. Great that she feels comfortable calling Jim and Dan ‘dad’. Not sure how this would be a bad thing or Jim’s fault.

You say she respects Nick, but if she’s not seeing him as a father then that’s on him to sort out and change the dynamic, it’s not reasonable to expect everyone to step back and do less.

He’s teaching her a second language. Wow, what an amazing skill that will benefit her throughout her life. I wish I had someone teach me a second language at a young age. “She isn’t Jim’s child”. Not biologically but he is a huge part of her life. Would you be annoyed if Nick was teaching her a second language?

Jim has a fatherly role in this young girls life. Well done for trying to prevent that.

Stop being jealous she likes daddy’s partner more than mummy’s.

bamf1701 said:

YTA. You are letting your jealousy shut down a very positive relationship in your daughter’s life. And your ex is right - it is your husband’s job to build his relationship with your daughter and shutting down her real with Jim won’t help that at all. And why bring up the conservative Christian and left-wing upbringing if his sexual orientation isn’t a factor?

etrues55 said:

YTA. You sound jealous af. Also, walking around the house in your shoes is gross. Do you know how many germs you’re bringing in?? Stop it.

And MandaDian said:

YTA. She has a good relationship with her stepfather and that’s okay. You just have an issue because your ex chose to be true to himself and is with another man. Also, YTA for referring to being barefoot inside as a “bad habit."

Edit from OP:

we wear socks and slippers inside! Not shoes! (But it seems like this is apparently a much stranger rule than I thought, so I'm very open to swallowing my pride on that one.)

She later shared this small update after reading the comments:

I am listening to people. If this many people are saying that jealousy seems like an issue then I need to consider that it's probably true. Sometimes an objective opinion (especially one from 2,500 people) seems obvious to those not involved in the situation, but not to those closest to it. I am entirely willing to accept being TA here and that my own ingrained prejudices have colored my judgment.

I don't like hearing it but that doesn't mean I'm not listening. I did genuinely post here with the awareness that I might be judged harshly, and now that it's happened, I need to accept what people are saying, and I do. Like I've said, it's not exactly fun to acknowledge, but I've been on the unlearning journey for a long time now. It isn't news to me that I have things to work on.