AITA for telling my wife to divorce me because I’m not forcing adoption on my daughter?

I (33m) have an 8 year old daughter Ella with my ex and I have full custody of her. I’m married to Laura (30f) and we have two kids together. Ella’s mom is a train wreck, alcohol, drugs, multiple arrests and a lot of personal issues. She has not seen Ella for around a year now. She did have supervised visits ordered by the court but she didn’t always make those due to hospitalizations, arrests and such. I’ve been dating Laura since Ella was 2. So she’s very familiar with Laura. But she doesn’t call her mom and she still loves her mom and wishes her mom would get better and be a real mom to her. I have her in therapy to help her process everything.

Laura knew how things were when we started dating and she knew how it was when we got married. I always made it clear that my priority was Ella’s safety, health and happiness and I told her I understood if it got to be too much and she didn’t want to commit. But she said she was on board for it all.

Only now she’s tired of my ex reappearing every so often and she wants to adopt Ella so my ex can’t have any access ever again. She does love Ella and sees her as hers just as much as mine. But the main reason she’s being so forceful is severing my ex’s rights would get her out of the picture until Ella’s 18 and chooses to look for her mom on her own. Laura says this is what’s best for her and for all of us. But Ella doesn’t want to be adopted by Laura. Even if her mom never gets better, she doesn’t want to be adopted.

I respect this and I won’t force it. But Laura isn’t happy. She said we have the other two kids to think of as well and how Ella might pull away from us if her mom causes more trouble in the future, she might choose her over us. I said that could happen even if she adopts her. And I said it will definitely happen if we force this.

Laura and I have discussed this numerous times now and she told me she doesn’t see our marriage surviving if I won’t talk Ella around or let her do it, or get a therapist who will. She said she will not keep being just the stepmom when Ella’s mom won’t put her first, while she has been and doesn’t get the benefit of legal stability of adoption. She said I only had two options and needed to decide which I wanted. I told her to divorce me then because I’m not forcing the adoption on Ella.

Laura didn’t expect my answer and she told me she thought I’d offer to speak to Ella more. That I clearly don’t care about our marriage. I said I do but she gave me two options and one option never happening. And I can’t control if she divorces me for it.

AITA?

submitted by /u/GamingDadx9x1 to r/AITAH
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