My husband’s ex told him I cheated with my stepbrother, claiming our baby wasn’t his. We eventually divorced. Years later he returned and wanted “the baby”—but he never expected the bad news.

My husband’s ex made him believe that I was pregnant with my stepbrother’s child, so he asked me for a divorce or an abortion. After ten years of silence, he wants to see his child—and I have bad news for him.

My husband’s ex completely manipulated him into believing that I was cheating on him. But it gets much worse. She convinced him that the person I supposedly cheated with was my stepbrother, and that I was pregnant with his child. I would never be unfaithful to my husband, let alone with my stepbrother. He didn’t believe me, so I ended up leaving him. But now he wants to see his child.

For reference—and also for me, because I’m not going to use real names here and want to keep track of the fake names I choose—the people involved in this story are as follows: me (35); Grant (38), my current husband; Sebastian, my stepbrother; Ezra, my ex‑husband; Cassie (30s, I don’t know her exact age), Ezra’s ex before we met. I’ll try to keep this as clear as possible, but this is a mix of seeking advice with anxiety and venting anger that I don’t want to take out on anyone else. So even if you’re just here to read about the horrible lives of strangers and aren’t going to leave any advice, feel free to read. I hope I can do justice to summarizing one of the worst times of my life.

Before I get too sidetracked with background information, here’s a summary of the current situation: I just found out that my ex‑husband has been asking about me after almost a decade of silence, because he wants to see me and my child. It might not seem like a big deal when written in one sentence, but I hope as you continue reading you’ll understand why this news has caused such an emotional upheaval.

When I was twenty‑four, my best friend and I moved across the country to a new city and a new state to start our adult lives. Six months later, she was offered her dream job in our hometown, and of course I encouraged her to take it. Unfortunately, that meant I was left alone in a new city and a new state.

Two weeks after she left, I met Ezra. I was alone, without friends, and stressed from my new job. He had just broken up with his high‑school girlfriend, and all of that combined to form a very intense relationship. A few weeks after meeting, he was practically living in my apartment, and I was convinced he was the love of my life. He was in his last semester of college, after changing majors several times, and was ready to start working at his father’s engineering company half an hour from the city. Maybe I was starting to see a future in that city. Now looking back, the cracks were evident from the beginning. Hindsight is much clearer than foresight.

When his graduation arrived and his ex‑girlfriend showed up with his mother, I simply smiled, introduced myself, and tried to make a good impression on his family. Cassie was practically a family friend, which was expected considering how long they had been together before the breakup, but she was basically the classic girl‑next‑door. Their mothers were best friends, so they grew up together, and I was told that the day they started dating was “the best day of Ezra’s mother’s life.” Still, I was young, naïve, and in love, so I put up with it. I sat next to her and did everything I could to get along with his mother. She never fully accepted me, but I never stopped trying.

Cassie became a constant presence in my life from that moment on. Ezra told me it was hard for him to cut contact with her because their families were so close. So I tried to understand. It didn’t matter that she clung to his arm at every event or called him by every affectionate nickname in the book. We’d come home to our apartment—because it quickly became our shared home—and he’d tell me he loved me, and I believed him. He simply didn’t want to hurt his family by cutting Cassie out. I mean, how could I complain when I love my own family with all my heart? I would do anything for them, so I could understand that he wanted to protect his mother’s feelings.

Eight months into our relationship, he proposed to me. I now know he did it the same day he found out that Cassie had a new boyfriend. At the time, though, I was blinded by love and happily accepted—even though there was no ring. I thought he wanted to propose so much that he couldn’t wait to get one.

A year later, I was walking down the aisle, happy to marry him. Back then, I thought my wedding to Ezra would be the best day of my life. I hadn’t seen my family in months, and suddenly they were all in the same room, celebrating my husband and me. I was so excited to catch up with them and introduce them. Until that point, the only family member of mine Ezra had met was my stepbrother, who had visited me a few months earlier. I didn’t even care that Cassie showed up in a white dress or danced almost as much with him as I did. Afterward, I excused it, thinking that Ezra was just celebrating this special day with his lifelong friend. After all, I had danced with my best friend and my stepbrother—the two people closest to me besides Ezra. That’s what I did throughout my entire marriage to him: I ignored the warning signs and justified his actions, especially when it came to Cassie. But that should have been a huge red flag.

For two years I made excuses every time Ezra prioritized his ex‑girlfriend—whom he privately called “obsessive” and “crazy,” among other insults, when no one else could hear. I ignored every time his mother compared me to Cassie. I turned the other cheek every time Cassie made a snide remark disguised as a joke or “helpful advice.” At the end of the day, Ezra was all I had, right? All the friendships I had made in that city were related to him or us as a couple, and every family connection I had was through him. My family lived in another state, hours away, and Ezra was never willing to make that trip. He was all I had.

Then I got pregnant.

To clarify, there was no abuse or anything like that. In a way, that would have been easier to explain to my family and friends. What finally made me open my eyes and realize how much Cassie influenced his life was the fact that he truly believed I was pregnant with my stepbrother’s child. Take a moment to process how absurd that is: Ezra genuinely thought the baby I was carrying wasn’t his, but that I had cheated on him with Sebastian, my stepbrother.

Since I lived in another city far from home, and our relationship before marriage hadn’t been that long, Sebastian and Ezra had only met once before the wedding, when Sebastian visited me early in the relationship. The second time they met was at our wedding. A year and a half after we got married, I flew back to my hometown to celebrate my mother’s sixtieth birthday. Ezra didn’t want to join me on that trip. A month later, I found out I was pregnant. I thought Ezra would be happy. He had always talked about wanting a big family with lots of children, and we had friends and family ready to support us. But instead of being happy, the first thing he said was, “She said this would happen.”

It’s been almost ten years and I still remember it with total clarity. I was completely confused. The only explanation he gave me was, “She warned me, and I should have believed her.” Instead of being happy, he left the apartment that same night and didn’t answer any of my calls or messages. When he returned the next morning, he gave me two options: “Abort or divorce.”

To save you the details: when I finally managed to get him to explain what was happening, it turned out that Cassie had been filling his head with lies. Apparently during our wedding, she convinced him that Sebastian and I were behaving inappropriately for step‑siblings—that we were too close, too affectionate. According to her, the way we hugged, how we posed in family photos, and how we spent time together at the reception were “too intimate, almost romantic.” She even told him that I had likely moved to our city because I was heartbroken after Sebastian got a girlfriend.

After our wedding, Cassie spent months filling Ezra’s head with lies about Sebastian and me. All she had were small fragments of our relationship that she saw on social media, since Sebastian lived in another state. But that didn’t stop her. Then, when I traveled alone to see my family and came back pregnant, that was all she needed to convince Ezra I was cheating.

Naturally, I denied everything. None of the accusations Ezra believed because of Cassie were true. Sebastian was practically like a twin brother to me. The accusation was not only absurd but deeply offensive. But Ezra didn’t care. He didn’t care when I offered to take a paternity test. He didn’t care when I showed him medical reports indicating that I was already pregnant before I traveled. He didn’t even care when I broke down in front of him, begging him to come to his senses.

It was a tough blow, but I couldn’t ignore it. I packed my bags, requested a transfer at work, and went back home to my real family. All things considered, the divorce was relatively simple. Ezra’s mother had insisted on signing a prenuptial agreement, and the lack of shared assets made the process quick. Ezra also refused any paternity test and thus signed a document relinquishing any rights to our unborn child. I hadn’t heard from him since then.

And now I find out he’s looking for me—and our “son.” My concerns are as follows: my current husband, Grant, knows very little about Ezra or how my previous relationship ended. He knows I was married and that it didn’t end well, but that’s it. It’s only a matter of time before Ezra finds a way to contact me. What am I supposed to do when that happens? Maybe it’s not as bad as I’m imagining, and if that’s the case don’t hesitate to tell me—but I’m starting to panic a little. This is a chapter of my life I thought was completely closed, and I don’t want to reopen it.

Update 1

With the intention of not attracting more attention than I already have, I’ll try to be even more vague with the details of this situation and of all the people involved. Maybe the word “stalker” is an exaggeration given what has happened so far, which I admit hasn’t been much. Two days after an old friend warned me that my ex‑husband was trying to contact me, I received follow requests on all my social‑media accounts. Although he hasn’t sent me any messages yet—because I haven’t accepted any requests—I fear it won’t be long before they start arriving.

He’s even been viewing my LinkedIn profile, which I can see because the platform shows who visited your page. It’s clear that he deliberately searched for me. I mustered up the strength and talked to my husband, Grant, about everything I mentioned in my previous post. I told him the whole story—about my relationship with Ezra, about Cassie, about everything I endured from him and his family, and finally about his reaction to my pregnancy.

Fortunately, the man I’m married to today is a thousand times better than my ex. He was understanding and gave me all his support as I recounted this never‑ending story. When I finished, he was more concerned about finding a way to comfort me than about the fact that I had never told him this before. Of course, just at that moment the follow requests intensified. We talked about what to do and decided to block all his accounts on every platform where he found me—which was basically all the ones I have. He had been stalking every corner of my online life. Luckily all my accounts are private.

I thought blocking him would give me some peace of mind. But then the messages started coming. He created fake accounts to send me private messages on almost every platform. In them, he said he had made a mistake, that he wanted to see me and meet his son. All the messages were different, but they ultimately said the same thing: he wasn’t going to stop contacting me until I let him see “his son.” He insisted that the child deserved to know his real father and that having a biological father was better than having a stepfather. He claimed that I couldn’t understand because, according to him, I had always thought that relationships with in‑laws were the same as blood relations.

The more I ignored him, the longer his messages became—insisting that he had the right to see his son. He wrote that he would keep creating new accounts and that I couldn’t block him forever. I have no doubt that he will continue trying to contact me. I just hope that sending longer messages is the only way he escalates this situation. Grant has assured me that we are completely safe and that Ezra won’t do anything really dangerous. But I have a bad feeling about all of this.

He showed up at my mom’s house. My ex‑husband—whom I hadn’t seen in nearly ten years—showed up at my mom’s door because I wasn’t responding to his messages. I visit my mom every Saturday without fail unless something important comes up. I always take my son with me, but since Friday night he had slept over at a friend’s house, this time I went alone.

In the morning, I didn’t notice the car parked across the street or the man sitting in the driver’s seat—at least not until I parked in the driveway and got out of the car. That’s when he also got out of his car and walked toward me. Understandably, I was shocked and afraid when I saw a man standing next to me, but when I recognized him, the fear didn’t go away. He was outside my mom’s house—a place he never visited during our marriage, a place he never bothered to go.

His message was the same as in his DMs: he wanted to see his son. He had tracked me across the country, apparently finding the address through shipping records when I moved, just because he wanted to see “his son”—the same child he once believed wasn’t his. I don’t know if I was stupid or brave, but in that moment fear left me and I was overcome with rage. I didn’t care that he had found my mother’s address. I didn’t care that we were in the middle of a neighborhood known for its nosy neighbors. And I didn’t care that I was alone with him for the first time since our marriage ended. I yelled at him with everything I had inside me, throwing every single thing he had done during our relationship in his face.

His only defense was that Cassie had manipulated him. He told me he was hurt and vulnerable and believed his lifelong friend. Apparently this all started when Cassie almost got married a few months ago and finally confessed to him that she had been lying the entire time. The moment Ezra found out I had been pregnant with his child, he started looking for me. Thankfully, none of our mutual friends gave him my number, so he resorted to finding me online. And when I blocked him everywhere, he had no choice but to find me in person. He said he was desperate to see his child. But I had bad news for him.

He didn’t have a child. The stress of his accusations, the divorce, and moving across the country piled up, and just a few months after we separated, I lost the baby. The child he had given up on never came to be. Ezra didn’t have a child. My son, Spencer, is Grant’s—my stepson, whom I adopted as my own. He has the same red hair as me and a personality just as intense, because Ezra was right about one thing: for me, relationships with in‑laws are just as valuable as blood relations. I have a child, but Ezra doesn’t.

By that point, I’d been yelling so loudly and for so long that my mother and stepfather came out of the house, along with several curious neighbors. I don’t know if it was the audience or the shock, but when my stepfather told Ezra it was best for him to leave, he left without arguing. Maybe I should have told him all of this from the beginning, instead of blocking him and ignoring his messages—but how could I have known he would show up here? I just hope that now that he knows the truth, he’ll return to his life far away from me and my family.

Logically, I should have realized that it wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of Ezra—not after he followed me across the country, desperate to see a child who doesn’t exist. To be honest, when I called him a stalker in the earlier updates, part of me was joking, trying to feel better about his sudden reappearance in my life. Yes, he had followed my every move on social media, where I had an account, but there’s a big difference between being a passive observer and becoming an active stalker. Apparently, Ezra was more than willing to make that leap.

I don’t know why I thought he’d believe me when I told him Spencer wasn’t his son. To be clear—he isn’t. Spencer doesn’t even have a biological connection to me beyond my marriage to his father and my adoption of him. We don’t share blood. The coincidence that we both have the same red hair was something Grant and I called destiny when I decided to adopt Spencer as my own. However, expecting Ezra to believe me—when the main reason for our divorce was precisely that he refused to believe me—was foolish on my part. Honestly, I don’t know exactly what I expected from him. Maybe I thought he would simply accept what I told him and disappear forever. That I’d never have to see him again after that day at my mother’s house.

After that day, I started noticing his car everywhere. At first I thought it was parked near my street, but only for a moment, so I assumed I was being paranoid. The second time I thought I saw his car, I mentioned it to Grant. From then on we both started being more vigilant—and sure enough, his car kept appearing. Every time we noticed it, he would speed off before we could do anything.

Two weeks of that was enough for us to go to the police. We had taken some photos of his car in different places, mostly near my mother’s house and ours. I thought surely the police would take seriously the fact that we were being watched and followed by my ex‑husband, who was convinced that my child was his. Surely they would take some action. Apparently not. Although what we presented might seem suspicious, the police told us they couldn’t arrest someone just for being near us. We had no proof that he intended to harm us, and he hadn’t done anything directly against us. So we were on our own in all of this.

I’m happy to report that my ex‑husband will no longer be a problem for me or my family. After doing everything we could to convince the police to take preventive action without success, we finally managed to present the necessary evidence for him to be arrested. As I mentioned in my previous update, Ezra had been lingering around Spencer’s school. The conclusion was clear: he wanted to take the child he believed was his, no matter what I wanted. Obviously neither Grant nor I were going to let that happen. Fortunately, our neighbor—who is a teacher at Spencer’s school—shared our concern. It was thanks to her that we managed to stay ahead of things. We knew that eventually Ezra was going to try something. We just had to wait.

In the meantime, we informed the school staff about what was happening. We made it clear to everyone in the office that Spencer wasn’t to leave the school with anyone except our neighbor, Grant, or me. A few days later, it happened. In the middle of the day, Ezra walked into the school office, saying he was there to pick up Spencer on my behalf because there had been an emergency with his grandmother. He even mentioned my mother’s name—probably thinking that would make him more believable. When the staff told him they would have to call me before releasing Spencer to him, he insisted that I was busy with the “emergency” and couldn’t be disturbed. When he couldn’t convince them, he pretended he would call me himself and left the building with that excuse.

Of course he never called. Instead, he sat in his car outside the school, waiting. However, the school called me immediately to inform me of everything that had happened—just as we had planned. They also recorded the entire interaction on video. At the end of the school day, they released the students as usual, but they kept Spencer in his classroom with my neighbor. It was then that the police—with the video in hand—arrived to arrest Ezra while he was in his car. Inside the car, the police found two plane tickets to his home state, along with high‑powered sedatives. They believe his plan was to use that medication on Spencer to take him away.

Ezra was arrested and will remain in custody until his trial, where he will face charges of conspiracy to commit kidnapping, endangering a minor, and any other charges they may add. Finally, our nightmare is over.

It’s been months since my last update. Ezra is in prison. I’m not going to detail all the exact charges against him, because I don’t want anyone to be able to discover his real name and track me through this. But I can say he will be in prison for several years—although I would prefer he stayed there forever. The charges include the ones I mentioned in the previous post, along with a few additional ones. Somehow he got away with some charges—which makes no sense to me—but as long as he’s behind bars, I don’t care.

He tried to justify the sedatives by saying they were his, which was true, because he had a prescription—he had been taking them after he found out the truth. Still, the plane tickets and the whole plan were so disturbing that he might have thought of using them. In addition to that, we now have restraining orders against him for Grant, Spencer, and me. He will never be able to approach Spencer’s school without being arrested.

During the trial, an official paternity test was conducted that proved once and for all that Spencer is Grant’s son. My medical records were also presented, with my consent, confirming that I had a miscarriage a few months after my separation from Ezra all those years ago. Ezra did all of this to end up in prison for absolutely nothing.

And do you know what the cherry on top is? Cassie. She showed up at the trial and made a huge scene, pretending to be devastated because Ezra was going to jail—shortly after her husband publicly left her. Apparently, she had been constantly posting on social media in support of him. In her last post, her husband commented that she was “free to go support him in prison,” since she refused to stop talking about him. Some friends from the city have told me that her divorce is already in process. Of course, I’ve blocked Cassie and all of Ezra’s acquaintances on every platform I could think of. I’ve cut off any possibility of running into them again.

Cassie and Ezra were together—which many people suspected in the comments, and I won’t deny that I did too. That’s why she almost ended up getting divorced. I don’t know if their relationship started while Ezra and I were still married, before we got married, or after our separation. But what’s clear is that she had always wanted to go back to him. The good news for her is that now she’ll be able to enjoy conjugal visits in prison and won’t have to hide from her husband while she does her thing with Ezra. Obviously it won’t be as glamorous as doing it in a fancy hotel, but not everything in life is perfect, right?

The funniest part is that I found out about all this because Cassie reached out to me via email. Yes, she had the audacity to send me a message full of insults and hurtful comments, as you can imagine. Basically she tried to rub it in my face that she had “won,” because in the end, thanks to the lies she put in Ezra’s head, she ended up with him. I was very tempted to respond and tell her she shouldn’t feel so proud because all she got was a pathetic loser—but the truth is I wanted to be the more mature person in this situation. That’s a lie. I told her, and of course after sending her my response I blocked her. I imagine she must have sent more emails full of inappropriate things, but luckily for me no one is going to read them. What a tragedy, right? Anyway, although I could have taken the high road, in the end I couldn’t resist having that last word. Sometimes being a little immature is the best therapy.

I just found out something I’m sure will leave you all speechless, and I couldn’t wait to get home to write it here: Ezra has been beaten up in prison. Don’t worry—if any of you feel sorry for that gentle soul—he’s out of danger. But from what I’ve been told, in prison they don’t look kindly on men who try to kidnap children, so he received a “special welcome” to make it clear what they think of someone like him. No matter how much Ezra has tried to play the victim all this time, the rules inside prison are very different. There, his attempts at manipulation and his superior attitude mean nothing. And it seems he has learned that the hard way.