My partner of 8 months spends every weekend with his 3 young boys.
He split up with their mum about 15 months ago. For a while they did the every other weekend arrangement which is obviously most common, then about 2 months into our relationship he pretty much went back to being with them every weekend, at her house -not staying over but there from morning til bedtime. This was because his ex partner got to a point where she apparently could not cope with the kids being away from her any more , it was making her very depressed, which I can imagine must be terribly hard. She lost her job at the time around that time (has a new one now) and think it all got a bit much.
It's been six months since I saw him at all on a weekend, except for maybe the odd Sat or Sun eve from 9pm til 8am next day - even these are rare as its kind of pointless to drive 2 hours literally just to go to bed together.
I haven't met his children as I don't feel it's right to so early on in our relationship and so soon after their mum and dad split. Also, his ex knows of me but has made it very clear to him he must not introduce them. She often makes threats about taking them away altogether, which although probably completely untrue, scare my partner to death.
I won't go into details but I have absolutely no concerns about the nature of his relationship with his ex, none at all. If anyone is good enough to respond, you can certainly question this but that really isn't the point of my post.
The point is I am completely torn - after 6 months and no real weekend time (we live about 2 hours drive from each other by the way, but see each other in the week) , I've basically said he needs to bring himself away from there even once a month say on a Sat afternoon so we can have a proper evening together. This reduces him to tears, saying he cannot bear to miss out on anything with the kids. He says he wants to, for our sake, but it kills him.
I feel like a cow for essentially demanding he be apart from his kids who are so precious to him.
As mentioned, his ex will not let him take the kids away from her at weekends - their split wasn't acrimonious (but was more him than her by all accounts) so she's quite happy to have him around if it means she doesn't have to be apart from them.
Am I being unreasonable to ask a devoted dad to give up a little bit of weekend time once in a whole for me? He claims he loves me, talks of a future etc, but he really cannot deal with being away at weekends without breaking down.
He sees them about 3 nights in the week for bedtime, seems fine on the other 2, no meltdowns then. But says that's because he isn't missing out like he would at weekends.
Does he need to man up, get some backbone and stand up to his ex, or should I just live with and applaud him for wanting to see them a lot and for him and his ex partner managing a good co parenting relationship?
What do I do?
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Relationships
Urgent perspective needed - DP, his kids and weekends
rollermydisco · 23/11/2012 23:19
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