To get fed up of my DP going to ExWs house regularly because of kids?

[Sunflowerspread]

I've been with my DP 5 years - and mostly good but for one niggle - he's always going to ExWs house because of their kids!

He takes his two daughters to Uni every morning - they live at their mum's - so he goes around every morning. Fair enough.

When their mum goes away they sometimes come to ours, they are very welcome, one used to live with us. But more and more they don't want to, and so DP goes to their house to see them and check they are OK. If they want their computer sorting, or a lift. Again, DP goes to theirs, they are often not ready, so he gets asked to go in, he does.

I do get that he needs a relationship. I do get that they are living at their mums. But why does it always have to be there?

I've tried to entice them to ours for the weekend, taken them out for dinners, all so that they can have some Dad time in his own house, or just him and them. His ExW has been starting to ask him more and more favours which involve him going to her house. They have a half sister now, who they hardly ever see because of this new 'norm'.

I'm just getting a bit fed up, but if I don't want to say anything directly as DP will just feel like I want to stop him seeing his daughters. Which I don't. I just wish it were more at our house!

Eats The lifts were always there in the morning, yet the 'double daily' lifts back were when DD1 started University. I thought perhaps that it was because he felt guilty that DD1 had moved out - she makes it clear that it was because of me, to her mums.

I remember at the time finding out half way through the term and just having a sick sinking feeling. I had assumed that DD1 would take the bus there and back, like others have said, her hours are not going to be 8am til 7.30pm when DP works. I assumed it was partly out of guilty, partly because DD1 is very immature. DP organised everything about Uni for her, everything. Whereas when DD2 started Uni - he didn't have to do half as much. It was also when DD3 was a baby and I do remember feeling really frustrated about 7 o clock especially, I'd be clock watching waiting for DP to come home, totally worn out by that stage.

He is very hands on being warm to DD3, but very hands off acting as a family together. He has in his mind that he puts her to bed every night, and as long as he gets in to do that, he doesn't see anything else is needed. At the weekends, I do think that he gets fidgety and bored, and likes to just get out of the house. But he won't just go and take DD3 out to the park, it's always to pick up DDs which he seems to jump at. At one point I got him to take DD3 to a group activity, which is not easy to manage with her needs, he just failed really. At one stage it coincided with a pick up of DD2 from her job, in the middle of the day, and DD3 went nuts. It was just too many stop offs and waiting around stuck in the car seat. DP really should have only focused on DD3. He then started to say that I'd better go along with him, but I said he needed to take on board some of the 'work' of DD3.

When I did go away for a couple of weekends, DP would always say it was fine with DD3, but I felt DD3 was starting to go way off balance. Like her grounding was gone. She has a professional support worker who once came in on one of those weekends, and she said that DD3 was noticeably off key and not 'quite herself' - when she popped in both DDs and DP were there butI get the impression they were not giving her any proper attention and DDs are practically strangers to DD3, as they do not engage at all.

My OH also had kids by a previous partner - who at one time even asked about coming over to ours to see the kids without us there, and sleeping in our bed. OH didn't seem to think it was a problem. Needless to say, that idea got squashed smartish. It's not an easy one to be reasonable about.

Oh ok, my dd 9 has ASD, and SPD and learning difficulties, and goes to a specialist Autism school. It can be very lonely, and you must be extremely lonely without the support of your partner. The fact that he is batting against you and not with you, is making it worse. I would rather be alone, than have someone who just was not interested. Try Solicitors after the new year, when its quieter.

So he likes just 10 mins for the day to spend with her putting her to bed, and lets you do the lions share of the work, and he gets the good bits. No no no. He is not a good partner or father to your DD3, I think as this thread is developing you are now seeing that. All these little niggly bits are coming together to form a big overall picture.

Those two posts Sunflower make me so sad for your DD (because of him obviously, you've clearly made all sorts of efforts in stark contrast to him).

It is incredibly difficult to get your head round it because when you've figured out that you can't change it no matter what you do, you have to move on to acceptance I suppose, and dealing with it however you need to deal with it.

It seems utterly incomprehensible because it is utterly incomprehensible and if we spent the rest of our entire lives on this conundrum we'd get absolutely nowhere because there is no figuring it out. It isn't inside normal patterns of caring no matter how alternative or how bohemian that might be - it just doesn't fit with any normality at all. You can't rationalise it or ever understand it.

No matter what you apply - logic, normal emotional responses, standard parenting behaviours - it doesn't matter because none of it's registering, they will never see the light on any of the issues or any of the points you make.

It's really hard - be almost better if they said you know what I don't give a stuff about the pair of you bugger off - but they continue in this all encompassing delusion that they are doing quite the perfect job and how can anyone criticise them and it's such an impenetrable brick wall.

And that's where the danger lies because you think oh I've not made myself clear, I've not explained the issue properly - pah, not the case. The person we're talking to just doesn't and will not understand. Ever.

I hope everyone will forgive me for posting (and am happy if MN think it should be somewhere else) but we've all had quite a crack on here trying to figure out these people. It has REALLY bothered me that I've not been able to put a name or a trait to my XHs behaviour and generally, those of us who have suffered with people who display the behaviours of OPs DH.

So I've been on the hunt online and pretty much discounted the personality disorders, eg - Narcissistic for example. None of them seem to fit (although I'm not a psychiatrist/psychologist so I could be wrong) but then I found 'Disordered Characters' and oh. my. God - get a load of this from this website (www.drgeorgesimon.com/drsimonsblogarchives.html).

This has nearly knocked my socks off:
Disordered characters don’t feel shame like neurotics do. One mark of a character disorder is a person’s relative incapacity not only to be deficient in feelings of guilt when committing harmful acts, but to lack any sense of shame for the kind of person they must be to commit such acts. It’s hard to be genuinely repentant and also hard to make good on a pledge to not commit the same kind of hurtful act again when you don’t really feel like a shmuck for doing the bad thing you did in the first place. Disordered characters have consciences that are under-developed and impaired. Most disturbed characters don’t hear that little voice in their heads that urge most of us to do right or admonish most of us when we’re contemplating doing wrong. They don’t “push” themselves to take on responsibilities and don’t “arrest” themselves when they want something they shouldn’t have. Any qualms of conscience they might experience can be eliminated with great ease. Character disordered individuals are notoriously nonchalant about the things that most others get upset about. They don't experience enough anxiety when it would be normal or even beneficial to do so. The disturbed character doesn’t get apprehensive enough about his conduct. He is too indifferent and unshaken when problems arise as the result of the way he does things, and he remains too unnerved and unperturbed in the face of conflict. The disordered character doesn’t do the dysfunctional things he does because some past trauma has him too hung-up to do otherwise. He does what he does because he lacks the capacity to get hung-up enough to think twice about his behaviour and inhibit himself and restrain his conduct.

Wow. Bingo (I think).

Oh, and this:
counsellingresource.com/features/2009/01/07/unreasonable-thinking/
counsellingresource.com/features/2008/12/22/self-deceptive-thinking/

That's been a real eye-opener for me. Certainly recognising my XH amongst the various descriptions!

Anyway, hope it's helpful to others on the thread or to you Sunflower.

No EatShit. I am pointing out that that having a child with someone who is still married to someone else is an action that most people would foresee as likely to run into difficulties at some point.

This does not absolve the OP's partner of blame. But at what point did alarm bells start ringing? A lot of people would have heard alarm bells ringing at the first mention of "Well, I'm not divorced yet" whilst dating, never mind the moving in/caring for step children/ttc steps.

The OP wasn't co-erced into the relationship. The warning signs were clear from the beginning. The signs that this man was selfish and had other commitments were already there.

Nobody is perfect and that includes you . She answered your questions further up thread.

Monday 19 Dec, at 16:44 post. Read it!

This is not a "no-one's perfect" Aero. It's not even being extremely naive. This is moral recklessness, selfishness or idiocy.

If the OP continues with the "woe is me, innocent victim of nasty man, his evil wife and wicked step-sisters" schtick, she is not taking responsibility for her own part in this situation.

And that perpetuates the likelihood of her, and her child, ending up in another precarious situation, with a less than scrupulous man.

She really could have seen this one coming early. Really.

It's possible she could have steered it in a different direction at various points, or avoided a lot of this altogether. She had choices and options.

The OP is not the victim here. She is a co-author. There are victims, there are people who had no choice. The children. Not the adults. To an extent the not-at-all-ex wife even. But not the OP.

If she doesn't realise that and take responsibility for it, she won't learn.

Please wind it in . They are not children, but adults, adults who have been indulged by both their parents, so that they are totally dependent on them, to take them to uni and work, totally incapable of getting themselves there independently. They are adults who should know how to behave and they are fully responsible for their behaviour.

I think op realises she is at a dead end with this man and I believe has sensibly broken it off, and will seek to ensure that her dd is financially provided by him, especially her little dd has disabilities.

I agree with you biscuit, I also think the red alerts were there from the beginning. I too would of been cautious about having a baby with someone who was still married, even if try were separated, the children in this must be confused, but where do you go from here, no idea, good luck though

Er, Biscuit, the ex wife had no choice? Rubbish. She did. And as Aero says above, so does the eldest daughter who is an adult. On the other hand, whatever agency the OP may have had earlier on has been severely curtailed by her position as full time parent to a child with disabilities. And a good man would have supported OP in handling that instead of trapping her in her situation largely alone. He's the one who has had most opportunity to 'steer this differently', and he didn't. So frankly your you-should-have-seen-it-coming post is both hugely unhelpful to the OP and also not even very accurate. Thanks

I really don't see the point in telling OP she should have known everything would turn out this way from the start. Without a handy time machine to jump into, what good does that do her? The 'take responsibility' moralising just comes across as opportunistic bashing of someone who is suffering. Season of goodwill and all that?

Actually biscuit save your sympathy for the poor 3 year old dd with disabilities who only gets 10 mins of her dads time a day, whilst he tends to the needs of his 2 adults dds. She is the innocent one in all this, where is your sympathy for her!

Exactly buttery, she is not a mind reader, and she might not have noticed the signs, as she said, he presented as the ideal partner, and she thought he was going to divorce soon. Anyway, divorce has nothing to do with it, its irrelevant, he could still have been continuing this behaviour divorce or not! It just a bit of paper, his actions are important, op did not know how this would all turn out like, similar to victims of abuse whose abusers present as intitally charming whilst they reel their victim in. A lot of victim blaming here biscuit!

Biscuit go stick your head in a Quality Street tin. Grown ups are talking.

Biscuit you go say that rubbish to victims of DV and see the reality, you tell them what you are telling op on here! I feel that the empathy train certainly missed you along the line.

Christ Biscuit read the tone of the thread now. We've moved on from victimblaming the OP and this has become a supportive forum helping Sunflower with "what now?!". If you can't help in that regard then strikes me that you're just trolling or at the least goading her. The situation is the situation. Help with what's next or fuck off.

Well said Icy, couldn't have put it better myself.

Merry christmas OP I've been following your thread. I'm wondering how things are for you and DD today - hopefully you're either with your own family, or your DP hasn't spent the day visiting his ExW and DDs.

Thanks I hope that everybody had a good Christmas. It was relatively calm and good to spend time with my family. I told no one. DP did send some texts saying that he missed us very much. He spent it with his brothers family. I'm looking forward to 2017 and feel strangely relieved not to have the daily stress of a half relationship.

Very glad to hear it.

Texts? Words are cheap.

Im glad you had a good Christmas Sunflower.