Hi MNers, posting this because I’ve had such amazing help in the past and I feel so up in the air about this.
I’m early 20s, and for a few weeks now have been dating a guy a few years younger than me. He’s seriously mature for his age - think sorted out his own flat (I’m still with parents), been recently promoted from the job where we met.
The issue is, he’s a parent, to a child under a year old. To be fair, the little boy isn’t an issue for me at all - I love children, always have, and he is just gorgeous. The issue is more with his DS’s mum (Boyfriend had been separated from his DS’s mum for quite a few months before we started dating, and I’m under no illusion that he still thinks of her as anything other than his son’s mum. She’s younger than him (not by much), but is quite immature in her behaviour.
When I first stayed over at his (without his DS there), she turned up on the doorstep in the early hours, with the baby, crying and shouting that boyfriend had abandoned her. This genuinely scared me, my parents had had similar scenes when I was very young, but after a little while she calmed down enough to come upstairs and talk to BF, and then eventually had a conversation with me. She explained that her concerns were that her DS would start thinking I was in a parental role to him, and might call me “mum” by accident (their DS is at the stage where he’s babbling, and he’s great with the “mamama” noise.)
I explained that obviously I would never ever allow this to happen, if I happened to be seeing BF when he has his DS I would just be there as “my name”, not any kind of nickname. She seemed to take this ok.
However, the level of contact she has with BF gets me worried. She’s previously said (having been the one to break up with BF, thus ending their relationship) that she believed that they hadn’t really broken up at all, and that she’d totally believed they would get back together. She texts and calls him daily to talk about things to do with their son, and gets angry and upset if he doesn’t reply instantly. I would never begrudge him this, I always say that his DS is the most important thing and he shouldn’t be leaving her hanging in case it’s important, but it often seems like it’s just a chance for her to self-insert. An example of this is when we took his DS to see his great-grandparents - she asked us to call when we got there safely, which seemed fair enough. She called twice during the 20-minute journey, not including several texts on the way. I’d be more understanding if he was very tiny, but he is nearly a year, and gets driven by different people often. Then once we were there, she called to tell him to get the recipe for a sauce his grandma makes, which apparently she loves.
This might sound really petty, but it happens almost daily, and gets quite upsetting. I’m not in any way setting up to try and act like a parent. It’s a new relationship, and we’re taking it as it comes, but it’s a lot of fun and I’m excited to see where it goes.
I can just foresee my BF’s ex taking every opportunity to try and remind him, me, and everyone else that she was there first.
Does anyone have experience of this, or can offer any advice?