To think DP spends to much one-on-one time with son from past relationships?

[justalittlemilk]

DP and I have a son who is 8 months old, and my only child. He has a son at 14 and a half years old (as well an adult daughter).

DP gets his son every weekend, he picks him up on the Saturday morning and drops him home on a Sunday evening. During this time I see him little to none, he spends the full time doing his sons hobby, or spending time with his adult daughter (who has not accepted our son so has no relationship with me nor him). It seems as soon as he picks up his son on the Saturday morning that my DS is forgotten. I totally appreciate the importance of spending time alone with his older son to maintain their relationship and so he doesn’t feel pushed out, but as I said it’s every weekend without fail literally since the day my DS was born.
I also understand that he only sees him once a week and wants to spend quality time with him, and he lives with our DS, but often he ends up working 6 days a week with Saturday being his only day off, and goes to work after he dropped him off on a Sunday.
When I speak to him about it he often talks about when our DS is old enough to go out and do stuff every weekend he will, but for me that’s only a small part of it, the other part is I’m left with all the care of our son, feeling like a single mother a lot of the time. I don’t live near my friends or family as when we moved in together we chose to live in his home town to keep him close to his other kids.
AIBU for feeling this way?

“AppropriateAdult

He shouldn't have agreed to have a baby that he wasn't prepared to parent. Or that he knew wouldn't be accepted by his other children. I wouldn't be happy with this either, OP.”

Or maybe she shouldn’t have had a baby with him when she already knew he saw his kids on a weekend and the older daughter didn’t like her?

@justalittlemilk

I hope to help here and provide genuine advice. I believe whether your DH means to or not, he is the one being unreasonable in this situation.

On one hand, he has to spend time with his other children but he should integrate his DS and DD into your family so you can get to know each other better. I was very much on the fence about this situation until I saw that you said your DH stays in another house with his DS when he has him. That set-up is just weird and how long does he plan for that to continue?

I think you are best to sit your DH down for a chat at the beginning of the week when your husband is home after work. In my experience, it is not about what you are dealing with that's the problem or what you say but it is how you say it that will determine the outcome.

You need to to be like this First of all, I want to tell you that I love you and our family and I am so very happy that we are together. You are a great partner and father and I could not have asked for a better husband (complimenting him in this way softens things, it is very diplomatic and helps him feel comfortable).

Having said that, I am sorry but I feel I have to say something. As much as I would never want to get in the way of your relationship with your other DS and DD and I appreciate how challenging this must be on you, I do feel uncomfortable with the current set-up of how you spend time with your DS at the weekend. I would never want to replace your DS mum as he has a mum and I respect that but I am his step-mum whether you like it or not and our son is his brother. I think I can bring something positive into his life and for our family to connect in a positive way to the best way we can

I want to love your DS as my own and get to know him as he is an incident child and he is part of you, the man I love. However, I feel I cannot achieve this as you stay in a different house when you have him and you do not bring him home to meet me or his brother. As much as I am not expecting this routine to stop straight away, I would like us to work towards creating a new dynamic that suits everyone. Perhaps he can stay here with us and you can take him out for some father and son time on the Saturday during the day and then movies at home for all of us at night and other family activities on a Sunday

I do not want to cause any problems but no matter what way you look at it, I am not happy with this situation and I would like you to go away and think about what I have said. Nothing has to be decided right now. I say these things because it is lonely for me also to spend weekends by myself when you already work such longs hours during the week. I miss my husband and our son misses his dad. I hope you realise that no matter what I come from a place of love and I do not want to cause arguments or upset for anyone. I want you to have a very good relationship with your other children, I just want myself and our son to be apart of that to some extent

I would perhaps write all of this in a letter that he can read, you can get your point across and as you are being nice about it, hopefully he will understand what you have to say. If this does not work then he is only thinking about himself.

Jesus op, your getting such a hard time here. I haven’t looked at your previous posts, but perhaps you do struggle with your relationship with your SS. Maybe that’s something you could all be working at - whatever the case, you can’t do that if you don’t see him.

On this matter, YANBU. Your partner has 3 kids and i’d hope, a desire to see and parent them all. Him disappearing throughout the weekend is not sharing parenting with you, and it’s skewing favour with his children. If he had another child, that baby should be part of his family, as well as his bigger kids. Even if space is a premium in your house, why aren’t they coming for breakfast/lunch/family time together with you and your ds?

Time alone with his older children should definitely happen - quality time with ALL his kids, and some time away for you on occasion. I hope you guys can find some resolve. Your baby isn’t a second class family member, just because he was born after his two siblings.

Also, in response to PP...if the dad is our earlyish and not home ‘till 6, 7pm where is the quality time in the week with his baby?

zebraaa why should she put an adult who doesnt like hers feelings ahead of her own when it comes to a decision like having a child or not?

You need to ask him how he sees the dynamic changing when his younger dc is walking and talking. It's possible the younger one will be the default option once his older son wants to spend his time with a partner.

He would probably see more of him if the two of you split up, not that that is unusual these days. For all the fathers who drop off the face of the earth after ending a relationship with their child's' mother, there are many more who discover parenting for the first time after a split.

As someone below has pointed out, you've posted about your dss recently (April) and have mentioned how much you don't like him and how you dread him coming round because of his behaviour on family outings.

Did your partner start staying at his daughter's place because of this?

So DP and I have a five month old DS together, he also has a 14 year old son who I just don't like.
Wow, This speaks volumes

Indeed all becomes clear now. No wonder he stays away to see his older son!

Your partner sounds like he is being a terrible father to your ds and an unreliable dp for you. When does he look after the baby? It is not acceptable that he has chosen to opt out of parenting his new baby because he already had dc. When are you supposed to be able to have time as a couple or a few hours without the baby? The whole situation sounds dysfunctional.

@Honeyroar like I said, if he works full time during the week and baby is already in bed when he gets home or about to be then the weekend is the only time he gets to spend with ANY of his kids, and at the moment he is totally leaving one out. It's not only the one night his baby misses out on, as he chooses to work on the Sunday. The full weekend is taken with no time set aside to be with his baby that he already doesn't see during the week.

All kids like one on one time but it's not appropriate to totally cut out ALL time with your other child to do so, it should be every now and then or for less time, for instance they could spend the day visiting the adult sister once a month, then come and sleep in the family home. The adult sister doesn't have to have a relationship with the baby if she doesn't want to, but has to accept she will see her father less often as a result because HE has a responsibility to the baby whether she or he likes it or not. She should be welcome to come over if she likes but if she chooses not to it isn't appropriate to spend no time with his child who is still a child to visit her. The teenage son should get to do his hobbies and spend some time one on one with his dad, but has no choice but to share a family home with his siblings as well. This is the reality of life with siblings whether the parents are separated or not.

OP, I have a step son and now that our daughter is here we have had to move to a three bed house to accommodate both of them. This is what needs to happen in your case, the whole family should be under one roof.

YABU. How would you feel if this is your son in 15 years ....

Amazes me a mother can think like this. It's HIS son he is spending time with.

Jealousy springs to mind.

He's being very unfair to your son .

He needs to stop paying his daughter's rent as well. She's an adult now. And if his elder son doesn't want to spend time with his new brother then maybe his dad ought to spend less time with him.

Your DH is letting you and your baby down very badly. He needs to tell his older kids how it is and they have to out up with it.

How old is his daughter?? Why won't she have anything to do with your DS? Sounds to me like the source of the problem is here. I think he is trying to appease her by keeping things as they were and not realising it's unfair on his new child that there will always be this part of his life he isn't a part of. The 14 year old is a teenager no surprise there he would pick hobbies over spending time with a baby. But a adult refusing to acknowledge a baby that Seems more likely to be the root of the issues for me

*put up with it

if just up the road,wait til they are home.take the baby up and hit with a plausible "reason"and bugger off for an hour. see what happens. cant and wont are very different things to deal with.find your feet.maybe?

zebraaa why should she put an adult who doesnt like hers feelings ahead of her own when it comes to a decision like having a child or not?

Because that adult isn't unconnected to her and because it isn't a decision about whether to have a child or not, but whether to have a child with that adult's father. I wouldn't let it be the ultimate arbiter of whether or not to have a child, but I would think long and hard about having a child with someone if their children did not accept me as his partner. She is presumably a young adult. She may still have been a child when the OP and her father got together. So yes, I would consider my relationship with her before getting more involved with the father, especially if the father were not about to facilitate the relationship.

smell how does he get his dad 5 days a week? He’s a baby, guessing OPs dp works at least 9-5, by the time he gets home his son is probably going to bed, so when is he spending time with him??

How do you know baby wakes in the night? If so is working he obviously won’t be wanting to get up in the middle of the night with the baby.

OP, just leave him, you don’t like the way things are, you resent his children because they mean you and your ds don’t get to see dp, yes you should have considered this before having a child with him but that’s a bit late now. Just walk away, he will then have to find time to see your ds as well as his other 2 dc.

I think we need some more input from the OP otherwise we're just inventing stuff to discuss!

What’s the age gap between you and the adult daughter? I’ve known friends that just couldn’t get on board with their dad’s having relationships with people their age. The compartmentalising isn’t normal and he does have a responsibility to his existing children and your baby. It sounds like there are much bigger issues at play around family dynamics.

It was a little unfair and misleading to miss from your op the fact that you don't want to spend any time with your step-son (and the step daughter doesn't want to spend time with you).

All those helpful posters querying why you couldn't all do something together were edging the blame to the father for this, when that's been your call.

Your DH is being massively unreasonable.

He has a child with you as well, and all responsibility for said child should not fall entirely you to every single weekend so he can play out with his almost grown up child, which is what he is doing. He doesn't even come home Saturday nights??? Wow.

I would be furious.

He needs to step up and be a parent to all his children, not just his son and not just catering to his adult daughter who doesn't like his life choices (you and new baby).

Did OP disappear when it was brought to poster's attention that she's posted previously, saying she didn't like her stepson?