To never want to blend families

[BlueBoar]

I’ve been with DP (living apart) for 2 years. I can feel he wants to blend our families soon - no idea if saying no would mean the end of our relationship - but I have tried this before and it was a disaster of catastrophic emotional consequences for all the children involved. I have a DS10 whose dad I left at 4 months. We moved in with my ex and his kids after 18 months when DS was 4 but it all ended in disaster 18 months later. I have made it clear to present DP that I will never put DS through that again. He has two DS, close to age in my DS, but very different in personality and my DS does not want to spend much time with them (he has loads of pals from school who have much more in common with him). I am adamant that I will not ever put DS through that again and I try to emphasise the adult relationship we have to DP. I want to see DP when no kids are around and have a solely adult connection but he likes to spend time with us and bonds with DS over things that his dad isn’t bothered about. AIBU to say to DP that we need to keep to adults only and he can only see me when I don’t have DS? And that we will never have more than this until (and maybe not even then) until after our kids have flown our nests?

Yanbu but you should now remind him this is not going to happen .

Give him the chance to walk away if that’s what he wants

YANBU - there's no need for you to live together if you don't want to. I'm not sure what benefits it would bring other than sharing living costs.

I'm friends with a couple who have five children between them from previous relationships (very similar ages). They've been together for years, have lots of holidays together but live separately. One of them is widowed and so always has their children but they seem to manage fine without "alone time". Everyone gets on well and there are lots of shared interests but there still isn't any need for them to live together. Maybe the adults will move in together when the children have grown up (currently teens) but currently they prioritise their children.

Blended family was the best thing I ever did. Relationship didn't last.but my family bonds with stepchildren and between siblings and stepsiblings will last a lifetime and into next generation

It’s so nice to see a post where the people who are parents are prioritising the various kids, instead of their sex life. I despair at the number of people forcing their current shag into their kids home and lives, there’s never a benefit to the kids involved, it’s solely for the adults. Wish my mother hadn’t inflicted her various boyfriends and current dreadful husband on my childhood, at best it was cringey and uncomfortable, and lifelong damage to me at worst.

While I understand your reasoning I think you may be doomed.

How do you expect it to work? Dates when you have a babysitter and your DP doesn't have his children? You want an adult relationship but doesn't want to share a life.

Your DP may see your DS as part of your life and therefore something he wants to include and be included in the future. I would be feeling like a booty call if you want to just share a part of you with me long term. it sounds more like friends with benefits than a relationship.

Be honest with him and make your position clear if you intend to keep it. be prepared to loose him and other potiential partners until your DS is an adult.

"Surely if you both have your own children and are settled you want more adult time, not more time dealing with other people's kids alongside your own?"

I agree with this so much.

I take issue with the implied hierarchy that sharing day to day, practical tasks with someone is deeper, better, more advanced, more - just more - than a non-practical relationship which is based on some other form of connection which can be richer, more subtle and more sophisticated than just being used to having someone around and they share the bills and the washing up.

I mean if I was in prison, by this logic, I would love my cellmates more than I currently love my boyfriend.

If your "hierarchy" works for you - if you feel closer to someone because you trip over them around the kettle every morning and have to negotiate over the remote control, whereas I feel closer to someone that I only see through clean, pure choice, and always tell the absolute truth to and who makes me laugh so much - well fine. But don't go telling people who can put their own bins out that their relationships are "downgraded" or "regressive".

Don’t do it if your gut says not to.

I’ve blended families, and I won’t do it again. It was okay at first, and I had a child with exDP, but the step kids won’t have anything to do with my older son and it’s an awful thing for a lovely boy like him to have had - an experience of people who don’t really care. There were positives at first, but I ended up totally protecting my own kids as often there is an imbalance and we would have ended up with snidey mean comments in the household if I hadn’t drawn a line -

A child isn’t a child for very long. We have to give them not just an ok home, but one where they can totally relax and feel at ease, where there is harmony. It’s difficult enough growing up.

What does blended really mean. I don't see how families can be blended unless everyone lives in the same house.

How do you expect it to work? Dates when you have a babysitter and your DP doesn't have his children? You want an adult relationship but doesn't want to share a life.

I don't understand why this would be complicated. Surely it's just like any other relationship/friendship? When you're both free and want to spend time together you do - that might be with one or all of the children or it might just be the two adults. Sometimes that might be going out, sometimes it might be staying in. If the kids are there then choose something to do that they're interested in. Sometimes it might involve staying over night.

You're not wrong to want that at all.

However, imo, it does seem wrong to allow your child and him to form a good relationship and have you form relationships with his children to then suddenly say no this isn't happening after 2 years.
It's only reached this point because you allowed it to happen, despite saying it wouldn't, which has allowed the other person to think it would.

He clearly wants to move forward with the relationship.
You want to move backwards and remove aspects.
Neither of you are wrong but you need to sit down and tell him that from now on it will be dates between you and him, no more activities with the children (or whatever it is you want). If he ends it that is his decision.

So how often would you see each other if there was to be no kids involved OP?

[quote BlueBoar]@SleepingStandingUp we have more time alone than 20% as the other parent times overlap. It will be a one night a fortnight less. All I want is for DS to know he won’t be disrupted again and for DP to know i am committed to him - in my particular way.[/quote]
I think your not wrong for feeling the way you do. But I think it is wrong to inflict that on someone else and expect them to go along with only seeing you for once a fortnight for potentially the next 10 years or so. In fact I think it’s quite extreme.

Many people are saying how sensible it is not to move in together but are missing the point that the OP doesn't even want her DP to spend time with her child. No days out, no movie nights, no holidays etc. This is a lot more extreme than just not wanting to live together.

@user1471457751 I agree maybe OP is not ready to date. I can see why she doesn’t want to move in all together though.

For clarity, we have spent every other weekend and one night in the week together for the last 2 years. Sometimes we have done activities with the kids (very brief like just going out for fish n chips) but those have proven to be unsuccessful as his kids are jealous of anyone else talking to him and as I said, have nothing in common with my own DS (understandable, they were not allowed to see him much for the two years before we met). So I have backed away from putting them through that and the pandemic has enabled it. The pandemic has also meant that DP and I have only just recently started spending time together - I hadn’t been to his place since early March until last week - and it’s given me time to realise that we have managed to sustain and maintain our relationship at a distance for three and a half months, so maybe this should be the way of things in the future. I know DS thinks DP is great but it feels really unfair not to have a relationship with his kids when he has a connection with mine. Maybe we can potter along as we are, I shall ask him if he finds it unbalanced. He “jokingly” mentioned buying a house together for all the kids a couple of weeks ago and I think that rang a little bell in my head - he knows I won’t live with another man as long as DS is at home. This is DS and my house, nothing to do with any previous relationship and we are extremely happy here in our routine.

I applaud you. You know what you want and are not afraid to set boundaries. I wish my mother had put the interests of her children first - she basically ruined our childhood.

You need to stick to your guns.
No living together and no marriage. Don’t be forced to do anything you don’t want.

Yanbu. I moved to a new build estate 4 years ago and many of the houses were taken by “newly blended” families.

Whilst the adults revelled in their new found “real” relationship - to the casual observer, the effect it had in the children was tremendous.

Each and every child who struggled in the new school was from a blended/forced new family.

My ex’s gf has 5 kids and is an expert at blending (there’s a nice gentle euphemism for you). She left the kids for weeks at a time to be with him (before they moved in). My kids are delighted they’re not being involved but feel sorry for her kids and in their own words hear from school friends nothing good about step-dads.

I remember reading here once years ago from a divorced GP who said she’d NEVER blend because in her line of work she fat too frequently had to deal with the children damaged in unimaginable ways by the new dad.

Very sensible OP, I completely agree with you and I hope that your DP will also agree that it is the best thing for all of the children.
This is the exact type of relationship that I hoped for after splitting with my ExH, sadly I never found anyone who was interested in the same and apart from briefly dating a couple of guys (literally a couple of dates) I have been on my own for fourteen and a half years. Well done to you for putting your DS first.

If it suits you both then it's fine to have that kind of relationship but you need to be honest with him. Personally I like to wake up next to my partner, perhaps he does too?

I think the blending thing is a red herring here because you have no intention whatsoever of blending and you never have in this partnership. I agree with you, this isn't one for blending (children of same age but don't get on).

The real issue is that you want a different type of relationship than the one you currently had before lockdown, and furthermore you want your son to back out of the close relationship he has with your partner, to 'even things up' as you don't want/can't get on with his children.

I think this is a more complex problem which isn't to do with moving in. I'm not sure asking your child after two years not to see your partner is a desirable state of affairs- this seems to me just as likely emotionally to be problematic as if you move someone in. You can't let him get attached to someone for two years and then just decide to cut that off and stop their time together, if you didn't want them to bond and enjoy each other's company, it's a bit late now.

You are really trying to solve the problem that you aren't accepted by and don't want to spend time with his two children who you don't connect with, by reconfiguring this as an adult relationship. I don't thin it's your fault you don't really fit into their family, and in fairness you haven't been aiming to blend, but it will be difficult to go forward with preteens into adulthood only with their father and nothing to do with them.

YADNBU
The only reason I haven't divorced my husband is because I would hate the DC to be part of a blended family. I have every respect for those who manage it and who have decent exes who are sensitive to their DC needs. I just know my H world shack up with someone with 4 kids who would bleed him dry without a thought of ours and it would be heartbreaking for them (and for me to see them sidelined) .

It's up to you OP (you don't have to involve your son in this at all if he doesn't want to be involved), but it sounds like your DP might be looking for something different in this relationship (you want to date as adults, he wants a family)
Which means he may decide to look somewhere else for what he wants?

YANBU having seen what this did to DH and his approach to families. Bio parents divorced without telling him and the proceeded to enter into other relationships, expecting the famies to just blend together. Disaster.

YANBU at all not to move in together.

I think YAB a little bit U to not want your DP and DS to have a relationship at all. I think most decent men would want some level of relationship with their partner's children, and he might easily decide to end things because he feels he is being excluded from such a hugely important part of your life.