Am I being terrible?

[SproutsRUs]

My husband and I have one DC together who is a baby and he has older DC from a previous relationship who are 7 and 11.

It's half term this week and he's WFH as it's our week with DSC.

I find my husband can be a bit smothering in making sure everyone is included in everything and it's especially suffocating on school holidays because DSC are here all day and I feel like I can't leave the house without taking them.

Basically I just want some time alone during the week with our baby like when they are at school and he at work and so I've made a few excuses as to why we need to go out some of the days DSC are here. Mainly things like telling him a group we usually go to is still on when it's not so I can go for a walk / park with DC without everyone tagging along or that I have a dentist appointment when I don't.

I know it's not great to lie, but I don't know what's worse, saying that so I can keep my sanity and leave the house by ourselves some times or telling him I don't want to spend all week with his kids!

As is yours, to me!

And FYI many people can and DO say things like "you knew he had kids when you met him so you can't opt out of things like this". That is being a third parent - as everyone else has every right not to do things like this.

@aSofaNearYou We obviously have different ideas about what being a parent entails. Rejecting and excluding step children is not necessary or essential in order to not be a third parent.

I think you’re being mean personally. I never understand why people choose to marry and procreate with people who already have children then seemingly reject the stepchildren. It just makes no sense to me, plenty of men exist who don’t already have children so why choose the one who does if you can’t accept their existing children?

The thing you did in the school holidays before is just plain cruel imo, I don’t see how or why you couldn’t have still met up with your friend with DSC in tow as well? Her child was not a baby or even toddler so not like it was a baby related venue, you went somewhere you knew for a fact they’d love and left them at home because you couldn’t be arsed with them. It’s really mean.

It's not rejecting or excluding them to not to lone childcare of them. That's just not being their parent.

The thing you did in the school holidays before is just plain cruel imo, I don’t see how or why you couldn’t have still met up with your friend with DSC in tow as well?

This is an unfair expectation.

Many step parents friends do not know the step children or have any kind of relationship with them, and having them there totally changes the dynamic. I wouldn't subject my friends to the awkwardness of my DSCs behaviour. Not all children are easy and a joy to be around on days out.

A person who, quite reasonably, wants to have some time alone with her own child without having to be responsible for two extra preteens.

When I’m with my father I’m not ‘excluding’ my mother because she’s not there, any more than I’m excluding my partner when I’m having dinner with my best friend. OP is not their mother, she knows that, her DP knows that, and her DH’s children know that.

Isn't the answer for someone, the father, to actually arrange childcare for when they are with him and he's working?

If he's working then he can't simultaneously be looking after the children.

Do they will need to go to a holiday campnor similar?

You could agree to do some childcare but not all the time.

What happens to them when you are at work on your two days?

Fuck me some of the dramatic language in this thread is straight out of a Victorian melodrama. I guess it’s fuck everything else OP does for them, the fact that she doesn’t want to take them out with her every time she leaves the house obviously means they’re being treated worse than Harry fucking Potter.

TBH I think it is a problem OP is lying to her husband. Not the lying itself, but the fact she feels she needs to.

Agree.

The sheer cruelty.
The inhumanity.
Won't someone, ANYONE, think of the SC?
The barabarity of not taking them with her EVERY TIME she leaves the house.

The pure malice of it all.

It is hilarious.
It's on MN every time a SM isn't enamoured with the reality of full time skivvy/au pair to the children of the man that she foolishly married.

It will tell you how deluded they are that they think itbis perfectly acceptable that she can't even visit her grandmother without his children in tow.

She needs to get back to work full time and start asking herself does she really want to be with this extremely controlling man.

And sort out her contraception as a priority.

Surely the step children are FAR too old to want to spend time with a little baby, or do the same sort of activities a baby does?

Is it not possible they would also enjoy some time without baby and StepMum, and instead just with their Dad? If they don't want to spend time with just their Dad, maybe he needs to look at why...?!

Perfectly reasonable to want to spend SOME time with the baby alone, each week - I don't see anywhere that the OP says she's NEVER doing anything with all three children together, just that she would, during the course of a week, like SOME time with just the baby.

Reading some replies here it's as if she's suggested chaining the DSC in some sort of oubliette whilst she and the baby gad about merrily feasting upon the delights of the world.

She really isn't, she wants a quiet walk around the park or a hour in a cafe with a friend - even as a childless heathen I can see that those are very different prospects with the addition of a 7 year old and an 11 year old vs just one small baby!

I don't disagree with your oh tbh and again I wonder why you'd have entered into this relationship when you have this attitude.

It's obvious that this isn't about you having time alone, it's about you wanting to not be with the sc.

Given you're going to child friendly locations, this sounds really off tbh. Imagine if the tables are turned and your oh in time to comes prioritises only the sc for activities how you'll perceive this.

Imagine if the tables are turned and your oh in time to comes prioritises only the sc for activities how you'll perceive this.

That would be totally different as they're all his kids.

They don’t come everywhere with you. They are not there most of the time.

They don’t come everywhere with you. They are not there most of the time.

They are in the holidays.

You are seeing this situation from a completely adult centric view. No regard for what this likes from a child’s perspective. They don’t get your different definitions of terms and ideas about who’s responsibility is what.
the point is that taking one’s biological kid out somewhere fun, and leaving the step children out when they would love to go- from a child perspective- will be experienced as rejection/ disregard/ preference for their half sibling. It’s is wrong to marry a man with children if you plan to treat them this way. This sort of stuff causes long term emotional damage. If you only want to look after your own biological DC then fine, DO NOT partner with a man who has other children. End of.

It’s oh so dramatic and yet this is how the OP’s husband and the DSC feel about the situation to the point where OP feels she has to lie about what she is doing/ where she is going to spare their feelings. I suggest you think again..

You are seeing this situation from a completely adult centric view. No regard for what this likes from a child’s perspective. They don’t get your different definitions of terms and ideas about who’s responsibility is what.
the point is that taking one’s biological kid out somewhere fun, and leaving the step children out when they would love to go- from a child perspective- will be experienced as rejection/ disregard/ preference for their half sibling. It’s is wrong to marry a man with children if you plan to treat them this way. This sort of stuff causes long term emotional damage. If you only want to look after your own biological DC then fine, DO NOT partner with a man who has other children. End of.

I don't need to think of it from the child's perspective because my DP, their parent, is on hand to do that for me. He knows when his kid is coming, he knows he'd want him to get to do things, so he'd make sure he was not working. As his parent. Situations like this need not and do not arise because he is actually on hand for fulfill his responsibilities, rather than assume I'm going to do it for him because I happen to be in a romantic relationship with him.

It's wrong to have children if you don't want or expect to look after them yourself. End of.

It does feel a bit mean to take your child out for the day somewhere fun and leave the other children at home with him while he works.

What’s going to happen when your child is old enough to tell them where they have been? Are you going to tell your child to lie as well?

Sorry but I don’t agree with the deceit involved.

You absolutely do need to think of it from the child’s perspective because you are an adult in their life/ living with them. It has no relevance whether you are biologically related to them or not.
you bound yourself to them socially and practically. They had no choice in the matter, they are children and therefore vulnerable/ dependent and they WILL be affected by their relationship with you (as
an adult they are forced to live with) whether you like/ choose to recognise that or not.

Great your DP has it sorted in your case.m - sounds like there may not be an issue. In the OP’s case there clearly is.

You absolutely do need to think of it from the child’s perspective because you are an adult in their life/ living with them. It has no relevance whether you are biologically related to them or not.
you bound yourself to them socially and practically. They had no choice in the matter, they are children and therefore vulnerable/ dependent and they WILL be affected by their relationship with you (as
an adult they are forced to live with) whether you like/ choose to recognise that or not.
Great your DP has it sorted in your case.m - sounds like there may not be an issue. In the OP’s case there clearly is.

You're not hearing me. My DP does not put me in a position where I have to do things I don't want to do for DSS that he himself should be doing, to spare his feelings.

If OPs DP is not doing that, the issue is with him, not her. Because it's his job to put himself out to prioritise his children.

The child’s perspective isn’t the only one that matters. I don’t think teaching them that it is, is a good thing either. That said, I don’t doubt that OP routinely puts herself out for them

And of course her own child is going to be her priority ! These aren’t children she’s adopted, and they know she’s not their mother. Not wanting to take them out every time she leaves the house isn’t the atrocity it’s being painted to be, and it’s ridiculous to say it’s indicative of her treating them badly.

At best that's 6 whole weeks of her life that the children of the man she proactively chose to start a relationship with, are present if they have half of the school holidays! It's hardly all the time.
So 73 days across the entire year, including eow. 20% of the whole year is not all the time.

The lies and deceit are indicative of her treating her oh badly. The fact that she knows she's going to venues the children would love to go and she's purposely choosing to go without them is her choosing to treat them badly.
She made a choice to be the stepparent, so time to step up. If she wanted a single life, where only her needs mattered, she needed to stay single.
She's lying to everyone and there is no justification.
If she lies about this, when found out, as it will be, it will be presumed that she lies about other things too and tbh, who could be blamed for then doubting everything about her and their relationship with her if this is the case.
They're the implications.

The lies and deceit are indicative of her treating her oh badly.

The fact that she feels she has to lie to her husband because he won't accept what she's telling her and step up to be present for his own kids, is him treating her (and them) badly. I wouldn't lie to him, I would just flat out tell him no. But the fact that OP has been driven to this doesn't make his demands reasonable.

The fact that she knows he’ll kick off over her doing something completely reasonable is the problem. If he didn’t she wouldn’t feel the need to lie, and that’s the bigger issue. He’s the one treating her badly, in trying to make her responsible for HIS children.

Yes, she made the choice to be a stepparent, but being a stepparent isn’t defined by being free childcare, is it? What being a stepparent entails, and level of involvement, tends to vary from family to family. There’s no universal rule that says in choosing to be a stepparent she’s now responsible for children that aren’t her own, in the same way she is responsible for her own children.

Anyway, it’s quite clear that this wasn’t what her husband expected of her when she first got into a relationship with, and married, him. Frankly, ‘she made the choice to be a stepparent’ is fucking meaningless.

’where only her needs mattered’ - are you being deliberately obtuse? No one said that. Prioritizing herself sometimes is not the same thing as saying only her needs matter. As you well know.