Is my step dad BU or is he right?

[Jugglingitall85]

Step dad pulled me aside yesterday to tell me he’s worried about me and that he doesn’t know how I am doing it all atm and that my DP isn’t stepping up to being a dad in the way he needs to. To which I broke down crying because I am reaching my limit. But I’m just unsure whether this is normal or my DP isn’t actually pulling his weight. I’m also questioning whether my parents are being over protective or not.

My DP and I have been together for nearly 3 years and we have a 13 month old. We had a lovely relationship but recently I have started feeling as though things have been off and the plates I am spinning are just stacking up and up. I cry several times a week as I feel so stressed out. I work 3 days a week at a demanding job and DP works 5.

My DP loves our son tremendously, but I often feel as though he puts himself first and the responsibility of being a parent gets him down. Some examples:

• DS recently had some health issues. For the first hosp visit, DP had been to a gig the night before and complained the whole time how tired he was. Meanwhile DS is very poorly and was kept in. I stayed the whole night with him, DP went home to sleep. Came back in the morning still complaining and fell asleep on the sofa in the ward room. I hadn’t slept a wink. :/
• Ive since gone to 80% of the hosp visits with my mum as DP doesn’t want to take the whole day/half day off work. I have to take off work though.
• I make all of DS’s packed lunches and pack the bag when he goes to my mums while we’re at work.
• I do majority of pick up and drop off bar a couple.
• I make all of DS’s dinners and do most of the feeding him.
• I buy all of DS clothes and make sure he has what he needs.
• I arranged nursery including visits and deciding which one. DP wasn’t interested.
• If I want to do something as a family like a day out, DP can often complain that he can’t really be bothered or let me go with friends.
• DP is constantly complaining that he is tired or unwell. This rattles me.
• DP is not well atm so I have done every night waking for two weeks.
• DP has just been away for the weekend and is about to go away for another weekend in a few weeks with friends. We haven’t been out for a meal together in months. I have time with my friends but having time together just feels at the bottom of the list.
• Whenever my DP goes anywhere with DS alone or even with me there, it always feels like a big ordeal or it’s been hard work and there’s a lot of huffing and puffing.
• I ask DP to help around the house, he will cook and clean the dishes and do some washing but won’t stretch to cleaning. That’s my job. He won’t even think about doing any DIY, the garden is a heap.
• Whenever I want to talk about the future or buying a bigger house he doesn’t want to talk in depth and shuts it down.

This all said he is a lovely person, which is why I’m struggling with it so much. Half of me thinks I’m being unreasonable but the other thinks it’s not enough. X

I have a 13 month old with health issues requiring regular admission. I do them all alone for the most part- no sleep and all. But that’s because I have a 5 year old and my own business. When I’m in hospital my Dh is looking after her, running my business, visiting us bringing/taking washing, cooking cleaning etc at home. If we didn’t have a 5 year old he would be at the hospital with us. Your dp is lazy and sounds disinterested in ds

Hi OP

You are so lucky to have a family who care enough about you to raise this with you.

Your step dad is right, your DP is a lazy whiney man child who brings nothing I can see to family life. He's not too tired or unwell to go to gigs, or away for weekends is he?

So what do you want to do about it?

And although it sounds flippant, I'd be in tears every day if I was stuck with your DP.

You've got a funny idea of what's 'lovely'.

Your stepdad is correct.

Oh another one of those threads, where OP describes the most useless waste of space and utter arsehole, hasn’t got a single good thing to say about him but ends with “he is lovely”.

No OP, there is nothing lovely about him and sadly, he really doesn’t give a shit about you or your / his child.

The reason you are crying several times a week is because your man is treating you and your child like the shit on his shoe.
Worse, really, because I bet he'd actually notice the shit on his shoe.
You know where you are at, you don't need MN to tell you. Others around you know where you are at, too. Let them help you find your way out 💐

I agree 💯

i feel bad for u as it's not easy but please, wake up and get a backbone, this man is completely using you.
he is not interested in you, only himself. he sounds like a selfish twat and should be ashamed of himself. he is a good dad, so what? so he should be, that's not something he gets a gold star for, he needs to man up, pull his weight and start really being a good partner.
you would be best off without him, you would be in a routine and only have a real kid to look after, not a man child as well.
tell your stepdad the truth and maybe u will see it yourself, this man is all about himself, he is treating you like staff. get rid of him asap.

Thanks all. As a ref point for me can I ask how much of the load your DP’s take your DC’s?

If I’m really honest I think that my DP wasn’t ready for the hard work of being a parent and the responsibility. The hosp stay really bothered me too. I also had a very traumatic birth, seizures, collapse at home alone, blue lighted to hosp. Had PTSD and counselling. My DP isn’t great talking about these things and never really wanted to talk about any of it afterwards with me.

I also see a lot of women on here describing their DP’s and it’s so crap to see such a trend of women taking so much on.

Also yes I really appreciate how hard it must have been for my SD to do this.

I agree with everyone else op - your DP is a lazy sod. Please don't have any more kids with him - it will be even harder with 2 kids.

My H is lazy and it's one of the reasons we only had 1 DS. I wasn't prepared to do all the work for another one.

@Jugglingitall85 my DH does 50% of the parenting, 50% of the housework, does 80% of the cooking, 50% of the food shopping, I do all the mental load/household admin, and I take the children to most of their activities (takes up a lot of my time and only one day a week when we don't have any activities on). He also works full-time. We're a team.

My husband works full time, I’m fully sahm. When the kids are in school I do most of the household stuff, and I take on most of the kids’ appointments/school runs etc as he’s working.

But in the hours he’s at home, including overnights, he does half of whatever needs doing at that time.

We are a team, and an equal partnership who both take full responsibility for looking after our kids and home. When I was ill (lupus) he stepped up and ran everything for weeks at a time so that I could recover.

Honestly that should be what you’re looking for and expecting. Your current partner is nowhere close to pulling his weight.

Did you see ‘Wife on Strike’ on Channel 5? I was furious, made me think of mumsnet and all the women complaining about their partners doing fuck all and treating them like the maid. One wife was pathetically grateful that her Dh had made dinner. 🤬

DH got up at 7 and fed the pets, unloaded the dishwasher and made me a cup of tea. He then ran off to shower and start his first meeting at 8.15.
He walked the dog at lunchtime as I am currently unable to and will be for some time.
He made the kids dinner, ran around at some point during the day, stripped all the beds, washed and dried the linen (machines obv).
I went to the gym while they were eating and came home to a clean kitchen. Kids are old enough to put themselves to bed.

I used to travel overseas for work from when they were v small and travel within the UK occasionally now. I completely take it for granted that he has my back and we are a team.

There are periods with most kids where I've found myself carrying more of the load as they change so frequently. You really do spend a few years in survival mode. When I was carrying the kid load because they were in a Velcro phase he was pulling his weight elsewhere.

OP, my dh did what had to be done with small children/babies. When my son (aged 11) had appendicitis, he cut short a business trip to India and came home (I actually had it under control but still). If it was 13 month old DS, he'd have been in the hospital with me.

I still had times in the early baby days when I felt "FFS DH" - no one is perfect - but if I had your dh I'd have been "just fuck off dh"

I'd talk to your parents about this if I were you. They are probably observing a lot.

Really sick of hearing about these wasters described as ‘lovely’ - what a fucking low bar.

My DH is far from perfect - our flash points are laundry and my sleeping

As a minimum DH does the following:

Two school runs a week
Packed lunches and breakfast every weekday
Covers more than half sick days
Cooks dinner most days (5 or 6 a week)
Takes older son to his Saturday activity
Menu plans and food shopping

Both of our boys are autistic too.

He also did lots of nighttime wake ups from birth even though I was on maternity leave.

He took 6 weeks leave both times and properly got involved - as a consequence both of our boys have been equally happy with either of us.

My DH is fairly typical of all of the partners in our group of friends.

Why do you refer to this man as your “partner” at all? He is living his own life. He doesn’t want to talk about what happened to you because he doesn’t give a shit. It doesn’t affect him. You are justifying being with a selfish manbaby who has made it more than clear that you and your child are him his way.

Me too sounds like you have a wonderful stepdad

I wonder if he's doing that thing where he's as awful as possible in the hope you'll break up with him, he sounds completely checked out of the relationship. I might ask him straight out - say to him what you said in your post and ask him what he actually wants because you can't just stay in this state of limbo as a quasi-family.

What he's doing is called weaponized incompetence and you're being taken advantage of.

As do I. How is your DP such a "lovely" person? He is leaving you to do most of the work while he carries on as though he is single.

There's a few things on your list that are pretty typical for men and most MNers will have similar splits, but there are others where he is taking the piss, and he hasn't worked out yet that as a parent he no longer gets to be the child.

We both worked full time from DD being 10 months old.
I did all nursery drop off and pick up then as nursery was at my workplace.
Most packing of bags, planning for the day, making sure DD had everything was done by me but OH would get her dressed and fed every morning while I got dressed etc.

Housework and household tasks mostly equally shared.

Hospital appointments....depending how serious it is I would suggest both taking time off for each appointment is a waste of your leave. And continuity can be very good. So if you go to all appointments for one issue that would help.
But then OH should be doing things like vaccination etc....but for development checks will he even know how to answer the questions? He needs to be more involved first.
My OH used to do around 1/3 of appointments and he was the one who stayed at the hospital when DD admitted (he was on crutches at the time so he couldn't drive, it made more sense)

But mostly your OH just needs to stop.complaining and start thinking like an adult....notice what needs doing and do it.

My OH is pretty good, but every couple of months I melt down because of the additional burden women/mothers have.

I work 3 days and DH works 5 but has regular stints away so there’s a lot of give and take but on the whole when he is home and we have both been at work he…
does maybe 40% of bed time (DD prefers me to do it and I don’t mind doing it so this works)
90% of the dog walks (I’m pregnant and can’t walk far at the moment)
75% of the cooking (he gets back from work before me)
most nursery drop off and pick up (this used to be entirely me but i changed jobs and location means I now can’t do it)
does a quick tidy of the lounge whilst I do bed time but I do most of the cleaning
I do 99% of the life admin.
I do all the activities with DD like ballet, music etc but DH often takes her with a friend and their DD out for a weekend morning.

Then on my days off with DD I tend to do the cooking etc.

This has been a work in progress though and he will admit that at the beginning he didn’t step up as much as he should have but he got there in the end.

This all said he is a lovely person

Well, he might be "a lovely person" but not pulling his weight is really not "lovely".

He sees you as skivvy, cleaner and cook. Can't even step up to be the parent.

Looks like you have 2 children to take care of.

He sounds like a selfish twat.

is he Ill or not? Sounds like he’s only Ill if it involves you and the baby.

I would tell him that you have had to suffer the embarrassment of your stepdad highlighting what a useless selfish arsehole he is.

I think by lovely she probably means he's not aggressive or violent.