Hi,
Just wondering if I am BU here. I have been with my DP for a while now, he has two children (age 8 and 10) whom he co-parents with their Mum. I have a good relationship with the children and we all get on great. I celebrate their birthdays with them, put effort into getting them lovely gifts that they’ll love, the other weekend I took them to the supermarket to get stuff for a Father’s Day breakfast for DP, taking care to make sure that it was all stuff they can safely prepare for him themselves as I was on shift all day at the hospital on the Sunday, I then came home from work and cooked a Sunday dinner for DP, my dad and the children. On Mother’s Day I helped the children make something for their Mums gift - a flower arrangement in her favourite colours, etc. If DP and I take the kids away or out for food, generally we halve the expense of it, when we go and do a big shop for a weekend when they’re coming to stay, I generally go halves on that too.
We now roll around to my birthday which is next weekend, discussed with DP about what we might do, and we agreed he’d message their Mum and ask if she could have them on the Saturday night (my actual birthday - I’ve had a very difficult year so planning to have a few friends over on the garden) as it’s his usual contact weekend, we would still have the on the Friday as usual, and get them back on Sunday morning. We could also do another day to compensate. Kids mum text back and said “yep, that’s fine, in fact I’ll keep them all weekend for you”. She is great and very flexible, and DP is the same in return.
It was then mentioned that kids Mum was going to take them away that weekend so that all worked out nicely. I asked DP if we would plan to take the kids out for food or something around my birthday to celebrate and he said that he didn’t want to tell them it was for my birthday, as he didn’t want them to think that’s why they aren’t coming to dads house that weekend, etc. I asked if anything along this theme has ever been brought up before, and he said no, just that he didn’t want to plant seeds.
So I’ve asked if we’re now having to keep completely schtum about the fact I’ve even had a birthday at all and it seemed that might be the case, so I backed off from the convo really as I found the implications a bit hurtful. I also don’t want to accidentally mention my birthday in front of them and they think that I’ve actively avoided celebrating my birthday with them.
I dunno, it just feels off tbh. Like I’m useful to celebrate everyone else’s birthdays and Mother’s and Father’s Day, I’m useful for my safe adult presence, I’m useful for my cash contributions sometimes, but my birthday is being strangely minimised and glossed over, and I’m not too proud to admit that it hurts a little bit, and to add insult to injury I’m going to have to actively lie to them or omit things from our chit chat so as not to let on. The youngest one is a prolific maker of birthday/thank you/just because cards for people, they even designed a thank you card to the car hire place, and yet I won’t get a little hand made birthday card!
Before anyone starts having a go at me purely because in this scenario I’m in the “evil stepmother” role, please just give it a rest. I know some of you will deem me to be getting ideas above my station, daring to have birthday, never mind expecting acknowledgment of it. I’m not an evil stepmother, I couldn’t be more engaged, giving and considerate of the wellbeing of these children and their father (and mother) than I currently am.
AIBU?