Alone time by yourself when you’re a stepmum ?

[Biscoffie]

Boyfriend is becoming increasingly annoyed/upset that I don’t spend every waking minute with his kids!

We’ve been together 2 years. He has 2 twin boys aged 4 (5 in September). They are with us every other week for the whole week. I love them, I have zero issues with this schedule and I make sure I’m available for fun weekends with them, and I play with them when I can.

But I am exhausted a lot of the time (no medical reason as to why). I’ve rejoined the gym recently and there’s been some raised eyebrows from boyfriend if I say I’m off to the gym. He doesn’t really say much about me going to see friends but I know he doesn’t like it if the boys are here.

Sometimes I just want to go to my room and read a book or scroll on my phone when they’re here, even just for an hour or so. Boyfriend doesn’t like this and either follows me (with the boys) or will say that I should be sitting with them. When they’re here they play together in the living room and I feel like it’s chaos (which is understandable with kids!) and I’d just like some time to do “adult” things on my own. But it seems like it’s making my boyfriend annoyed.

It’s not that he wants me to “take over” care or entertain them, he just wants me there all the time. I’m boiling today and struggling with the heat, I said I’m going to sit in the bedroom (where we have aircon), and he started saying “well what about us? The boys don’t understand why you’re not sitting with us, they’ll think you’re poorly” etc etc.

I feel stifled, and feel like I’m always doing something wrong. I understand he has kids and accepted this from day one. But I didn’t expect it to be so all consuming.

Boyfriend has said it’s made him think I won’t like being a mum (if we have kids) because this is what parenthood is.

he calls me their stepmum which I know isn’t generally accepted on here as we’re not married yet, but I do fulfil that role if that makes sense (bar the time I’d like to spend alone!!!)

Aibu?

A man with 2yr old twins on the hunt for a girlfriend to parent his kids- walking red flag.

Decline the boyfriends attempts to control your time and consider if you'd not rather have the bliss of being single, or a better boyfriend in the future than this man.

This is the honeymoon phase, this is him on his best behaviour. It's not good enough.

I go and sit in my bedroom to get away from my children too sometimes. Sometimes I notice dh is missing and indeed he has also snuck off for some peace. Completely acceptable and often necessary...
These are my children that I have parental responsibility for and I need break, you are more than entitled to time to yourself away from your partner's children.

I totally sympathise OP. My DH was like this with me during lockdown. We had been together around 2 years and we had to take DSD more frequently as both DH and ex were key workers. She was often with us for 8-10 days straight and I found it suffocating. He followed me round the house like a fucking stalker if I dared to take 10 minutes to myself in the bedroom. “DSD wants to play teachers”, “DSD wants us to watch her scoot round the patio”, “I’ve said we’d all watch a movie together, DSD is waiting downstairs”…it was absolutely relentless and he just didn’t realise it was an issue for me. Things reached a head and I ended up reading him the riot act. It was fine after that, he was just absolutely clueless and didn’t realise I needed or wanted space and just wanted us all to hang out together. Had his reaction been any different I’d have walked, no question. You are NOT being unreasonable.

An entire field of red flags. No wonder you are 😴 tired. To this man you do not have autonomy. You are just another woman to be used and manipulated.