I'm at breaking point. DP more interested in drumming than his family.

[teacoupons]

DP is 25. When we got together he had a DS from a previous relationship who was a few months old and I had a DD from a previous relationship who was 18 months. He was a drummer. I supported him but he was unemployed, brought in no money and I provided for him for the next two years.

I fell pregnant. While I was pregnant we had a few issues with his drumming and drinking/other women he'd previously slept with around him all the time. He gave up drumming to be a family man and started taking a class in college to become an electrician for a career. He told me drumming was a pipe dream and a distant memory for him and he'd never go back as he was looking forward to our life together.

He's been lying to me for two years. Since the birth of our daughter (who's 11 months) he's been in college one full day a week, working five days a week and being at home for the rest. Tonight we go out for a few drinks to celebrate my birthday and he meets an old friend who has just been signed with his band.

I get back from the toilet and he tells me his friend is setting him up auditions and he's going to them. He wants to be a drummer. He "hates his life" but loves me and his DC's. He wants more. He wants to be in a big band and get signed to do tours without regard for me, his DC's or the lack of time he currently spends with us. He wants to take his two days off a week and drum it all away. He would give up work to drum. He wouldn't do anything for our family.

So, I find myself at a crossroads. He has lied to my face about the drumming for two years. He is adamant he's doing it and doesn't care how it affects us but wants both drumming, his job, his college and his family. He is a man child who is all about him and I am broken hearted, defeated and feel like a mug.

I honestly don't know where to go from here. Please, help. AIBU to think his dream should not come before his family that he wanted and he built or am I being selfish?

I think the answer to whether he is being reasonable or not is to ask yourself if a woman would do that or if you would do it.
Would you have 2 young children and then decide not to support them but to go off to play a musical instrument where you won't see much of your children and won't be able to financially support them? The answer for most women is no.
He made the decision (twice) to start a family (or not to ensure he didn't start a family). He has to live with this decision, not dump his kids and the expense of keeping him and the kids on the women he slept with whilst he goes off to play at being a popstar.
If he does hit you that's a definite reason to boot him out.

I think I'm thoroughly defeated and confused. We have come to a compromise over the drumming after hours of talking.

My dp is a drummer. You can't stop someones passion and force them to confirm you have to compromise and try and understand.

This bloke is a drinker who plays the drums, noddy. There's a difference.

In the new year he plans to go back training which means no drinking or smoking and drumming. He's said he'll drum and socialise but not drink.

He's said he'll drum and socialise but not drink eh no can't see that lasting long

Why are women so stupid as to get involved with men like this?

I think I'm thoroughly defeated and confused. We have come to a compromise over the drumming after hours of talking.

Or rather you have

It seems you don't really understand the nature of his "no compromise" stance.

What you may be overlooking is that that is an attitude musicians in his situation HAVE to assume, as the bare minimum for any chance of success. Record companies don't offer tours to new young bands and then set about arranging them around the night-time feed. He wants to work in a field already massively overpopulated with young childless guys who get up every morning and think nothing but music, with single-minded determination bordering on mania, until they go to bed at night. You can't compete in that field while making compromises, and he seems to know this.

It sounds from your description like the likelihood of him ever earning a living as a general unsigned gigging muso, session player or whatever is pretty non-existent. As a technically mediocre, non-reading self-taught drummer, he won't have the skills to do so. Technical mediocrity OTOH never stopped Ringo Starr or plenty of other people who fell in with the right people and joined the right band at the right time. That's probably the only way it can happen for him.

Of course the likelihood of his achieving his dream and getting signed (which is only the start anyway, and about as sure an indication of success as a lottery ticket) is incredibly slim even WITH the no-compromise attitude. But that's his problem and a decision he has to make.

You really need to leave him. He may well have made the initial decision to change in good faith - it would seem if he followed it up with regular proper college attendance than he probably did. But he's not ready to, doesn't want to, and even if you succeed in making him he'll resent you forever for it.

These things are simply incompatible.

He refuses to teach drumming

What. The. Actual. Fuck???

I'm a singer. All the drummers and other musos I know teach, or have done in the past. He's a lazy useless fucker, a piss artist who drums a bit. I gather he can't read and is self taught. Fat lot of work he'll get then. No doubt he would turn down session work anyway - a big contract or nothing, I suppose. Nor would he get many drum students if he did condescend to offer.

I went out with a drummer a while back, who certainly does not fit the thicko piss artist stereotype. He was, and is, totally focused and hard working, and he's very talented. No boozing, drugging or fathering children he doesn't want. Just sheer hard work, and networking to get work. He teaches and does loads of session work, plus every gig that comes along. He practices every day too.

He's now in big demand, gets put into lots of gigs when the Yanks come over on tour and is going great guns. He has wanted this all his life.

The difference between him and your cocklodger is that xBF has got where he is through sheer hard work as well as real talent. Cocklodger doesn't know the meaning of the words. Essentially he's a spoilt mardy baby. Get rid.

Confidence and RufusTFirefly know whereof they speak (and clearly are "in the business", as am I).

However, he can still play in an originals band :) And have fun doing it. Is that an option for him?

Sorry that you find yourelf in this situation with 2 children, sure you have a right to be angry with him if he made promises he hasn't kept but, I'm sorry to say, there is tremendous naivity about the whole way you have believed and funded this man. If you are studying counselling I suggest you go and read up as much as possible on co-dependency to see how helping someone and controlling someone gets all mixed up. I'd also go back to that old self help classic, women who love to much.

You have been funding a fantasy, your fantasy, and perhaps his fantasy on days when he can think of babies and small children as cute extentions of himself, but not on days when he can picture himself on that world tour, which of course is unlikely to ever happen but you can be sure that he will resent you for the rest of his life if he sees you as having stopped him getting his break, conveniently using it as an excuse for the fact he couldn't actually make it.

I once read a biography of Belle & Sebastian, and IIRC a member of that band (Stuart David maybe?) said that they operated by three basic rules in life:

1. Never hit a woman.
2. Never cross a picket line.
3. Always get your round in at the bar.

I have no information about your partner's attitude to industrial relations, but what I have read above leads me to suspect that he has already struck out on points 1 and 3. If so, I think you know what you need to do.

Wishing you well.