Has anyone got time to tell me if my relationship is bad or good?

[littlejackiehorner]

I've only ever had one relationship before this (at least one we lived together and it was really serious) and he was a drunk, cocaine taking guy who was aggressive, very selfish and quite outwardly unpleasant to me at times.

I wanted to know if anyone had time to just read this and let me know what this relationship sounds like. If it's a good and normal one or if it's a bad one. I feel at times like I don't see the wood for the trees.

He was quite infatuated with me very quickly, at the tail end of a marriage where she'd left him and broken his heart. He told me he loved me and I was his soulmate nd that what he had with me he never had with her. He could not do enough for me, wanted to talk to me every minute and I've never felt so loved by anyone before.

He's a generally nice sort of guy, easygoing, popular with people, no bad temper, kind to people, responsible and dependable and he pretty much always does what he says he will.

He has a child from previous. Very cute and lovely kid of 5. I have a child from previous. Also a lovely kid, but some SN which makes him challenging at times, he's 8.

He asked me to move in with him after about 6 months dating, so we did and have lived together for 3.5 years now. We live with my kid full time and his every weekend and most holidays. Kids get on great.

Living together meant me moving quite far from home /leaving my job and a lot behind me so that's hard but I always felt like I had found Mr Right and he's made me happy and given me a happy family I always wanted.

On the good side

I feel silly almost even asking about the quality or normalcy of my relationship because BF is so outwardly devoted. He can't do enough for me, would give me his last penny, would drive any distance to save me walking in the cold, would go out at 11pm to Tesco if I fancied some crisps, he cuddles me all the time, very affectionate, always wants to see me and misses me if we're apart. We have a great sex life, he remembers every ocassion and gets me romantic and thoughtful gifts. He listens to me when i want to talk and he tells me everything. We laugh and get on as great friends and enjoy nights on the sofa and trips as a family. He is nice to my friends and family, he is supportive of my ideas and wants to help when I have a problem. He tells me he loves me all the time and does nice things for me that make me feel very loved and appreciated. He isn't an angry person and never says bad things to me or does anything nasty. He is a really good Dad and always does things with the kids and plans things for them. He's the first to get up on the weekends and brings me a cup of tea. He acts proud of me when he introduces me to people and his friends have all told me they've never seen him so happy or in love like it is with me, and that his marriage was nothing like that.

So there's a lot of good things, and day to day, we are just good to each other and in love but a few things are just ongoing battles in my head.

Concerns

I feel guilty even saying this but a few things concern me.

1. He seems to favouritise his kid over mine. I know this is normal to a degree but sometimes it is really obvious. In fairness, he is a good Stepdad and comes to parents evenings and shares responsibilities and is a good ear and role model to my kid BUT the favouritism seems to slip out in subtle ways. Like my kid asks him to play a game and he says hes busy and two minutes later he plays the same game with his own kid and looks annoyed if mine wants to join in with them. This breaks my heart a bit for my kid who has SN and gets rejected by people a lot. I do treat both kids 100% equally and if anything I spoil my Stepson more and I do a lot of things to make sure his kid feels 100% included in our home, but it hurts me to see him do that.

1. He has occassionally been caught lying or doing something "off", which I have swept under the carpet, but which irks at me. For example, I once caught him looking at porn one night when I was really ill and he lied about it. Seems silly, but I really needed comfort that day and he was wanking over porn while I was suferring and needed a cuddle and it annoyed me a lot. I am not sure he is 100% truthful with me over little things like that and feel like he spends a lot of time on porn sites or whatever.

1. When he asked me to move in with him, he said he wanted marriage, more kids and various things but none of it has materialised. He told me a couple of years in that he changed his mind about the baby, which I accepted, but the engagement was also put off by two years and the wedding is set for much later than we agreed. I can't help feeling niggled that our joint plan has been slowly changed to somthing else without my consent. He is always saying he can't wait to marry me and he bought me a beautiful ring but I just feel like he does everything on his timetable.

1. His ex wife seems to still play a role in our lives. For example he allows her to dictate elements of our lives that seem to cross a boundary of what should not be her concern. He seems hell bent in impressing her at times - for example buying expensive gifts for his ex in laws (although the ex wife has now remarried) and it is sometimes a bit concerning that he does no such thing for my parents. Albeit they were married 18 years and he says he feels her family are very important to him and I try and be understanding but he honestly acts like they are his in laws and mine aren't.

1. Although I moved to live with him, he has changed nothing about his life to allow for me being his partner. So for example he still plays in all the same sports teams and hobbies that he did in his marriage and socialises in a way as if he was still her husband, and mixes mainly ith their old joint friends. That makes me feel extremely excluded. In fact, I feel his involvement in activities and social groups that I can't be part of have left me very isolated in my new town and at times I feel more like a mistress than a partner.

1. We never argue. I say that in the sense that I literally mean that in four years he has never once told me anything I did annoyed, upset or aggravated him in any way. He has never been in a bad mood and snapped at me or said something mean or stormed out or slept on the sofa. I mean, literally not one time. And I worry that this can't be realistic. He says I am perfect, but no one is.

1. We have no social life. I mean, we do stuff at the weekends with the kids as a family and he's rarely out with friends without me but we don't know any other couples or families. He knows lots, but because they are friends of the ex wife, he tends to go to their events alone and never invites them to our place. All my friends live far away so the only time we "socialise" is when we have weekend visitors.

1. He remains separate from me financially. I have my accounts and cards and he has his. We both have a Tescos clubcard. We've not "joined" in that sense and while he pretty much is the most generous person you could describe I don't feel like a full couple. He also got a life insurance policy through work and named his kid as he sole beneficiary, and he got a new passport and named his Mum as next of kin. This isn't about the money...it's about me not feeling like a full partner and those things made me feel like less than his partner.

1. We have his kid every weekend and holiday. Now don't get me wrong, I love his kid and love having him around, but when we have him every weekend it means we literally never go out as a couple or have a weekend just the two of us. I don't think we ever do that and I am so bored and isolated that at times I dress up in heels and a little black dress just to have dinner at home.

So that's it. Based on those things..do you think they are things that are worrying?

It has been years now and we have slipped into the permancy of this and I don't feel 100% like I am part of my own family. I feel like he loves me, yes, desires me enormously - maybe to the point he has me on a pedestal, but I feel like he keeps a foot in the door of his previous marriage and I am not fully secure. I also feel like I gave up such a full and colourful life of my own, to become a SAHM, to be there for his child and provide for him the family life he wanted, but often worry that it is at my own expense.

I have tried to talk to him about all the things on the list - some things over and over again -and his response is always the same which is to cry a lot, tell me how sorry he is, how much he loves me and then he just pretty much carries on exactly how things were. I honestly feel like if I left him he would collapse completely because he seems to need me that badly - but then I wonder why he can't see my own need as well as his.

Most of the time I just go along with it, because he showers me in so much love and kindness that I have never had before. Because he is a good Dad and a kind person and because I love him and he doesn't mean to harm but I just want to know what independent observers might thing of our perfect life and home which might not be as perfect as it looks on the surface.

Nothing on this list is ever going to change.

This is the problem. If you were in a true partnership, a truly committed relationship, it would not be "my child" or "your child" but "our children". You would be a team and a family. If he loved you, he would look after your child. It's a very clear sign of how selfish he is that he expects you to do all the housework and childcare while he goes out to do his hobbies and see his friends - he basically does as he pleases. In the week, his life revolves around him, and at the weekends, his life revolves around his child. You're not really in the centre; you're more the enabler aren't you?

Also, I earned much more money than he did. I mean, previously. The reason I was the one to give up work and move rather than him was solely his child. Both of us would have been fianncially and logistically much better off if it had been the other way around - and strangely I think we would have been a lot happier!

We say out children but I don;t really feel that.

How do I feel that when he treats them diferrently and doesn't include us on the life insurance policy?

I feel like we are a fantasy family but the real nitty gritty is missing.

In the week, his life revolves around him, and at the weekends, his life revolves around his child

That is EXACTLY how it is.

Exactly.

Another cross post!

"We can't buy because he is still (3 years post divorce being finalised) on the mortgage with his ex wife."
!!!

That says it all, really, doesn't it?!

However, the fact that you're renting is actually a positive. You're not tied to him and that means that you're just as free to walk away as he is. All you would have to do is give the landlord notice.

I meant our children

the amount of times Emma we have had that talk.

When he asked me to move he gave me a 5 year plan (in writing)

I move, within 6 months we get engaged. We buy our own house (we even looked online at building plans and designed one!!!), we get married, we have a baby of our own.

All of that was supposed to have happenned by now.

None of it has!!

Asking him to remove himself from her mortgage doesn't work. He says it's not about her, it's about his son. She has a new partner...why can't he share her mortage?

I want to own a home, I never have. I want to be married. I wanted another baby.

Gaaahh!!!

"Also, I earned much more money than he did. I mean, previously. The reason I was the one to give up work and move rather than him was solely his child. Both of us would have been fianncially and logistically much better off if it had been the other way around - and strangely I think we would have been a lot happier!"

Hang on a minute. You're the main carer for your child, aren't you? He is with you most of the time? But his child only sees him at weekends. So on that basis, your child should have taken priority. But I'm not at all surprised that the move was in his favour. To the detriment of your career. He has always got his own way. I'm sure it was all part of the plan - to turn you into the obedient SAHM with no life apart from the one he deigns to give you.

He has broken every single promise, hasn't he?

I think the point was that my child's Dad is not involved, so I could move and he couldn't. At least not without giving up seeing his child regularly.

He was promising me something in exchange though. A better life in the country. Better schools. Marriage. A family for my son. Security. A life as a partnership and I feel like that's not what I have,

He's more interested in "security" with his "old" family. Pandering to her parents, scheduling our holidays around her, she even picked who slept in what bedroom in our house (not kidding), and he is permanently socialising with his old friends from his marriage and exclusing me and I am always alone with DS and he is basically takign the complete piss.

Starting to get angry now.

Yes, he broke every single promise so far. It's always "one day"

I don't think he really loves me.

I mean, needs me and wants me...but loves me?

why doesn't he care about my hope and dreams and what I do all day or have to look forward to?

Now you're talking. Keep listening to that voice, it's yours and you have every right to listen to it.

The rescuer and victim thing his home with me too and it doesn't end well. When you finally start to need to be your own person he won't take it well. You have already seen the hysterics. At the moment he needs to be wanted by you. It is an attachment issue and he won't let you leave. You are so enmeshed with his self esteem that he needs you there to look after. At first this feels great. After a while it is to much. You have reached that point.
I worry that your efforts to get out more and to be more independent will result in increase efforts to control. Albeit in a subtle way.

I hve been thinking a lot today, and I can't really work out whether I properly love him nd he properly loves me or we just fit together.

What does proper love mean and the diferrence does anyone know?

What should I think or feel about him?

We can't really answer those questions for you, I'm afraid. I think they're the kind of questions you have to work out for yourself in your counselling and through the Freedom Programme.

We can't really tell you what to think or feel about him - all we can tell you is that your thoughts, feelings, needs and wants are valid.

... having said that, if you want to learn more about true love and healthy relationships, this thread might be a good place to start?

In a way his ex said it all didn't she - he's very selfish. He also sounds dull and frankly odd with the weeping. Have you read 'too good to leave, too bad to stay'? Amazing book about feeling ambivalent. I ask because you are 'weighing' the fact he loves you against his worse qualities and getting muddled. The trouble is as you say is that you aren't very experienced. It is quite possible indeed common to have a partner who loves you without it being right. One sign of a good relationship is a laid back, easygoing quality totally missing here.

I think there's two separate issues.

One is that he's got certain character flaws, which make it hard. One being that he is quite selfish and likes to do what he lieks to do and does not have much of a thought for other people's needs. This obviouly ruined his first marriage. The other is that he's the least assertive person i have ever met, never seen him get angry or have a confrontation and so he has a habit of getting what he wants with manipulation instead of discussion. A bad flaw, yes, one I have only just seen and recognised as what it is. The last is that he doesn't know how to communicate about negative things - he can't argue express negative things and he;s always trying to be Mr Perfect instead of Mr Real.

The second issues is that I believe that he has not gotten over his divorce. I think all of it -delays getting married, the insurance policy, not wanting to stop his old social life, not getting off her mortgage....all of it is about not letting go of his old life. I feel like he still has one foot in it. I am not sure he still loves or wants her but it's the life. I think he felt like he was part of her family, like he was important in the village because he was her husband and like he has been usurped by his ex wife's new partner.

I think he probably is "in love" with me, in an infatuted sort of a way where he fawns over me, but I think he's not capable of seeing that my needs might not always match his and that he needs to make sacrifices too.

I think if he wants me to be with him and live with him and play house he has to let go of his old life. Stop socialising with her friends and family unless he wants to include me, put me on the insurance policy and the bank account and everything else. Set a date for the wedding, but a house with me.

If he really can't do all of that I don't want to be with him.

I do think I love him...for many reasons not shown on this thread there are a lot of lovable things but I'm not happy and don't feel in an equal partnership here.

If his ex-W defaulted on her mortgage, could he afford to pay it and the rent on your home as well? If not, you could end up homeless.

She's really rich independently. Her family own half the town. Another reason it annoys me that he won't get off the paperwork. He's no reason to be on it!!!

He may be selfish - but she is too by the sound of it. Every weekend? She's taking the piss. Plus that thing about who sleeps in what room - fs!

Yy he may be an abuser, certainly. And there are a lot of alarming aspects to what you describe (that you're somehow not REAL in some sense??) but he also appears to be pathologically incapable of upsetting anybody, terrified of conflict. But ends up upsetting you enormously in a profound way.

People like this - often men - can suddenly disappear, go AWOL, bcs the pressure of keeping everyone happy crushes them to the point they can no longer sustain their lives and literally run away. I hesitate to say this but he may see you as a (silent, invisible) partner in his quest to keep everyone happy, facilitating his role. No thought, or cognisance, that you may be human with needs yourself. You were strong, capable, very successful when he met you, after all. Hesitating again: if you make it known you're not happy he could see that as yet another person in his life he has to keep happy when he's already bursting at the seams keeping everyone else happy - you're supposed to be facilitating him in this quest like some sort of deity.. Except he's wedded ( ) to the wrong people in his (completed misguided, fucked-up) quest. Or person, family. It doesn't sound like he's got off the tracks of his old life and is still trundling along them.

Except that makes him sound innocent - and I don't think he is. Perhaps there's a mix of all the suggestions on this thread going on with him. The most pertinent is that, for whatever reason, you are not real to him in a crucial sense. Your gut knows it, your life has become diminished.

As for taking up the offer of a full rest and being loved and cared for after years of holding everything up alone - oh my, I so understand this, can quite see me going for a deal like that (for the exact same reasons). One gets so weary of being strong and brave. It could have worked, certainly looked like the real deal at the time - still does, really. Except, no, the key things aren't there, haven't actually materialised . Crucial things. That were promised - like a baby, marriage, a house, a life together.

So no, I don't think his ex is

Oops. Edit fail

Can I ask about the start of your relationship with your partner ?

Was he still living with his wife when you got together ? did he leave her for you ? Or did she leave for OM?

You say she is from an important and rich family in the village - what was the reaction from people when his marriage split up ? You say he is still friemds with the same crowd that he used to be - is his ex and her partner involved with them too ?

I'm trying to understand why he socialises with his ex and her DH 4 nights a week while leaving his current partner at home ? And why you think this is ok?

And why he's so involved with his ex inlaws ? Do they like him? don't they judge his for leaving their daughter and her child - I know I would. I'd be perfectly civil but I wouldn't be best buddies .

I'm wondering if you rent your house from her family ?

There's a lot of unusual stuff going on .

That's funny springydaffs I thought exactly the same re this type of man doing a sudden runner. They can't keep up the Mr nice guy and the only way out is to disappear and no one can believe it, they were so perfect, loved you so much etc.

The more you post op the weirder he and the whole set up is.

No. When we met they were just separating officially but still under the same roof. Shed been in a relationship with someone else for two years and he had been "hoping" to win her back.

Her family were very upset she left him. The general reaction was people were glad he had someone else because she had for a long time and they felt sorry for him.

He socialises with their joint friends. Not with her pe se. Although sometimes he does.

No we rent privately