Is love ever enough :(

[MilieJones]

Hello,

I’m look for some impartial useful advice if possible.

Me and my partner live an hour away from each other. He has an 8yo. I have a 6yo and 4yo. We all merge together as a family well and it’s lovely.

Like with all - In the beginning we saw each other constantly - he would travel to me as I have my own home and he lives with parents so we only get alone time at mine.

Him coming here has got considerably less now it’s maybe once a week if that. He works shifts as does his ex wife and I work mon-fri 8-4. My children don’t have a dad in their lives so they are in my care consistently. My partner and his ex have a slight routine of every other weekend Friday night-Monday morning school and every Wednesday night-Thursday morning school but the ex then also calls on him most days to have the 8yo from school or over night or till late when she’s working. So no routine really.

For three months I’ve been utterly horrid blowing up at him constantly that I never see him, we never have sex etc. I get that that it is a pain for him but I’m reslly hurting. I’ve tried to chill out. I’ve let it be and I’ve waited around now I need some progression or do I need to find someone else with the same vision for life as me. I don’t know which?

My sex drive is very high and my want for a partner in life is high. Ive got the house the career the kids and the lifestyle now it’s time for a person to share that with me.

With the distance, work patterns, lack of physical contact in all sense of the meaning. I want him to move in but he is very much like ‘I want to be where my daughter is so I’m there at all times when the ex asks and I want to be with my family and friends as she never let me be’ but in my head I’m thinking: this can’t be your life plan and you have been living with family and/or friends for two years now and you’re 34...

I blow up and then we’re ok again and I ask him to sit with her and look at shifts and make a plan so I’m not constantly wondering when I’ll get to see him but he doesn’t do that either. He says it’s not like that. I’ve said (with shifts) he’ll see friends just as much and I don’t care if he stay out late ... it’s the fact that his stuff is here ... WE have OUR home and ultimately he calls it home and he comes home to me but it all falls on deaf ears.

I make it sound awful but, together we are a great couple, we click, sex is amazing and the kids all love one and other. He is my future in my eyes but I’m very very very lonely and I become resentful and horrid and we argue because I don’t get it and nor does he...

I feel like I’m asking him to pick between his daughter and me. I’m not. But I see it looks that way - but does that mean we can never live together because he is at ex’s beck and call as to when he can see the 8yo? Is that right??

Am I right to put it out there that I want a partner and family life (Work, kids, dinner, chats, tv, bed, sex and repeat..) and if he isn’t going to do that then I need to find it else where or should I hang around waiting because I rate the actual relationship highly even though time spent together is minimal?

we’ve already established that even when we live together he will have to stay at his parents every Wednesday and every other Sunday to take 8yo to school so even if I get him I’m already having 1-2 days a week without him.

Next week he is planning on doing ‘a weeks move in’ hes already said he isn’t going to move in after that so I now know I’m going to have to watch him go again although it will be harder as I’ll have had him everyday. I doubt I’ll react well to having him gone again...

Basically should I forgo my happiness to keep on waiting around feeling lonely to suit him because he should be at the ex’s beck and call due to 8yo and living with parents and seeing friends...? if not what’s the compromise...he can’t be here because of 8yo needing him (I think in the beginning he chose to see me instead to have the 8yo and that didn’t go down well understandably) I can’t be there because he lives with parents and nowhere for my kids to sleep if we went there and he won’t get his own place and I can’t move because my house is here kids schools etc... so, should I thank him for the wonderful time but say I need to find someone who wants to make a life with me. (I have done this before and it didn’t ‘make him realise he wanted me’) I’m making myself unhappy for his wants but he doesn’t give in. Then he’d be making himself unhappy for my wants and I don’t give in to letting it be that I’m last on the list of priorities and he may never live here...

So could someone give me any advise please? who should give? What should give? What should I do?

Thank you xx

You can flower up the language of you being in a relationship with him but what is coming over loud and clear love is that daughter comes first (as it should be) you need to stop stressing about him honestly and find your own life, if he wants to be with you he will, you will find a way ,good luck xxx

I am sorry this is so upsetting for you OP but in all this, if you and he split , your house is legally yours isn't it? Just thinking you need to look after yourself financially .

And it's not love in the way I think counts, being there, sharing hopes, ideals, moving forward,shite times, great times, you have to be honest and say "I want us to be a couple"

Whose idea was it that you bought a house in-between his town and your town?

I'm sure he went along with it quite happily at the time (living with his ex, and then his parents, can't be all roses)... but whose idea was it really in the first place?

I'm guessing it was yours.

You sound very driven, very focussed, very "alpha". He sounds easy going, fun-loving, non-committal, very "Beta".

You will always get frustrated by his tendency to let the tides of life push him this way and that way. It's very different to you.

If you keep doing what you're doing now (waiting, exploding, waiting, etc) you'll just get less and less happy. For your own sake, you need to feel in control of your destiny.

So you either accept that you have a live-out boyfriend (which has some benefits), or you quietly bring your focus around to yourself, and accept that this man - lovely though he is - just isn't the type you need.

I hear you. I've recently ended a relationship that was very similar. Have a read of this article a d see if it rings true. It did for me and made me realise what I already knew: I was wasting my time as he wasn't really free or ready for a relationship.

pairedlife.com/advice/IsHeStillMarriedToHisEx

I feel such relief and peace now I've ended it as was causing me so much stress.

I am somewhat in a similar situation. Have been with my boyfriend 1.5 years. Living 1 hour apart, 33 miles between us.

He wants to stay near his DC, obviously, which I admire him for. My DC are settled in their schools too, and my location is more central (London, while lives outside M25). One major helping factor - I have an aupair who enabled me to stay at boyfriend's regularly.

However, the future is uncertain. His youngest is 8. Mine are 10 and 7. I foresee years and years of having two homes, and what will happen when I don't have an aupair anymore? Even if we somehow move in together, we need at least 5 bedroom home to accommodate all our DC even for regular contact.

My mum says, perhaps it is a good situation as it is, keeping separate homes and not blending DC permanently, as it removes the tension of a blended family. I see some sense in it. I would like the relationship to workout but I see no clear vision. He says "we will work it out" and we have about 1.5 years while I keep my aupair and he sorts his financial post-divorce mess.

I do worry though that I am wasting the best of my years without a clear future, or having to wait at [I don't know how many years] until we can set up one home.

My sympathies, OP.

You are doing nothing wrong wanting more, you see him once a week, he has ONE 8 year old daughter, why is so bloody hard to not see any more of him?

He's happy as it is, you're not, I'd not be happy either, I don't think you are asking him to choose between you and his child, you are simply wanting a relationship and sorry but once a week sounds pretty casual to me.

Sorry just don't understand why it's only once a week.

His child comes first of course, but he's not seeing her the other six nights of the week is he, he wants to see his friends, well there you go, you come last in the pecking order.

There is a difference, I believe, between the situations where:

You keep two homes but remain in a committed relationship, a partnership, and see each other when you can, things are consistent enough even if work or kids intervene every now-and-then, and you both give enough energy and time to nourish the relationship. This can work well I think and avoids the blended family strife.

You keep separate homes but one of you is dropping everything to run round after the ex on an ad hoc basis to take over with the dc randomly which starves the relationship of time and a sense of mutuality.

I think OP and always ‘s ex was in this situation. I think that OP is pulling all the strings and her OH is just blowing which ever way the wind blows. Tough decision to make for OP.