Sorry this is really long but I need to rant along with question whether I’m better off just leaving. My partner and I have been together for 6 years, we have a 17 month old and I’m 30 weeks pregnant. My partner’s 9 year old daughter lives with us full time with little input from her mum.
Generally speaking my partner is a good man, we’ve had some issues and have semi split up a few times. When I was pregnant first time round it was mostly him going out all night on the piss with no communication but he’s stopped that. There was an incident with a stripper a few months ago. Now it’s mostly work related (although there are lots of other little things). He works very hard and I’m grateful that that means I can stay at home a bit longer with my baby. (It also means we’ve been able to bring his older daughter to live with us full time too as I do 90% of the looking after her). But he never switches off from it. When he is at home he is often dealing with work calls/texts and most weeks he will physically go in to work at some point on one or both of his days off. It makes me really angry and I’ve told him so many times that it feels we are always put behind his job, he works long hours and I’m happy to get on with home life myself when he’s at work but on his days off I’d like him to prioritise family. He still gets his life out of work when he wants it, he usually meets his friends on one of his nights off every week which I don’t mind as long as he’s here to help with dinner/bedtime before he goes out. I’d just like him to not always put work above being at home with us, It never lasts more than a couple of weeks though.
Another sore subject is my DSD, she’s only 9 and had a lot of upheaval in her life (her mum is shit tbh) so I don’t want to blame her but I am finding her increasingly frustrating to look after. She’s been with us full time for 14 months and there is a list of things that I am struggling with with her that have not improved at all over that time and I find myself getting really frustrated and angry with having the same conversations over and over and over.
Anyway last night, once again, he went into work for over 3 hours when it was his day off. He tried to dress it up as a favour to me because I’d accidentally had an Amazon package sent there that he was going to pick up. I stupidly thought at first that this was a genuine nice thing but quickly realised he actually just wanted to do something at work and had a handy caveat to try and not get a hard time for it. He left the house bang on when dinner needed starting (always a stressful time for me) and didn’t come back until after I’d put the baby to bed.
The bit that has really struck a chord with me is that last night i took out my anger and frustration on my 17 month old. She was whingey and throwing food off her highchair which she does often, normal baby/toddler behaviour. Usually I will just take a breath and deal with it but last night I shouted. I looked directly at her and shouted, then I picked up the food she dropped and threw it down the hallway at the front door. I hated myself for it immediately afterwards.
This is happening increasingly often now, not to that extent but I am finding my patience with her getting less and less and it’s always in response to actually being angry with either my partner or my stepdaughter.
If this is happening now I worry massively how things will be when I have a toddler throwing food coupled with a newborn crying. If once again my “partner” has chosen to go into work on his day off when he’s supposed to be at home supporting me.
When we sort of split up a few months ago (stripper incident) we rubbed along in the same house but there was no communication and no expectation that he would be here at certain times and help with certain childcare things. If I’m honest it was so much easier for me and made me a better parent. Not expecting him to be around meant I wasn’t angry when he wasn’t, I just got on with it. It gave me a bit of a taste of single parenting and I honestly found it liberating.
But. Is this worth leaving over. All the hassle of moving (I can’t afford to keep this house on my own, he probably can). My daughter not seeing her dad and sister everyday (I don’t expect a huge amount of effort from him re. contact), financial stress and insecurity, the reality of having 2 under 2 on my own (I know that a couple of weeks of, sort of, doing it on my own before will not be the same as actually being a single mum).
I do really love him, he’s my best friend but I really don’t know if being with him is turning me into a mum I don’t want to be. I will always do whatever is best for my children.
I grew up with an angry, unpredictable and stressed out mum. I don’t want that for my children and I really don’t see things improving. I don’t feel listened to, no one seems to care enough about how I feel to make any changes to their behaviour and yet I’m expected to revolve my whole life around taking care of them.