How can I make DP understand?

[InTheFamilyWay]

I posted this on AIBU too. But thought it might be useful to get the step parents' perspective on this too as I really don't know if I'm BU or not.

DP and I live together. He has a DD who lives with us half the time. We've had some issues in the past with him sidelining our relationship for DSD. That sounds terrible - obviously she should come first in all appropriate ways. But what I mean is things like choosing to take her instead of me to something I really wanted to go to and that he knew she would hate. And making non-important appointments for her that clash with important appointments for me and him. That sort of thing.

Anyway, we recently made friends with this couple and went to their house for dinner. I noticed that they had a couple of really lovely photos of them together framed in their living room. Just nice snaps of them hugging each other and suff. Nothing naff or formal.

I mentioned to DP at the time that we don't have any pictures up of us together and that I thought it would be nice if we did. The only framed photos up in our house are of DSD.

He was looking through some pictures taken on our recent holiday and showed me one saying that it would be a good one to put up of us. But it had DSD in it too.

AIBU to be upset that he just doesn't get it? I just want some sort of demonstration that he values our relationship in its own right and not just insofar as it relates to him and DsD. Which is what it feels like most of the time.

I think this is a relationship problem, in that he's using the fact that he has a daughter to cop out of doing things with you.

You need to grow up tbh. She's his child!

Excellent idea OP. I did the same!
Dh first had our house filled with old photos of dc with/without him. After about a year I told him we need to make our own memories, those old photos reflected their old life together, v unhealthy if you want to move on in a positive way.
So, we now have a special place in our living room for our couple photos, another space for our dc photos, and one photo each of us with our dc!
Can't get fairer than that.

I took our recent house move as a way to "re organise" our photos.

I still have quite a few old photos up but they're mainly ones I've taken of the kids since we've been together and not ones his ex wife took.

We've also got several photos of us as a couple.

Was it you who wanted to go with DP to Wimbledon and he took dsd instead knowing you would love it and she wasn't bothered one way or the other?

It does sound as Colditz says, a relationship problem. I don't get any sense that you resent dsd from your post. What I am getting is that you resent DP making you feel that you are worthless and nothing to do with you is important to him. I think the dsd is almost a red herring here because it sounds like he would be this way if she wasn't around, ie putting his social life before yours and finding reasons not to attend your events.

Have you talked to him in any depth about this? Or has he deflected criticism making it all about dsd?

He makes it about DSD. But I don't know if it's true that he'd put his social life before me. He's a real homebody. He loves to hang out with me at home. But I get the impression that days out or doing nice stuff is a waste if he only gets to to it with me. Like it's not worth bothering doing anything good unless DSD is there too. So it means we don't ever really do nice things just the two of us. No weekends away or anything like that.

See, that's unreasonable. I can understand that budget constraints might mean that you save to do things with dsd so she doesn't go short but - it's your life too. When will he have time to do things with you? I really don't think you are being unreasonable.