I am at my wits end and need some advice and an outside perspective.
I divorced 7 years ago and have been with DP now for 6.5 years. We moved in together after about a year into a house we bought jointly.
I have two DDs, now aged 15 and 12.
Myself and DP are struggling now and I’m at a loss as to how to proceed.
Early on he got on great with the DDs. They were very fond of him, shared interests, he watched movies with them, did drawing etc, he enjoys family outings and is generally much more interested and hands on than their dad.
I was delighted as family life had been a struggle with their dad, he was a high functioning alcoholic who really never wanted a family or to be tied down. He is still in their lives, sees them regularly (1 weekend in 4 as he lives abroad) etc and is much better as a hands off dad with little in the way of responsibility. They have a lot of fun with their dad and as he sees them only once a month he doesn’t apply much in the way of discipline. He deals with everything with humour and jokes, is really messy and generally weekends and holidays with him they are allowed do more or less what they want. Their stuff comes back all in a heap with stuff forgotten more often than not as their dad is generally too busy havig a good time and joking around to pay much attention to all of that. I’m not having a go at him, it’s how he is and they love it.
DP on the other hand is a very regularised kind of a man. He likes routine and structure and an organised house. My younger DD went off him completely after one holiday with her dad (I think the penny dropped that the family unit of me, her dad and the two kids was irrevocably gone and she got quite depressed for a few weeks – she was about 8 at the time – and has never had such a good bond with DP since – he has dealt with this fairly well, he understands things are hard for her but obviously it’s also hard for him as she turned from hugging him and enjoying him a lot to being resentful and pretty hard on him, almost overnight. They rub along ok now but theres no real bond) My older DD and DP have a sort of love-hate relationship, they joke and fight in about equal measure. I always thought this was quite healthy.
Over the past couple of years though, I guess you could say as the girls approached and entered teenagerhood and left childhood we have begin to struggle more and more. As I said DP is organised, structured, very tidy etc. He gets VERY frustrated by “stuff” left lying around, by chairs not put back under the table at the end of a meal, by the girls not putting their laundry away quickly, by them leaving shoes or schoolbags around the floor where they shouldn’tbe, or leaving coats on chairs etc. By them making a face of disdain when they come to the dinner table or not eating their vegetables. All of the stuff that definitely IS irritating in a family home, but also fairly normal I suspect.
The struggle comes because he can’t seem to be able to cope with this “laxity”. I don’t like it either and I pull them up on it and lose my temper sometimes, but he seems to have no humour about it. – he expects it done his way and if not he gets very annoyed. He speaks to the children quite harshly then and if I challenge him on it he gets distant and withdraws from the family. There seems to be no space for a middle way.
We try to keep a no wifi after 10pm and none on Sundays rule and there is no allowance in his monitoring of this for any flexibility. He does all the tech stuff in the house and so if the kids want some wifi on Sunday or after hours they have to ask him and he makes a big song and dance and won’t adjust it. I’ve asked if he can show me how to do it but he hasn’t. I don’t mind a bit of flexibility, in anything, I’ve no interest in runnning a police state and sometimes that what it feels like he would like. Something where we have very black and white rules and regulations, everyone adheres to them at all times and woe betide you if you don’t.
He is pretty controlling in other areas too. We have a dog and recently my DS visitied and fed the dog some sweets after he had asked her not to. He ranted at her in front of about 8 people, telling her off, how he wasn’t happy etc etc. I get it. Of cousre she shouldn’t have done it but really, it was a minor thing and could easily have been let go. He doesn’t care who is present, if anyone does something he doesn’t like, or outside his rules he will tell them off in no uncertain terms. He is a very big man with a loud deep voice and it’s not easy to brush it off.
Soon after we got together he had a different dog and we were outside a café when some very silly teenage girls walked past and fed his dog a chip. He stood up and shouted at them “stupid cunts” and ranted at them. I remember being gobsmacked at what I saw as a really extreme overreaction , nevermidn the use of language I wasn’t comfortable with in that context - being shouted in public at two clueless teenagers. It was a side of him I’d never seen but I somehow ignored it as he was lovely to me, to the kids etc and I buried it. Recently it is coming back to my mind more and more.
I was really cranky yesterday – I do suffer with depression and anxiety which came to a head at the end of my relship with exH and sometimes things get on top of me (I’m dealing with this at the moment – meds and counselling but sometimes I still have a bad day) – and I was locked in a sort of tit for tat exchange with my DD1. I was feeling quite low and tearful.
DD1 is always late, she was late again yesterday as we were trying to get somewhere. We were then driving back to the house afterwards and as we pulled into the drive she took off her seatbelt and swung the door open to get out of the car before it had stopped. Stupid behaviour I know, thoughtless. He slammed on the brakes and did an unecessary emergency stop which threw her and her sister forward in the car. He ranted at her, she was rude back, I gave out to her for her rudeness to him and told her she shouldn’t have done the door thing. But then I also said to him he shouldn’t have slammed on the brakes like that as it was dangerous.
I left it then but it was on my mind all evening. I have to go away with work for w week next month and DP will be in charge. I generally have to do this once a year and it’s always been ok, but I feel tensions are higher between them all now and I’m feeling worried about it.
I brought it up with him this morning and he just says they need to learn, they need to learn.
We tried joint counselling for a while as I find the energy in the home can be pretty unpleasant at times and I wanted to try to dicsuss how we could make it better in a mediated, supported environment. He pulled out of that after a few sessions as he found it really difficult to open up.
Because of my anxiety etc I often worry the negative enrergy is my fault, caused by me. But I do feel that his unbending attitude, allied with his withdrawal when things don’t work according to his plan, and his controlling approach contribute a lot too.
When I am in a bad mood, giving out about something one of the kids have done, he always jumps on it with me, as though he is delighted to have a reason to give out about them. Then it can escalate, as it did yesterday. I was annoyed with my DD, giving out, so he joins in, and then we end up with the emergency stop in the car situation, which I think really shouldn’t have happened. I tried to explain to him this morning that when I am losing my cool I need him to keep his, not to join me in it. I told him I don’t want the kids frightened in their own home, or overly worried about anything. They’ve had a hard enough time with me and their dad splitting up. They told me previously that he has done this kind of thing before when they’ve been with him in the car. I get it, they can be annoying, they squabble and fight like toddlers at times and I know I’ve pulled the car up myself abruptly on occasion to try to get them to stop. BUT I would always apologise after, and explain why I had done it and try to get them to understand the frsutrations.
I know the poor man is finding it hard, he never lived in a family situation since he left his own parents home and apparantly they all put things away and never left a mess there so he can’t understand how it isn’t like that in our home.
He is always kind and loving to me, will apologies if he hurts my feelings etc but he WILL NOT apologise to the kids, it’s almost like a point of honour with him.
I feel like I am living with two people, the loving partner and the gestapo policeman.
I’m the first to admit I can be soft, I’m much more interested in my kids remembering their childhood as a happy, warm place than somewhere they adhered to uncompromising rules – that said, it’s not like I let them run the place. They have bedtimes, there just might be a 20 minute leeway, I do ask them to clear their stuff up and remind them if they don’t, but I understand it is not top of their priorities and might take a while or a few reminders…that sort of thing.
I recently found DP looking at porn online in our shared office when I walked in, something I really wsn’t expecting and it threw me. He tried to pretend he wasn’t but a day or two later admitted he was. TBH I probably wouldn’t have minded except for the lying (exH lied about a lot of sexual stuff so I guess it’s a bit of a trigger, plus I have some personal body perception issues I’m working through so it brought that stuff up too) We talked and I tried to explain how it made me feel and how I really felt I was living with someone I didn’t really know as a result of it (we’d talked about porn before, he knows I am pretty openminded so I didn’t really understand the subterfuge, that threw me) – anyway – as a result he decided he wanted to figure a few things out and is going to counselling now himself. Which I thnk is great, I told him I need him to join me solving this, that I didn’t want the “problems” is our relationship/family life to be all my responsibility (as they were in my last relnship)
But its slow going. At the moment if I bring anything up he dissolves into tears and says he doesn’t know what to do, that part of him feels like just packing up and moving out, but then that he loves me and doesn’t want to lose our relationship.
I did suggest to him before that maybe an option would be for him to move out and get a place nearby, that for the next few years we could continue our relationship as a couple without all the stress that family life is obviously bringing to bear. He absolutely didn’t want to do that said “it wasn’t what I signed up for” – which I do get, but with all the stresses and strains maybe flexibility is needed?
Anyway. I had no idea this would be such a novel. Thanks if you made it to the end. I guess really I am hoping for guidance, is this normal? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Should I be worried? Am I the unfair one being too soft and unreasonable?
I just don’t know. Parenting is hard enough, step parenting is a whole other ball game