Am I being unreasonable??

[lovenotwar321]

Me and my partner have been together for 7 years he has 2 children from a previous relationship that we have every other night. 5 months ago i gave birth to our child and obviously things in our household just got a whole lot busier. My partner doesnt finish work until 6pm every night and then every other night collects his children after work and by time they get home our child is in bed and i have cooked them all dinner. One of my partners children plays football and goes training once a week and plays a football match every weekend. I cook and clean for all the children even though they are teenagers and old enough to help out although it would be me making them do this as my partner always forgets and wants an easy life but i dont want to be the bad guy. My partner has started going to the pub every friday night after work now and he works hard so i understand he needs to let off steam but it means that most of the week he doesnt see our child apart from he gets up for an hour every morning whilst i sleep. He then takes his child football training every other week after work when it lands on our night and football matches again every other weekend. The childrens mother does not take the child either training or football on her nights my partner has to arrange lifts.

So my question is this am i being un reasonable to ask my partner to stop taking his child football training every other week and to stop going to the pub every friday. I never want to get in the way of a relationship with his children but its just too much at the moment our child is still up 3 or 4 times a night and i do it all but he helps on the weekend. The football matches means hes normally gone most of the day on the weekend and training means he doesnt get home until 9pm and he says his child is missing out if he doesnt take them and its not fair to keep relying on other people to take them. With him now going to the pub i feel like ive had enough of constantly being alone and raising our child and cleaning up after every one but dont see a solution to changing things. Ive gone mad at him tonight a build up of emotions and he says im over reacting and its mot fair to ask him to do that. I just want to know if i am being unreasonable or if im not the only one who thinks hes got to make changes and he cant always take his child football as he now has 3 and a partner to share his time with.

sassbot Your earlier post in thread suggested that children from “broken families” don’t need to compromise for anyone ever and have some sort of special privilege within the family. They’re either part of the family or they’re not. Take your pick.

Then you added the whole biology thing in to it and made it sound like because they have a different mum/dad they’re not proper siblings and again don’t need to compromise the same way “full” siblings would have to.

@readitandwept

Well I was replying to a more general comment saying they had never known a parent stop their older child from doing an activity because they had another child to say I had never known a parent dedicate whole days every week to one child's hobby when they have more than one child, they usually just drop them off at said hobby.

But in what way is that not what's happening here?

For balance, I don't know any parents who have allowed one child to have a hobby that takes up the whole weekend, and actually stick around every time rather than just drop them off, given that they wouldn't even be interacting with them there
Really? We live in another world then. In my world, parents do dedicate almost a whole weekend day to their kids playing football.

Parents get into the buzz of it, supporting the team. They encourage their kids and are there to pick them up when they don't do well.

When games are at home, it's a cour of bouts, when they are away, it can be up to 1 1/2 drive, then you need to be there an hour early for their training so pointless to drive all the way back.

At least one parent is there for almost all kids in the vast majority of cases. Very often younger siblings come, inuding babies when the weather is nice. They love it.

It is more often fathers although not always. When the mums are at home with younger doings, they are usually grateful for the peace and quiet. Ironically, there's aot more moans from mums when fathers don't bother to stay and support their child than the other way around.

@Dontdisturbmenow

To the matches, yes, but not to every single training session. I do wonder what the other child is doing during that time since OP said there were two step children - do they tag along or are they left behind with their step mum? Is there any thought given to whether they want to dedicate so much of their time with their dad to their sibling's hobby?

I may be somewhat biased because I do think football as a hobby takes up quite a ridiculous amount of time and forces the entire family to centre their lives around it whether they like it or not (I had three hobbies as a child and was dropped off and collected from all three). And I do think that when he has chosen to have another baby and his partner has told him she is struggling, it is taking the piss to excuse himself because he needs to "cheer on" the other child, without at least picking up the slack elsewhere. He's not cheering on his baby for learning to sleep through the night, is he. It wouldn't be such an issue if he wasn't also excusing himself at other times (the pub), but in general yes I do think attending every single training session and match of one child's football club when you have three including a baby is a bit unrealistic, and very much an example of something that isn't sustainable in a family with more than one child.

Op says he takes the kid to training eow. It might very well be that depending on where it is in relation to where he works, pick up the kids, and training grounds, it would make no sense to drive back home and go out again to pick them up again of it would mean 15 mns at home. That is usually the reason why parents stay at training.

From what OP wrote, it doesn't sound like a lot of time to me at all. A training session eow and a football match eowend, I'm sure he spends much more time with OP and their joint child than that.

Well there's a lot of emotion evoked by this thread!
@Handbagsatnoon - my ex was also a cheater. In retrospect he was a shite husband & did some very bad things - to me. However, being a shite husband & doing bad things does not make a person a shite dad or a constantly bad person & my exh was a deeply unhappy man in himself - time & therapy has taught me that his actions towards we're not a reflection of me. In my situation he's the nrp & the nrp's role as a parent is never going to be 'perfect' - precisely because they're a nrp. Tbh I think most nrps get a very hard time by rps by dent of the fact that they can't behave/parent like the rp does - but that's the nature of divorce, the day to day parenting becomes unequal & that's something everyone has to deal with. You can't be the on the ball parent if you're not in the family home ft. It's not ideal, but in all honesty no one gets what they want from divorce. Most adults see divorce as a relief but then post divorce reality sets in - one parent doing the vast majority of the parenting vs one parent struggling with not living with their kids ft anymore & both parents nearly more annoyed with each other that they were pre split. However, both adults & children should realise that a couple's relationship breaking down should not translate into a parent/child relationship breaking down & a lot of the time nrps seemingly back off from responsibilities because the rp is making life difficult as hell for everyone & is not facilitating the children's relationship with their other parent.
People often remark to me how adjusted & happy my kids are post divorce & while not without their issues they are generally very happy & the main reason for this is that I took my anger with their father & dumped it on a therapist instead of letting it eat me up - and believe me it was hard & there were days I wanted to tell them every awful thing he had done but I never did because he is their father & it's a totally different relationship to the one I had/have with him.
@sassbott - my exdp & I also chose never to have a child together for the exact reasons you've outlined. But I'd take it a step further by saying the knowledge that his exw would have caused all sorts of issues with his kids was a major factor for me as she would never have supported blending or compromise & I do believe compromise are necessary & I know second family's can blend very well but they do need support from all concerned. I knew if we had a child she would have (via the kids) done everything both physically & emotionally, to ensure keeping her kids separate from their sibling which would have put dp in a terrible position.
My kids have 2 half siblings & if I'd presented any level of negativity regarding their father having more children they would have jumped on it & gone along with it because of course they were hurt, insecure & vulnerable in the early days. Instead I chose to promote it as a positive & on days where dd (who's my youngest) didn't want to go to her dads because it was 'boring' & when he was inclined to say ok because he knew she'd be bored and a bit stroppy (she was 10) I said no & made her go; explaining to her & saying to exh that this was their family life & their reality now & that she had to learn to cope with being bored around a baby & he had to cope with the stroppiness & the fact that he now had 4 kids & not 3. My dd (& my ds's) are all the better for learning that while they are very loved they are not top of the pecking order & my dd has gone from being a guilty, separated dad's little princess (in her dad's house) to being an extremely kind & empathetic young lady who loves her little brothers, but who is also well capable of calling her dad (NOT her sm) out if he's trying to wing one Saturday snooze too many . I don't say any of this to blow my own trumpet but to highlight that blending is possible with enough support from all the adults involved.
@lovenotwar321 - if you're still around I too would say the football is important but moving forward your dp should bring the other kids at the weekend (if they're free) & as time moves on the baby too. That way you get a piece of Saturday to yourself. As for the Friday nights - again, as the baby gets older put the 16 year old to work as a babysitter & go out as a couple a few nights a month. The 16 year old shouldn't have to miss his activity but the family can be blended into that activity & he's old enough now to take a bit of responsibility & give you two a break. In no way do I think first family kids should be shovelled into a corner but I also don't believe they should be put on pedestals & overly prioritised. The nature of divorce is that it can work well if the adults work hard to move on, & the main reason I split with my exdp is that his kids & exw refused to deal with him moving on - they wanted constant priority, attention & no compromising & that manner of behaviour is totally at odds with how I choose to live my life & rear my kids.
You're doing just fine in what is not an easy situation, but all family life is juggling - for both adults & kids.

The childrens mother does not take the child either training or football on her nights my partner has to arrange lifts.

So if you succeed in stopping your partner, his child will undoubtably miss out altogether.

So my question is this am i being unreasonable to ask my partner to stop taking his child football training every other week and to stop going to the pub every friday.

The pub is reasonable. The football training is not.

Surely you discussed your views before deciding to have a baby? Incompatibility over parenting is often a big reason for why couples split up and then more children suffer. Think about it, do you really want your partner’s next girlfriend who he has a child with to drop your baby because of it? Of course you don’t.

Yes it does rather depend on how far away it is which OP hasn't said as far as I can see, but if it's close enough to come back I do think he should be.

Well, rather, I think he should adjust his mindset to be helping more with his own baby, the amount he felt it was ok to go to the pub demonstrates his attitude, and he only gets home at 6 every other day and is busy with his other children until late on the other days, which suggests a pretty hands off dad to the baby. I do also feel for the other step child in this scenario, but it's also unclear how they fit into it.

@funinthesun19 I need to go back and look at what I wrote because I’ve clearly messed up between the thoughts in my brain coming out on here.

I don’t think children from broken homes should get special privileges. My children don’t but then they move between my exh and I fluidly. Zero conflict. Near enough 60/40 split and we’re all doing as well as we can given that no child actually wants mum and dad to be apart.

But do I think situations need to be taken into account when looking at ‘broken’ families? Absolutely I do. How often does NRP have access if it’s not 50/50? If it’s court ordered EOW then yes, I do think concessions have to be made for those children. How old are the children? How have they adapted to the split and subsequent transition between homes? How high conflict is the primary carer/ relations between parents? If exceptionally high conflict again this has severe ramifications on the children involved. What are the children’s personalities like? All of these are significant factors in what happens when children are involved.

To assume that one size fits all is at best naive, at worst selfish. I’m not suggesting no one has to compromise. Everyone needs to compromise (especially children so they don’t grow up as entitled and spoilt young people).

The degrees of compromise and the ‘flex’ within the family should ebb and flow depending on all of the above.

Re my biology comment? Well it’s true. If you don’t like it, reinvent humans. There is so much research that clearly shows how much secure the bond between parents and siblings is. It’s there to ensure the human race survived. That if a lion was about to rip the head off your baby or your baby brother, you rushed to save the baby as opposed to chucking the baby at the lion to save your own skin.

The biggest piece of work counsellors are doing with step parents is to make them understand that the bond with a step parent / step sibling is damaged far easier and can become irreparable much easier. A parent / child bond is not impacted on the same way. Nor is a full sibling bond. Look it up. I for example can tear a strip off my children and two seconds later we’re back to normal. I cannot do the same with my exDp’s children because our bond can be damaged far easier. I can discipline by all means but it’s in a very different way to how I discipline my own children.

My children can absolutely go at each other and minutes later are best friends. They cannot do that (ever) with my partners children. In the main due to age difference, personalities (mine are more robust emotionally as their father and I have zero conflict), and because they don’t have the same relationship with my partners children that they do between themselves.

Does that mean my children need to compromise on how they behave/ treat my DP’s DC. Absolutely. Does that mean I compromise and essentially give my partner free rein to do what he wishes with his kids EOW? Absolutely I do.

Why is any of that wrong?

But in what way is that not what's happening here?

Well it's one training night EOW and one weekend day EOW, according to OP. Not multiple days per week as you were saying.

@Magda72 I completely agree with that some NRPs get a very hard time post divorce/separation and I've seen first hand what it does to children.
My ex was a good partner, apart from the cheating of course, but was and is a crappy dad. I knew exactly when he started cheating and when he left didnt see the dc for 2 months they were still young so it didnt affect them as much. Over the years I've learnt to forgive and we co-parented pretty well and as I said in my pp he used to take them to football as part of our agreement.
I won't go into the whole story, but his new partner was the OW to the woman he left me for, so she has major insecurities regarding him being out of her sight and had an issue with him coming to collect our dc and eventually wanted him to stop taking them as she was having a baby and only wanted him around just for her.

I now cannot forgive that and neither can my dc as they're much older than they was when he done it before, they didn't and don't know about the baby, but think their dad has chosen his partner over them which he has done, now he has to live with that and I have no sympathy for him.
I have chosen not to have anymore dc as I know that it would have a huge impact on mine and my dcs life, I wouldn't be able to take them out as much and don't think its fair on them to have to sacrifice what they have now for my own wants.

@Magda72 I couldnt agree with you more.
My partners EXW is exceptionally high conflict and not remotely supportive of her children having a second home with their dad, me and my children.
She has deliberately sought to undermine their relationship, even telling their children that daddy prefers sassbotts children. And many other things. All of these are the reason that I refused to even contemplate living with him. His children needed to see him alone. Away from us and that was the only mechanism we had to undermine (visibly) the rubbish his exwife was coming out with.

Bringing an innocent child into such a deeply unhealthy dynamic simply would have caused everything to get significantly worse.

My blending from my side? Works absolutely fine. Why? Because my children see my exh whenever they want to. We discipline on the same page. My exh likes my partner and is fully supportive of him being involved with our children. Likewise as a result I am fully available to invest in a relationship healthily. Children take their lead from their parents. And if one parent isn’t supportive, it is a lifelong battle IMo.

I’ve often wondered how youre getting on? Have you remained separated? My DP and I split for a while but have reconciled with a new set of ground rules. Now I need to figure out what’s next.

@sassbott the OP is talking about half-siblings not step-siblings. The teens are the OP's step-children but her own child's half-siblings.

The relationship between half-siblings is completely different than between step-siblings. Depending on the age gaps the relationship between half-siblings can actually be better than full-siblings.

OP due to safeguarding your DP may not be able to leave his children alone at training. However apart from the evening training he could be extending the match time. I've noticed in the sports I use to do that certain fathers use to use it as an excuse for social time with other fathers.

I don’t think you are being fair to ask him to stop supporting his child’s football activity. If all the children were yours I’m sure you wouldn’t want the older children to have their lives curtailed by the little one.

@Youseethethingis your post this morning about these threads on Mumsnet is spot on - it should be stickied! Indeed you can’t do right for doing wrong.

Step family dynamics are so complex. Everyone is trying to do their best with difficult stuff around parenting, feeling outsiders, being spread way to thin, feeling resentful, feeling guilty, weak Disney parenting, high conflict ex partners (delete as appropriate). A new baby amidst all that is more of the same.

@sassbott I am pleased you are back in a relationship with DP but you sound a bit like me, needing to retain that dividing line between families to keep things healthy.

There’s no one size fits all.

@ColaFreezePop I know they are half siblings. And I completely agree with you. Sometimes a new baby / half sibling can work wonders and actually pull families together.

But I still think the factors I spelt out (biology aside) have a huge impact on how smooth these families come together. If you have a party determined to create Merry hell, that can still just as easily impact half siblings. In fact they can very easily destabilise non resident children further as they are daddy’s flesh and blood as much as the NR children are. And there’s another child calling their daddy, daddy. As opposed to my rowdy lot who address him by his first name.

Trust me, half sibling. Step sibling. Given my situation and the high levels of conflict between my partner and his ex wife, neither of those were options if we focussed on what was best for his children. And that was stabilising them and ensuring my partner could focus on them as much as he needed to. Anything else would have been (sadly) the wrong thing to do.

@latent yes. I do think a dividing line is needed. Although I’m giving a lot of thought as to whether that is what I actually want longer term out of a relationship. The EXW has dictated (via conflict) too much of our living situation and now it’s time to either make a decision to stay as we are, move forward or simply knock it on the head. Because 4 years in, we’re nowhere forward and it feels like we’re coasting because it’s better than being alone.

@sassbott am hoping here with real trust and kind-but-warts-and-all honesty between us about the issues (progress is happening gradually) we can move forward eventually.

Yes, you and the new baby should definitely be prioritised. Certainly for the next few months anyway. You're not being unreasonable at all.

a baby needs you to physically stay alive, a teenager could get a bus to anywhere they need to go. A baby's needs are significantly greater than older children

I don't agree with this. Babies really just need looked after and it doesn't really matter to the baby who does that looking after. Older children need stimulation, emotional investment, time and the feeling that they are loved and valued. Personally, I found the teenage years way more demanding than babies and toddlers.

The arrival of a new baby is totally the wrong time to cut back on time with older DCs. However, your DP is disrespecting you in leaving all the cooking and cleaning to you. His children should be doing that for themselves and he should be parenting them.

The XW is a red herring here and you are using her as an easy scapegoat. Your DP has to work out how to give time to all his children, and his partner and that means cutting down on the pub visits.

@sassbott a half-sibling is also the children's blood relation and the family courts now recognise this.

A step-sibling is not a blood relation so it is seen completely differently as there is no reason why the children should have anything to do with each other.

I don't agree with this. Babies really just need looked after and it doesn't really matter to the baby who does that looking after. Older children need stimulation, emotional investment, time and the feeling that they are loved and valued. Personally, I found the teenage years way more demanding than babies and toddlers

You are talking emotional needs and I am talking physical needs. A baby's physical needs are far greater than a teenagers, yet I always see it argued (usually on threads that involve step children) that it's fine for one parent to totally neglect the baby's needs to focus on the older children. In my opinion, unless you have specifically said to the mother "I am not going to do any of the hard work for this baby so it will all be on you" before conceiving then both parents should he prepared to act as though the other parent was only willing/able to do half of the work and the rest is on them. Yes, a baby might not mind who is looking after them, but the mother does and if you made an agreement with the mother to have a baby then you have a responsibility to share the hard work, unless you've made it damn clear you're not going to and she was happy to go ahead anyway.

It's rare that full siblings have an age gap this big but in the cases where they do I have never known one parent or both neglect their share of the baby's needs to focus on the teenager because of their emotional needs, they have simply needed to adapt. It's totally out of line for a dad with older kids to expect his partner to do all the hard work because of HIS responsibilities, he's the one that needs to be working twice as hard, not relying on her to pick up the slack.

Again, this is not specific to this thread, it just really bugs me how regularly I see the argument that the baby doesn't mind who's looking after them so it's ok for the dad to leave the mum to do all the work.

@sassbott the difference between a step sibling and a half sibling is that it is fair enough for your partner to just focus on what's right for his children and not yours. A half sibling would also be his child, and although it's all well and good and very admirable to say you wouldn't bring another child into that situation, once the decision has been made and he has another baby it is no longer the right thing to do for him to prioritise his older children above the new one. He his given up the luxury of only thinking about them.

OP, imagine things don't work out with your OH and you become a single parent. In 10 years time, your now Ex decodes to sign up your dd to karate lessons and starts attending competitions which he tells you not to worry about because he will take her to her lessons and competitions so you don't have to, as you couldn't any way.

Your dd loves the sport and the competition, and it's a, special time with her dad so it makes her happy. Then one day, she comes home 8ntrars, telling you that her sm has told her that these will have to end because she considers that her partner should spend every weekend with his new baby and there's no room for her competitions any longer which makes her very sad.

I very much doubt you'd say to her 'stop being so selfish, your father new baby needs him more than you. You would probably have ended up giving up Karate in a couple of years a yway so why does it matter. You now need to accept that your dad can't give as much attention and taking you to training and competition is unfair on his new partner so just accept it and be happy'.

It's so easy to see it differently when it's not your own kids who are losing out and yours actually benefit from the decision at the expense of the other.

Every step counts is a great book about step families I found it very hepful

Why don’t you go to football with them and take the baby? They can be wrapped up warm? Why don’t you go to the pub and get a babysitter or once every two weeks get one and his night can be on a Friday every other week why can’t you all go out as a family all children once a week ? I agree I hear the word balance and I think it’s key- also listening to each other as a couple, understanding each other’s views and feelings and ultimately- you BOTH need to compromise