Hello,
My partner haven't seen his daughter (13) since mid-March because of the coronavirus which hit pretty hard in our area and because her mother and adult brother continued socialising with a number of people and my DP was afraid (if we got coronavirus, we literally had nobody to take care of our toddler and my older son).
I asked DP to bring SD to our house since SD's mother continued seeing her boyfriend who lives 15 min away from us and nobody got coronavirus after a while, but his answers made it sound like being with us would not be nice for SD, which I found very strange. The schools have been cancelled here since March until September. So she spent her time basically chatting with friends, watching videos and playing board games. Her mother lives in a small 2 bedroom appartment where SD doesn't have a room (she has a corner of the small livingroom). Her mother's boyfriend lives in a basement of a small house and she spent days if not weeks there with him. Surely not a lot of space or more fun there.
We have a small but fairly spacious house with a yard and a trampoline. She has her bedroom here. She gets along well with my 12 year old son and adores our toddler who's becoming older and more fun to be with. She likes cooking with me and can chat/watch videos/play board games here.
Finally, my DP decided that it's safe to bring her here soon. I asked if he wanted her to spend longer time with us (normally, it was EOW), but he says that she must prefer seeing her friends (she doesn't have all that many) than being here and he wouldn't want to force her since there's nothing special here.
I know he misses her, but I feel like he has this complex of inferiority where he thinks the the mother and the friends are all more important than him. I don't remove the importance from these people, but is it the right attitude to have? Maybe it makes her actually think that he doesn't care about her all that much (which is not the case) and precisely take him for granted?