My annual Christmas disappointment comes as my husband makes it clear (through his choices and actions) that we (me and our baby) are just an afterthought to be fitted in when it suits him or would be entertaining for the SC. His ‘family’ is, for Christmas purposes, the SC and his mother/siblings.
Everything is supposed to be organised around what his ex will let him have wrt the SC. And then for him to take the SC to visit his family. All this is always arranged without any discussion with me. I get told his plans and then asked what mine are. Because clearly we are not a family unit and it would be ridiculous for him to plan Christmas with his wife.
A side effect of this is that I cannot actually make any plans of my own because my husband will kick up a fuss if they don’t make me and our DS available to him for his family purposes. It’s like DS is just a prop and my role is to ensure he’s available whenever it suits his father.
This year I told my H that actually I have plans for Christmas Eve so none of us are available as props and stage managers now that he’s got his ex to let him have Christmas Eve with the SC. And he was awful. Clearly I am not part of the family but it’s not ok if I make my own plans either. I should just be sitting waiting for when I’m convenient to him and his actual family.
So that’s depressing and infuriating. I mean, it is much better if he takes the SC to visit his mother from 26-28 December because his mother is possibly the least pleasant person I’ve ever met (and she plays favourites with her grandchildren). But having it made utterly obvious that I’m not actually part of his idea of ‘family’ (unless it suits him to demand that I do something) is never fun.
Nor is the ‘making it fair for the SC’ thing ever fun at all. ‘Fair’ meaning they get much more than anyone else, and then much more from their family too.
I never enjoy giving them presents because their parents have allowed them to have a hideous attitude about it. Nothing is ever good enough for either of them and they’re never grateful for anything. No. They just complain about how it’s not good enough. And their father makes excuses. This doesn’t just happen at Christmas (yesterday SS’s response to being taken to softplay was to bitch and moan that it was a softplay he’d been to before and he wanted a new one; and his father basically started making excuses to explain why he’d booked this clearly inferior one rather than telling his son that he should be polite and thankful that he is being taken to softplay at all). The thing that makes it worse at Christmas is the context of the whole ‘making it fair’ so they get loads more and then the other kids get to see them complain it’s not good enough.
And then there’s Christmas dinner. Loads of work and then they’re a misery to eat with. There is never anything remotely celebratory about a meal with my SC.
It’s all a DH problem. He could treat me better. He could exercise some parental authority. He could teach his children not to be ungrateful and horrible about things. But he doesn’t. And their mother doesn’t either (because she thinks that’s a reasonable way to behave about everything - she’s teaching them that it’s always about what you can get from people and that nothing is ever enough).
(And for the evil SM bingo: no. When I met them as young children, I did not think that their mother would actually do the opposite of teaching them manners or that their father would be too lazy and guilt ridden to parent them. I thought it was very little children in the process of learning and a period of change for them, which would be a temporary blip. It just didn’t occur to me that their mother has such abhorrent values or that he would choose to have a relationship, never mind children, with someone who would actually teach her children to be hugely demanding and to make it clear that nothing is ever good enough for them.)