Don’t want stepson all the time

[Sky1248]

I want to see if I’m being unreasonable at all and all comments are greatly welcomed!

I have been with my partner for nearly 7 years and when I first met my step son he was just turning 2! He was always very clingy to his dad and I always tried which sometimes I loved having him and sometimes I dreaded it!

we now have a 3 year old and 9 month old together and sometimes I appreciate the times it’s just me my husband and my kids however my husband is saying he wants our stepson included in everything and wants to invite him to absolutely everything! Even my 30th meal I said don’t worry about inviting him as he’s quite rude to my family that were coming but my husband was adamant he wanted him to come.

i have no person issue with my step son I do find him a bit spoilt and he has such a better life with his mum always doing nice things so I don’t know why my husband always wants him with us.

am I unreasonable to say I sometimes want to do things without him and just our kids?

He only sees him twice for tea and EOW.

I'm not sure how to sugarcoat this but your lack of understanding for your DSS and DH is really shocking.

Blimey! What dramatics!

Parenting in the way that your child needs doesn’t punish the other kids, particularly in this example. They get to spend time with their sibling. That’s it.

Every other weekend and a couple of teatimes? That's it? Exactly how often do you think he should be seeing his son?

The rest of the time it is just you and your 2 kids.

And how often do your children see / speak to him?

Don’t get into a relationship with a man who has a child and then expect to be able to play happy families without that child!

If he’s integrated into family life then you are under estimating your own role in addressing his rudeness and is how I would approach this. Your dh is UR to expect you to have a role of responsibility but not embrace that standard manners towards your family are expected. Step parenting became challenging and unenjoyable for me when I was expected to do all the same parenting stuff as for my own children and yet have no say when the behavior was not appropriate, favoring emerged from dh due to guilt. You have dh problem I suspect. Even if all three children were jointly yours and your dh, it’s perfectly ok to not go everywhere together.

You realized early on in the relationship you didn't love spending time with this child yet decided to get married and have two more children with this man.At no point at the start of the relationship did you not think about possible scenarios and what would happen if DSS mum became ill or had a accident and he had to come and live with his Dad permanently or in fact if DSS and his mum just didn't get on. He only comes occasionally and it's clearly an issue let's home it doesn't increase.It was your responsibility when you realized being a step mum wasn't for you or at least not with this particular child to bow out of the relationship.

As for compensating for his dad leaving, well it can be a traumatic event and many adults are still dealing with the complications of growing up with separated and then blended families. Quite often the emotion that go along with parent leaving don't come out until the teen years even if it happened when they were much younger.

Could it possibly be that he misses his child? That he wants him to consider your family as his family too? It sounds like your DH is trying to be the best dad he can be in the circumstances. Perhaps he’s aware that he hasn’t made the best choice of second wife when it comes to his eldest child?

Or could it possibly be that you’re making little or no effort to hide your resentment towards this child’s presence in your home and your DH is trying to compensate for this by going out of his way to make him feel welcome?

Your DH feels the same way about his step son as you do about your own children.

YABVU.

How would you feel if one of your children were selected to be excluded from family events? If he said oh don’t bother inviting child 2 to my birthday we can celebrate without them?

Don’t marry someone with kids if you aren’t willing to be a step parent. It’s a horrible role in many ways - you have to be willing to parent and not parent and share parent and be open to the child treating you as a parent but also not wanting anything to do with you etc. because they didn’t sign up for any of this but you did. You knew about the child, and it was a mistake if you thought your husband would be a part time parent.

while your husband might not always have custody of his son he always IS his son. No more, but also no less, than his other kids. His eldest son should be every bit in his thoughts and planning as his other children.

And yes - the mental health and developmental impacts that can come from the stress of a parent leaving the home can have long term impacts. You do have to forever put up with that in a way. If he is exceptionally clingy then a calm discussion around getting the child mental health support might be appropriate. I do not recommend that being your response to your husband not seeing his kid as only a sometimes child.

You need to give up on this idea of “your real family” your step son is part of your family forever. Your default needs to be inviting him to everything, and assuming he’ll be part of family events. He may not attend everything - because that is the reality of living across multiple homes and multiple core families - but you should be planning for him to participate in significant family events. If you would be upset at your biological children skipping the event then it’s something you should plan around then for.

Even if you never really like him - you need to treat him as if he is loved (absent the usual caveats of advise and harm etc)

He's a member of your family so yes he needs to be included in everything. You didn't marry a single man, you married a man with a child. It shouldn't even be a conversation. He is part of the family, end of.

This. Yanbu.

Read what I quoted (and the post she quoted). That poster did make it clear that the OP and her children have to make it (their existence) up to the SS.

In any case, the problem here is the DH, who isn’t doing a great job of considering everyone’s needs.

He has 3 kids yes. But he chose to have them with two different women and that means his older child will not always be included in everything. That’s not nasty; it’s reality.

@Sky1248 I think you need to take some time to really figure out what is upsetting you here. It is so common for posters on MN to come on with a problem framed as the SC but it’s really all about the DH’s attitude and behaviour. A remarkable number of men do treat ‘2nd families’ as second class. And women on MN come on to say that’s exactly how it should be. 🙄

It can’t really be the couple if dinners in the week that’s the problem - what is making you feel like your husband cares about his younger children less? Why do you feel your children don’t get to have any fun?

That is the problem, not your stepson.

Gosh, you barely need to tolerate him at all! 2 meals a week and every other weekend?

And what do you mean your SS gets more attention on the facetime calls than anyone else? Who else would get attention when your DP facetimes his son??

He takes him to his football training Friday evenings, any matches on a Saturday and Sunday on his weekends so our other child don’t much time at all so the weekends we don’t have him I like it to be our kids so they can have attention

Also with the FaceTiming he really asks questions about what he’s been up to and anything he wants to talk about. With our kids he just doesn’t seem to be that engrossed in asking that much. I feel we are always second best

If you reframe these same details you can see that the problem isn’t your SS.

It’s that your husband has a favourite child and ignores the others.

"I have my kids now the original one is obsolete now"

You are being ridiculous

What a monster.
Presumably you see your children every day?

The reality is your dh has created his family and that consists of dss, you and your two dcs. So there are five of you in the family unit.

dss is only there for maybe 75 hours in every two weeks, but during those 75 hours he is as important a part of the family as you are.

This is how it will be for the next decade. The only way to make it work is to embrace it and be as committed to it as your dh is.

This cannot be real.

@Sky1248 can you put yourself in the position of only seeing your child a few days a fortnight? You'd want to fave time them occasionally too!

Wtf do you mean by "compensate"?

Your husband is his DAD. He needs to parent. This little boy was there first before you and your kids. Obviously he needs to be included in family occasions, he IS family that YOU chose to join. You really need to shift your perspective here, flower!

If he is rude then you speak to your DH 1:1 and ask him to deal with that.

Something tells me he isn't though, you quite clearly don't like him and think he's a burden on your otherwise perfect family. Ffs.

These threads always drive me nuts. I was the step child; my father remarried and had 4 more children. I initially visited for around half of every school holiday but there was no way I would have expected to go away on every holiday they had or attend every birthday meal. They went to Disney and Canada without me. It would never have occurred to me that I should have been invited.

I loved my step mum and her family. They are all lovely people. I got gifts at Christmas, but not like their own grandchildren because I had grandparents of my own; I was invited to all big events like weddings and funerals, but not every blinking birthday dinner.

So no, OP, I don't think you're being unreasonable to not want your stepson at YOUR birthday dinner.

I also don't think you are unreasonable to want to do things with just your own children now and again

Now and again? Apart from 2 tea times every 7 days and every other weekend, he doesn't have his own child!

I feel sorry for this kid. I hope your seething resentment doesn't shine through on his visits to his dad's home.