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?

But surely they are still part of your core family unit? Every child that you have is surely equally part of your family unit?

That's the bit I don't understand. I can't get my head round your children only being part of your family 'unit' on days they're with you.

@IncompleteSenten

i think your misunderstanding it,

if a mother has more than one child with more than one man to the likelihood is someone will always miss out on what their other sibling/parent is doing and that is life.

i went out the other week with my child’s dad and child.. my partner did not ring or talk to his eldest while we were there. he didn’t tell him a thing but there’s magnets and a key ring that he will have seen now and he’s not bothered . 2 weeks later we booked something else and we picked the step son up on his mums time and took him as a once in a blue moon situation..

I also don’t agree with always going to collect your child from their other parent in their time because it’s their time and they are with them for a reason.

@IncompleteSenten

i think you’re all taking it too far the poor woman has asked for a birthday with her birth family with the children she birthed and their dad. Im sorry but what fun is a meal to a child anyway. She isn’t asking for them to move to the opposite end of the country away from him. She’s asking for a tiny bit more time without him when he should be with his BIRTH mother anyway.

i adore my step son but I don’t want him to be at every event cause the dynamic changes and some times I just don’t want that.

although I am finding myself wanting him with us for days out more and more but this woman is not wrong. As a mother you do want time with just them and their dad

If your relationship were to break down, presumably you would want your husband to include your kids in his new life?

Could this be to compensate for you not being 100% warm? It's clear you don't want the step kid around and however much you think you might be hiding that it's probably poking through

she probably is the OW, he obviously feels extremely guilty, that is why. She may come back on and refute it but in general the stepmothers who have 'the hump' are the OWs and carry on the insecurity that made them an OW in the first place.

What???

That's not how things work.
I'm not naturally closer to my full siblings.
Why do you think looking like them even makes a difference? I actually look the most like my half sister who is a different race.

It wasn’t in the OP. It was in another post. It is there, and even if its a typo its quite telling.

Good point. Imagine it was a husband saying this about a mother’s child who was 50/50 between mum and ex. “I don’t want him/her coming to my birthday lunch” - absolutely pathetic behaviour.

I think people who behave like this have jealousy and insecurities around the previous relationship and can’t separate the child from the ex. These people who should not get involved with anyone who already has children.

This is how I feel. I’ve been married for ten years. DSS and his DM have been such a pain in the arse, so disruptive to my peaceful existence with their self induced drama and demands that I’ve had to step back for my own sanity.

i tolerate and am pleasant to DSS when I see him (although I keep a distance because he can get quite volatile and violent and I find if you don’t engage you don’t put yourself in the firing line). But if DH dropped dead I’d be quite happy not to see him again and I’d allow my own kids to make their own choice when they’re old enough to facilitate that contact themselves.

Your SS is part of your family whether you like it or not. Plenty of woman do what you’re doing, they come in as a SM but soon as they have their own DC they want not a lot to do with the SS. (Queue the good SM jump in to defend themselves) Your kids are just as important to your DH as his own son is and vice versa. He doesn’t have favourites but he hasn’t seen him daily so of course he will ask him what he’s been up to etc. If is behaviour bothers you speak to your DH about that instead of taking a dislike to the child

There’s a step child in our family ( not my step child, now an adult). We’ve always included him in meals for all our birthdays etc, it wouldn’t have occurred to us not to. This is your husbands child, yabu.

Complete inclusion in his father’s life is not compensation. It’s just having a father.

You were right first time. 'Our stepson' is in the OP and it is quite telling.

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!

but this event isn’t centered around his father. But his step mother.

Yeah and I posted upthread about the strange wording of a post where she said something like “ he is more bothered about my stepsons happiness over our kids” (paraphrasing here) but the key thing is she didn’t acknowledge in the statement her stepson was also his bio /first kid. It was like “my stepson” vs “our kids”.

I mean congratulations for your super detective work but that was basically the essence of the post.

The concept is he sees his kids rarely ( a few hours every fortnight!) so of course in that limited time he should be more focused on playing with them, making happy memories, asking them about their friends at schppp etc than worrying about if they have had eg. An extra biscuit or been a bit louder when playing their computer game. He's going to be more hot on discipline with his own kids as he’s (half) primarily responsible for their every day disciple and also those kids see him every day and get to play and fool around him every day to balance out the time he spends disciplining him.

Of course doesn’t meant to say if they, smacked someone over the head he should look the their way. As I said twice they are polite and nice kids so its clear it was fairly minor things.

Anyway, I said it’s understandable he wouldn’t discipline to the exact same degree so not sure where you got out of that don’t discipline at all .

And just to add it’s probably also a bit like how a Grandparent or Aunty/Uncle who see their granchild/nephew every month for a few hours will likely discipline differently (more leniently) to a grandparent whose grandkids lives with them full-time. The relationship has different dynamics and priorities.

My friend is unfortunately that kind of person to be overly defensive about her own kids, so I wasn’t surprised to hear her worry about minor things like that when not bothering about the fact her partner doesn’t see (or financially support) his eldest kids much. She’d be absolutely furious if it was the other way around and her kids were getting such little quality time and effort from their own father.

His eldest kids getting let off for minor things will do little or nothing to address the imbalance their set up has created with one set of kids getting the vast majority of time and attention from their Dad. Her kids are better off and she knows it.

It makes sense to exclude him on the basis that it’s an adults only event, but not on the basis that children are included, but he is excluded from that part of his father’s and half siblings’ family.

I don’t really get your sarcasm or what your point is. The essence of what post?

If you mean the post I was responding to yes I know that’s what they were saying, and I was agreeing with them and sharing a similar sentiment I’d noticed based on another post the OP has used .

Or if you mean the essence of OPs post, well..still, I was still agreeing with what those two posters had pointed out.

What’s the problem? Why call it “super detective work”??

He's a decent father then, a really involved Dad with his child.
My daughter's dad is the opposite and he and his wife have ensured my children are not a part of their family which has left a damaged relationship. Here you are with a parent who genuinely wants to be involved and you want that time reduced.
I think you are being massively unreasonable and were the tables turned you'd be furious if your husband dumped your kids and moved on

A big factor is that OP likely cant exclude her children, because she doesn’t have other childcare. But her DSS is with his Mum anyway.

All those who can’t open their mind to another POV wouldn’t last two seconds as SP. Don’t judge what you don’t and can’t understand.

From the OP where she refers to ‘our stepson’ the issue is that she actively wants to do things without him.

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

To be fair, some activities aren’t suitable for that spread of ages, and some threads involve the partner expecting to do step parent facilitated family things when their child is staying, and have a weekend off child care when they aren’t.

However that hasn’t been mentioned here - just annoyance at the level of the father’s involvement with his son.