Just more resentment
I don't know what to think anymore. I am really trying to be happy with SO, but the truth is that I'm not. And I believe that while he can fix it, he won't. Reflecting on it now, I think that because I came out of such a dysfunctional relationship, I saw SO as being such a catch, I did for a moment believe he was The One.
Currently, we are due to take a trip to his hometown with all of the children. So SS6 is here and has been here since last week. I'm not sure why SO insists on getting him when he knows that we both work, and he does not pay a babysitter to watch skids. SS16 is still in boxing, and now has a summer youth job. So he is limited in how much he can help (and has admitted to me he doesn't want to watch younger skids and I don't blame him). And just as a reminder, SO works Monday through Wednesday evening and overnight Thursdays and Fridays (he's doing the overnight now).
As for me, I am now working 9-5 and get home around 6, just to have to deal now with SS6. Other skids are now able to see their mom, so they are with her this weekend until Sunday. So now SS6 tonight took over an hour to go to sleep because he was crying that I gave him a bedtime, 10pm. He wasn't outright crying, he was trying to cry silently. I felt bad for him, but I also felt resentful that it wasn't SO who was dealing with it. That he gets to go to work tonight, come out tomorrow and go to the gym. That he always gets to be the laid back, cool, calm and collected person, while I'm always tense and upset. And I don't know what to call it, but I feel as if he's trying to manipulate me, even though he's superficially helpful.
For example, tomorrow he will come home and go to sleep during the day while I try my best to keep DD1 out of the room and keep SS6 entertained. But I could also choose to leave and he won't fight with me about it, but I know he'll feel bad, so I just don't do it. Because I don't want to be "the bad guy".
I can't look back on everything now. We have DD1 together and I am really trying to do what I believe is best for her. But sometimes I don't know what that "best" is. I have many issues with SO, and one of them is that I feel we no longer have a personal life together. We don't go on dates. He doesn't surprise me. Our intimacy, since we had DD has decreased to a frequency of maybe twice monthly. Cosleeping is probably part of it, but that's also because we have a 2 bedroom apartment and I'm not going to put her in the boys' room. Plus he won't help me train her to sleep in the crib.
He's pretty much the one who does a lot of the cleaning in the sense of mopping and sweeping. I just don't do it because I feel helpless. I feel like no matter how much I clean or if I try to buy stuff for the apartment, the boys are just going to dirty/damage/use it up anyway. So why do it? I clean up after myself and DD1. I refuse to clean up after an 11 year old and 16 year old. It's constantly a fight when I come home from work and I see dirty dishes and glasses in all of the rooms and on all of the furniture. Of course each of them blame it on the other and it's a struggle to get someone to do it.
My birthday came and went last month. SO told me he'd get us a weekend getaway trip. Still hasn't happened. Didn't even bother to have the kids make me breakfast. Meanwhile I try my best to make his and the boys' birthday as special as I can. His life is so busy with working, the gym and his kids, that I feel like it doesn't leave us with much time for each other. I barely see him. I forget sometimes what was so attractive about him to me.
And I wonder if I should sacrifice my own desire to have that companionship so that DD can have an intact family experience. Or would it be better if I showed her that it's okay for sometimes relationships not to work out. I think we could have an amicable split. I don't think he is a bad father to her, even though I do resent that I pick up the bigger financial portion of responsibility for her. It's almost like because I have a career and work I get penalized for it. He gives BM2 100 dollars weekly for child support. And he pays for SS16's boxing membership, plus boxing trunks that have to have initials, and the "necessary" 200 dollar boxing sneakers with the special mouthguard to match. I'm here busting my ass trying to move us all out of a small apartment into a house, and he's just stuck in the moment, not prioritizing, not planning, just existing.
While I get to pick up the pieces. I was thinking to myself that they all benefit from me being here, but I don't feel that I do. The best it gets for me is that I can leave to work super early without having to drop DD1 off anywhere at 5am....otherwise I miss living alone. I miss coming home to an empty house without so many needy people. I miss coming home and everything is exactly where I left it. I miss wanting to decorate a place, and make a place feel like home. I miss buying food and it's still there when I get home from work. I miss feeling secure and knowing that no one was going through my stuff. I miss actually wanting to come home.
I wonder sometimes if I should just wait it out until they grow up, but I don't know if the pros outweigh the cons. That's a nice chunk out of my time. And then I wonder if this is just a phase, and if it could get better. SO says he's working on trying to switch to 9-5 again but I don't even know if that's the thing to save us. There's just so many layers and dynamics to the brokenness we are right now. Or maybe it's just having a toddler around, I'm not sure what to think anymore. I just know that if I knew then what I knew now, I wouldn't be here.
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Comments
Based on what you have
Based on what you have described you are a nanny and servant to this guy with no thanks in return
It's time to leave this crap
Take your daughter and your self respect and walk out the door
Be the mother she deserves
Thanks for the response
Thanks for the response ladies. These feelings are not new to me. I have let him know how I feel about everything all the time. Even last night, after I got off here, I spoke to him. He said that he thinks he will never make me happy. That I usually have something going on to complain about. I admitted this may be true, but some of the issues we had with the kids we don't have now (SS16 used to be so manipulative, and he's actually easier to relate to now that he's a little older). When I told him I don't look forward to coming home because there is a always a mess or drama I don't want to deal with, his response was basically that he couldn't leave his kids.
I give him credit for trying after I speak to him. He tries, he's just not consistent so you never see the results. And sometimes I wish he could just see things for himself instead of me pointing everything out to him. Unless I point out to him the issues, he never seems to know what is going on and that its affecting me in a negative way. He won't call the boys daily to make sure they are doing what they should. He will come home in the middle of the night and clean the dishes in the sink the boys left, but he won't be consistent in teaching them that being the level of dirty they are is wrong.
He will make an effort to "spend time" with me for a day or two (by asking me to stay up later to watch a movie) but then the following weekend will go back to being 90 percent Dad and 10 percent into himself. And the guy has no problem with doing that. He's a peaceful guy and he tries to keep the peace. It's me that has the issue with it. If I were honest, I would say that I'm grateful he's not a deadbeat dad, I'm grateful he's not an abuser but now I just want more. And I feel like I take on my responsibilities as I should with DD but he doesn't do that with the boys. I couldn't imagine getting my DD to visit and assuming my SO (assuming I was with someone else) would take care of her. But he does that to me and he thinks it should be okay because we are in a relationship together. If he was able to be thoughtful of me, maybe I would not feel resentment in feeling like I'm helping so much. But this is the guy who thinks that because he cleans up messes his kids make when he gets home at 1am from work while the house stood dirty all day, he's being thoughtful of me.
And Sueu2, to your point of the twice monthly thing, he doesn't hang out, he's very into the gym (won bodybuilding trophies in his 20s), he's not a secretive person so his phone is always out and accessible and he's not a big computer person. He's with DD until 1pm daily then he goes to the gym then he goes to work. He is very into his phone with CNN and he follows politics closely (meaning he's always listening to CNN on speaker on his phone all the time at home). Just kinda hard to get in the mood to do anything when he's more interested in politics and insists on talking to me either about the kids, politics, or the workout he had that day. I don't believe he's cheating, it's just who he is or should I say who he has become. Because believe you me, he wasn't that way in the beginning. Our dynamic changed when I was a few months along with my daughter and it never really recovered from that. I won't be naive and say it's impossible, but I don't believe he is. I just don't know how to fix this. I sometimes think that if I shut my mouth, grin and bear it that maybe then I'll look attractive to him. But for the life of me, I am not that person. So I use my words. I speak. I vent. I'm honest with him about it all. Even in the beginning, I told him that I did not want to end up taking care of someone else's kids. That I positively knew that I would never love them like my own because I didn't know what having my own was. And he accepted me. But then he changed his work schedule and I'm in a completely different space than we were when we met. And obviously he lost interest, because here we are at twice a month.
All of the things I mentioned just now are things he would use as defenses to why he's a good partner (doesn't hang out, no bad habits, all about his family, etc etc). He also does try when he gets home sometimes but he gets in bed around 1am M-W, and I need to get up at 5am, so he's stopped trying to wake me up for the most part. But I feel like there's more to it than just coming home when you should and not cheating. I still want to have an actual life with someone that has nothing to do with kids, not his or mine. You know, like a date night once every 2 weeks or something crazy like that.
I want kids to be held accountable for cleaning after themselves and their performance in school. I could go on and on. I'm just tired.
Aw, honey. I have felt how
Aw, honey. I have felt how you feel, and I have a great DH and a great DD... but sometimes I am frustrated and unhappy about my life and I feel like all I am is someone to do the chores. Like a workhorse, unimportant, no time to be a person.
I am sure that you have a LOT more stress in your life than I do with the space considerations and the number of stepkids - and their ages.
I do have good advice, but it's very difficult to follow.
Stop. Stop taking care of everyone. Take care of yourself, and DD1 (but expect DH to do a lot as well, and accept it if his way isn't very good).
Seriously. You're making yourself invisible in your own life. But YOU come first, truly.
I'll tell you some practical ways I have done things differently for myself.
1. I go to bed very early. I resent the h3ll out of not having much of a personal life, but I feel so good when I start the day feeling half-way decent. Huge burst of positivity to start the day without dragging.
2. When I see things that need to be done, I write it down. I give the list to DH. Then I tell him all the other things as I think about them. I enjoy how frustrated he gets that he can't seem to get any one thing done because there are 6 billion things to be done and more if he looks around. Ha! Take that, DH, now you know how it is in my head!!! Then I enjoy a cup of tea and decide what is *really* important on that list to do when I am done my tea.
3. I think of ways I can make 'routines' out of regular chores. For example, at night I make sure the cat has food and water, put the wash on delay so that it's done when I get up, while I'm in the storage room I scoop the cat litter, right now I also bring DD to the toilet as she no longer wears pull-ups at night. Mornings I pee, put the oatmeal in the microwave, and put the laundry in the dryer, then check that the cat still has food and water before I get dressed (all the while reminding DD that yes, she can indeed get dressed by herself).
4. I make sure I have at least 2-3 hours every single day where I don't have to be doing anything else. If I do yoga, I practice being in the moment. If I am on ST, I don't also think about having to make the tea or do the mealplanning, etc. When I am playing with DD, I don't think about how much I'd rather be reading a book or watching TV (even though I am very tired of playing 'baby').
Once you really push through the initial discomfort of putting yourself first, you will give yourself space for more of yourself to come through. Maybe leaving is indeed the very best choice for you. Or maybe things will settle into a rhythm you are ok with once you no longer try to be and do so much for others.
This reminds me a little if
This reminds me a little if my dh when the kids were younger. He worked out of town often. So of course I was home working full time, at home by myself with 4 kids, one of which was his skid whom we had full time and due to skids behavioral issues was more work than the other 3 put together, I just schlepped along raising his kid for him because he was out working, and eventually was deployed for a whole year while I kept ss. He always told me he appreciated me, but also that he would do the same if situations were reversed. The problem was the situation was never reversed ever. I look back now and almost find it laughable to think he would have worked full time and parented 4 little kids by himself, including a skid with behavioral issues. He might have tried but it would never have lasted.
His schedule is not working for you nor your marriage or family. I agree the skids should not be there if he is not. When his kids are there he needs to take some responsibility for them and make sure they are completing chores and doing what they need to be doing. He needs to make time for your marriage. Regular dates. His oldest kid is old enough to watch the younger ones occasionally. Sorry if he doesn't want to but that's life. Does he realize u r thinking of ending things. My guess is that he is unaware of how close he is to losing you (even though I know you've tried to tell him).
Yes, I keep checking back in
Yes, I keep checking back in too! I agree that he's selfish, but I think she's enabling him. I hope she stops doing that, starts putting herself first, and then I'm curious about what might happen next! Anything's possible when you know you're wonderful.