“My Boyfriend Moved in With Me and My Kids But Isn’t Ready to be a Stepdad”
A month later I unexpectedly got pregnant and but lost the pregnancy eight weeks later. Afterward, I found out my boyfriend was talking to women he doesn’t know on Snapchat. I forgave him for a stupid mistake and he’s done everything to prove that I’m more important. But since then, we’ve been going through a rough patch. He isn’t sure being a stepdad is what he wants in life. He says he doesn’t want biological children of his own, which I’m fine with; I don’t want any more children either.
We love each other very much, and two months of a limbo state of what’s happening in our relationship has been driving me crazy. He says he isn’t sure if we have a future. He misses his best friends, too. I told him that if he felt like he needed his own time that he could have it. We do everything together other than work and go to classes. But I don’t have many friends to do things with, so I can’t just go out, plus I have my children. I told him he can have his space if need be, but I’m not sure if that’s enough for him. I just don’t understand how he was always fine with the idea of our being a family, having talked about our plans for the future being marriage, and then it’s suddenly changing. I just need some unbiased advice. — Tired of This Limbo
When you say he was “always fine with the idea of our being a family,” how long is “always” really? You’ve been together only a year and a half, and he didn’t even know your children for the first six months (which is a good move, by the way). After six months, you introduced him to your oldest kid, so that’s a year — and you don’t say when you introduced your younger two children to him — just a year in which he even had a clue what being around your kids was like. When you look at the time that you’ve actually been living like a family — six months, the last three of which has been a “rough period” for your relationship — the time of living happily as a family is reduced even further. Basically, you all lived together three months before he expressed that maybe this lifestyle wasn’t for him after all. And those three months followed only a handful of months that he even knew your kids. When you look at it that way — when you look at the actual timeline of your relationship, the “always” part of always being “fine with the idea of us being a family,” isn’t very significant.
The truth is, he was fine with an IDEA, and when he began living the actual reality of life as a family with three young children, he realized he wasn’t so fine with it. I mean, the baseline we’re looking at here — how he felt about the idea wasn’t even great or excited or happy; he was “fine.” That was the baseline you started with. It’s really not such a big surprise that in three months’ time, he went from being “fine” with an idea to being unhappy with the lived reality. It’s not a surprise and it’s not confusing. He changed his mind. It happens ALL the time. People change their minds. They particularly change their minds about situations that are much harder than they had any idea they would be – situations like raising three young children.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of this bad news, but your relationship simply is not going to work out. No amount of love between you is going to change the fact that your boyfriend doesn’t want kids and isn’t ready — and may never be ready — to be a stepdad. You need to let him go. And in the future, you have to be much more protective of your children. To go from living with their father to living with another man in one year’s time has to be a little tumultuous. In the future, only move your children in with someone who has spent extensive time with them over the course of not a handful of months but rather a year or two at least. Don’t move your kids in with someone who has no experience with children, who does not fully understand the reality of raising children (either through raising his own children or through lots and lots of time with your children).
You need to end your relationship, and, rather than begin looking for a replacement partner, spend some time cultivating a relationship with yourself and building a circle of friends. It’s speaks volumes that you don’t have a friend you could call up to hang out with. That’s not healthy. We need friends. We each need a social life. We can’t depend on a romantic partner to meet all our social and emotional needs. For one thing, it puts a lot of pressure on you to find and accelerate a romantic partnership rather than let it take a slower, more organic pace. For another thing, you don’t have trusted individuals who care about you and your well-being acting as a sounding board and giving emotional support when you are making huge life decisions like moving your new-ish boyfriend in with your three young kids six months after finalizing your divorce and moving into your own place. A solid good friend would have/should have said, “Hey, maybe take another year to let this develop a little more, and let the fall-out from the divorce and the move settle a bit, at least for your kids.” You need that friend. You need that friend a whole hell of a lot more than you need a boyfriend. I hope, for your sake and for your kids’ sake, you will focus on finding and building that kind of relationship in your life.
***************
If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
LW1: Wendy’s advice is wise, and your boyfriend is wise, too, to realize that the reality of being a step-parent isn’t what he thought it would be, and to tell you honestly that it’s not for him. I’m sorry that it didn’t work out, but your relationship is effectively over. And I’ll also second Wendy’s advice to develop a circle of friends. Being utterly dependent on your partner for all companionship isn’t a healthy situation, and it doesn’t make for a healthy relationship.
LW2: I’d say there’s a good chance that Ally knows what’s going on, and has known for a long time. You always know when your partner’s heart is somewhere else. I don’t care how good an actor you are – she can tell. Prolonging this sham marriage is NOT A KINDNESS. And I think you know that, you just can’t bear the thought of admitting a terrible mistake and looking like the villain to your friends and family.
There are going to be consequences for the mistake you made in going through with the marriage, but you have no choice but to face them. The longer you wait, the worse it will be.
LW1 — Within 18 months, your kids have gone from living with their dad to living with some other dude they barely know. Break up with him, and don’t move in with anyone else for a long, long, long time.
LW2 — Wendy was kind in calling this a “heartbreaking mistake.” In my view, you’re extremely selfish. You KNEW what was going to happen; it wasn’t an accident. You’ve already caused irreversible damage. Spoiler alert: Anytime anyone says they “ended up” doing something, it’s clear that they aren’t taking responsibility for their actions. You didn’t “end up” kissing her. You made many conscious decisions in that direction and cheated on your (new!) wife. I hope “fragile” Ally takes you to the cleaners.
LW2: I don’t buy that you are afraid to hurt other people, your wife, your families. You are afraid to hurt yourself. You may not love your wife but I strongly doubt that you would start a serious relationship and get engaged to a woman you don’t love. I am pretty sure that you love your wife. You redefined your marital relationship in a lukewarm relationship after you met the other woman.
And I would bet money that you are just the kind of guy who is afraid of intimacy. A man who falls in love with an other woman right before his wedding is just afraid of being committed. That is why, in my opinion, you stall when the time comes to be honest. The more intimate and committed you are to her, the more you want to escape and idealise someone else. But you don’t want really to break up with your wife.
All the compliments you say about your wife show that there is something strong here. And the sex: you both could work on it. Attraction is not something stable, I wouldn’t found a relationship solely on attraction.
But you went too far. Tell your wife the truth and get a divorce. Then start a therapy because I wouldn’t believe so much in your relationship with Anna. By the way, she is not that great: a woman who cheats on her fiance for months? A good person? You have lots in common, for sure, in the realm of honesty and loyalty.
LW2: By the way, don’t think your wife is so fragile that she couldn’t make it without you. She will be disgusted, hurt, but then she will be fine and will move on. You both don’t have kids, so it will be easier for her to move on. I hope for her she will find a man who respects her.
#LW 1 – Wendy is right. Your bf needs to see you and your kids as a package deal and he has to be excited that he gets a “four for 1 deal”. He’s not a failure or a bad person for realizing this reality isn’t for him. He tried, but he wasn’t being honest with himself. I think you getting pregnant was his wake up call that he’s on a path leading to a place he doesn’t want to go.
You need to ask him to move out, take time to heal and then focus your attention on your kids and developing a social life with other women. You had enough time to date – so you can join a book club, find a club, take a class, something that gets you out of the house and meeting people that you don’t want to marry.
LW2 I think you’d benefit from reading “Surviving an Affair,” by Willard F Harley Jr. You need to understand that you are getting a lot out of your marriage that you take for granted and then you are getting something out of the affair. You’ve never been in a relationship with just Anna. Anna has been the forbidden woman on the side. So far you’ve never needed to do basic, mundane things with Anna like take out the trash, pay the bills, figure out where to live. Anna has been fun without commitments or responsibilities. Most relationships that begin as an affair don’t last long after the primary relationship ends. The affair can’t handle real life. Just know that as a fact of life.
The most likely outcome of people finding out you had an affair is that they will hate Anna. They will never like her and at most grudgingly accept her in your life. They will always compare her to Ally and she will always be less because she’s a woman who likes affairs. What’s the one thing you know beyond a doubt about Anna, besides the chemistry? You know she cheats. You know she isn’t trustworthy. She knows the same thing about you. You both know you can’t trust the other. That’s some foundation for a lasting relationship.
Let Ally go because she deserves far better than you but don’t expect much of any happiness to come from your relationship with Anna. Ally deserves more happiness than she will ever experience with you. She deserves someone who is honest and loyal and devoted to her. She deserves someone who loves her and has her back.
Geez LW2, what a weak and pathetic person you are. You stayed with and married a woman you weren’t attracted to, because your friends thought you should? You “ended up” sleeping with a co-worker? Whoops! It must have slipped in there! I hope you are truly ashamed of yourself, for having cheated Ally out of YEARS (SEVEN YEARS!) of her life where she could have been with someone who truly made her toes curl. Years where she might have found a true and honest person, and not wasted any potential fertility. Instead here she is, wasting time with someone who only married her because he cared so much about the opinion of his college buddies, who doesn’t even give her a satisfying sex life. Weak. Pathetic.
LW2 You write as if you are a passive participant in your own life. You base personal decisions on things like your friends think she’s great and more superficial things like she’s more beautiful than you are good looking. You seem to have no inner core where you make serious decisions based on your own thoughts and feelings and conscience. The way you tell it things just happen to you and you let them happen. You take no ownership in your own actions and choices. You sound like someone who needs to grow up. Needs to take responsibility for their own actions and decisions. Needs to learn to be alone before being in a relationship. Needs to figure out what they need in a relationship.
It probably is no coincidence that you found your wife’s replacement just before marrying your wife. Now you have an out from a relationship you claim you never wanted that much. I doubt you are trying to save your wife and your family from pain. You’re trying to save your own face. You don’t want to look bad and you don’t want to hear what they will all think of you. They won’t like you. They will be shocked to see who you really are. They will be stunned that you could be you. They won’t like you and they will hate Anna and they will hate the two of you together. Your bliss will be very short lived. Anna will be hurt and angry that your family and friends don’t love her and accept her like they love and accept Ally. Anna’s family could easily feel the same about you if they realize you were in an affair. The world will hate you and you know it. That’s the pain you don’t want to face.
” … we went through with the wedding, having a great day with our friends and family.”
This quote just struck me … He seemed to think about the wedding as a day, not a lifetime … Very strange … Clueless really …
LW, BIRTH CONTROL PLEASE. I’m not sure why we read about so many “unexpected” pregnancies here when we’ve worked hard to make reproductive choice easier, but please take care to avoid having the fourth child you say you don’t want.
LW: he doesn’t want to be a stepdad. You should encourage him to find a new place to live. Make friends because you need a community of supportive people around you. Even if it’s other moms or parents that you take turn watching the kids with. I commend you for waiting six months to introduce your bf, but he moved in too fast after that. Be careful with your children. They need more time to acclimate. They need stability.
Sometimes ideas are appealing — but Reality proves decidedly less so,
Yep!