I've been married for 3 years and my husband has two kids from a previous marriage. The kids are great and I get along with them. As they are getting older; him and his ex wife decided it would be a good idea to have a little more "family" time with the kids. This started about two years ago and at first he would go to her house and they would sit down and have dinner together.
I had asked him if I could go and he said they decided it was going to just be mom and dad. It was only happening about once a month or two and I know the kids liked it.
Now that lock downs are over they take the kids out to eat. I've been getting upset for being excluded from this all together. I even asked if I was considered part of the family. He said yeah I am but him and his ex want to do this for the kids and with the kids exclusively. The other week I read a post from a woman who went on vacation with her SO's exwife's husband.
This gave me the idea to try something similar. The only problem is that his exwife isn't remarried or seeing anyone at the moment. I still have an ex that is on my social media. My husband knows and knows that we rarely if ever communicate with each other. He's a single dad and the most we ever interact is the like pictures of each other's kids.
This past weekend my husband and ex wife had late lunch plans and an activity with the kids planned. I asked again if I could join and the answer was no. So I contacted my ex bf and asked if he could meet me for a meal around the same time they were doing "family time". He found a sitter and agreed to meet me. We basically caught up with each other and was nothing that was romantic at all.
I thanked him for meeting me and I let him know why I invited him to have a late lunch and dinner. We laughed and that was the end of it. Later that evening my husband came home with the kids. He told me everything they did and asked what I ended up doing. I told him I met my ex for a late lunch and just caught up. He was furious and threw a fit. He told me that seeing an ex like that was
adisrespectful.
I asked if he trusted me and he said yes he does. Then I told him that I always have to trust you when you're with your ex. He said that was different and that he's okay with me catching up but wanted to be there with us. I then let him know that I'm not playing the what's good for me is not good for thee.
That as long as I am not invited then I'll do what I want with who I want and he'll have to show the same trust that I am showing him. He then said that he understood and that he'll have to talk this over with his ex. I told him that he needs to grow a spine then and that was that. It's not up to his ex if I am part of the family or not.
I'm getting tired of being the step mom and the bio parents just think I can be excluded. Well, this works both ways and I am part of this family and need to be treated as such and if he thinks I just need to sit back and trust him and he doesn't have to do the same, then he's mistaken.
It seems to be okay that I wash the kids clothes, cook dinners and help with homework. What's good for me is not good for thee is no more here.
Yesterday I posted about my husband going out with his ex wife and doing family time with her and the kids. This happened over the weekend and I, in petty retaliation, decided to have a late lunch with my ex bf.
Of course my husband and I have argued for days over this. I
I'mwasn't budging and feel like I wasn't being treated as part of the family. It's completely unfair that I'm expected to help out with the kids like I'm some sort of servant to them and not be included elsewhere in their lives. I was fed up and wasn't having it anymore. This has been going on for a couple of years.
So here's the update. He invited his father over for dinner last night. We all eat and talk and just have a nice time. My husband brings this up to his dad, thinking my father in law is going to scold me or something. Wow, my father in law laid into my husband.
He told him the day he decided to put a ring on my finger that I was part of the family. That his loyalties need to be with me first. Of course his kids are a priority but he's not a family with his ex wife and he can't have two families. The only men he ever heard of having two families were the ones who messed around on their wives and did have two families.
He said that he needs to be a man and make sure that he's always protecting his wife, he should cherish me and never let me feel like I'm not wanted. He told him it was selfish of him to even walk a line in which he had two wives and that marriage doesn't work like that.
That I'm the one who's going to be there to change his adult diaper and clean up after him when we're old. He also laid into him for not respecting my position in his life and in the family and that I'm a great woman for even putting up with all of this for as long as I have. He then told me that ex lovers don't belong in a marriage and that I should not have done that but understands why I did though.
He also said that I need to make it clear to that gentleman that this will never happen again and apologize to him. He turned to his son and said that goes for him too. That he needs to make it clear to his ex wife that they are not together and while they are the kids mom that he's with me and me not joining them is not going to happen anymore.
He told his son that if that can't happen then I need to leave him and find someone who will be with me the way a woman deserves. That he needs to not be involved with another woman then and focus on the relationship with his ex wife and kids.
My husband and I were speechless. My father in law got up and left and said that we have some things to discuss that's between a husband and wife. My husband walked him out and a little while later came in. He apologized to me and said he's going to make this right.