in

England

I need advice! Should I leave my partner?! Please please read!

My partner and I have been together for 3 years, we have a 6 month old baby boy and he had a daughter with a previous partner.

My partner and I get along, on the occasion we have a laugh, if we go out together which we haven’t much in a while we enjoy or time however ever since being with my partner I’ve noticed my life going downhill. I had a career on the way, I was motivated, happy, so much to look forward to, no drama, no issues, my life was literally perfection. Even when him and I were good, now I think about it, my life had had an issue every month.

At the start for the first year it was issues with his baby mum, ruining our plans, causing arguments, giving him his daughter on days he hadn’t agreed out of the blue and just leaving her daughter with one of his family members without telling him so he had no choice to pick her up until he finds out on the day (therefore ruining our plans bearing in mind we were in a very fresh relationship) I put up with this until I told him you need to put your foot down and there needs to be boundaries because she is controlling your life and I’m scared to put the effort into making any plans with you anymore because I don’t know if they’ll even happen. You can imagine how excited I am to go out on a date with this new guy I’ve been seeing and we get ready and put deposits down on reservations for him to get a call from his family when all he wants to do is enjoy his time and of course make everyone happy however he never dealt with it well and we argued.

The first year I fed his daughter, bought her all he clothes, bathed her, planned and paid for days out however I didn’t do this for anything in return yet I do expect to have respect in the fact that our time is our time and your ex is quite clearly doing this to ruin our time. These issues took a while to fix.

Second year, his daughter who is 3 at the time, started to act out. As kids do. However, there was 0 discipline. I tried to discipline her myself which he had no issues with however he never got involved until I sat there to myself and thought, why am I the one doing this. Her mother was clearly not putting the work in and I can’t really explain how I could tell this, but I just could. It got really out of hand and I tried to communicate this with him, yet he did nothing. She would have tantrums if she didn’t get what she wanted, she would go in other rooms and wee on the carpet, yes, normal kid things however as long as I saw some discipline here, I wouldn’t of cared but there was 0 and this continued for a year. We had her every other weekend and my partner would come home after picking her up on a Friday already in a bad mood either from work or from all the driving and the whole weekend would be constant issues so we would argue so by the time it got to his and I weekend alone, we wouldn’t of really been out of our rut yet from the previous weekend.

Third year, this is when everything really got bad. I fell pregnant, our relationship at the time was a little spotty however as I mentioned before he is a semi what decent guy, we do get along and we can be good together and in my mind I thought as his daughter is so young this will pass and his ex will get over it and hopefully he will step up at some point and be a better father. In my mind I’m thinking will I really abort this baby just because of “what I thought at the time” a temporary phase of life when I’ve always wanted a baby since I was 14!!

We went back and forth deciding on to keep the baby or not as I was so unsure if this was the right thing to do at the time but I felt my baby was sent to me for a reason and we went ahead. I discussed with my partner all the things required, what I’ll need from his as support and what I expect after the baby however he was absolutely terrible. I did all the baby shopping on my own, I had to fend for myself, he rarely ever discussed the fact I was pregnant, didn’t go shopping with me, it was like everytime I got home from work where everyone would speak to me about my pregnancy every single day, I’d walk through my house doors and I had to just pretend I wasn’t pregnant almost. He was so unbothered and uninterested. It was so depressing. I brought this up to him so so so many times and it would only cause arguments and he’d ask my why I had to keep talking about it. He wasnt involved at all.

Moving onto having the baby, my agreement was after I had the baby I’d have our home to myself for 2 weeks. Usually his daughter comes here for the weekend but my baby was in the NICU and was under strict instructions to not be allowed around any children. Ontop of that, I never wanted visitors or people over within the first month anyway as I wanted to enjoy my little bubble and just take the being a new mother. I said to him he could go and see his child if he wanted to within the 2 weeks or have her over at your dad’s, anything. He said it’s fine, he will stay with me for the 2 weeks and will see her after as I had also had a c-section and could barely move.

5 days after I was out the hospital on a Friday, my partner says “you do realise I have to go today right” I said “what”??? Long story short he got up and fucked off on a Friday with 2 hours notice and left me on my own with no food, no arrangements for anyone to come and help me as I could still bearly pick up my baby and just got up and left. That weekend I was supposed to do some food shopping online and sort out my home whilst he helped me with our son because we had literally 0 food and I was breastfeeding. This didn’t happen as he left me alone. The day after I texted him 100 times called him over and over again as my son had weed all over the bed during a nappy change and I couldn’t change the bed myself. I begged him to come home for an hour, he ignored me. We were never the same since that day. He then went back to work on the Monday, so he ended up only being off for a week and only “helping” me for 5 days.

As a side note, when I found out I was pregnant I said if he can’t start to discipline his daughter or make any effort to control the environment considering this is my home to, we can’t be together on the weekends you have her. I said I can’t be dealing with this freshly postpartum because you won’t be able to support me this way. She goes to bed at like 9-10 o’clock and she has to have the tv on all day. I said to my partner, I work 6 days a week and I can’t even come home and watch a programme whilst she plays, bearing in mind it got to the point I was heavily pregnant and couldn’t go anywhere and couldn’t even watch tv in my own home, he responds “what else is she supposed to do” as you can imagine everything got worse during my pregnancy. I honestly didn’t expect it to escalate this far. I asked for him to have some discipline and a better bedtime for your daughter as there is no schedule. This didn’t happen. We now separate every 2 weekends whilst he goes to his dads.

The first 4 months of my son’s life it was like he didn’t even exist to him. He wouldn’t even acknowledge he was in the room. Fast forward to today he gets home every single day after our son his asleep as he’s working late because he wakes up when he wants and goes to work when he wants. He could easily get home for 5-6 but he doesn’t. It’s 7-8. My baby goes to sleep at 7. All around he sees his son probably 4 days a month. I’ve done this all on my own. He hasn’t supported me at all. No feeds, nappy changes, baths or bedtime. He never sees him.

Ontop of this I’ve still had to pay all the bills and take money out my savings to pay our rent as he had a massive job drop out (he’s self employed carpenter) however he was supposed to start saving for emergencies as soon as he found out I was pregnant but when this job dropped off 2 months before I gave birth, he admitted he hadn’t saved, therefore we had no income for about 3-4 months. On a good month he earns 3x as much as I do when I’m working (as I’m currently on leave) get I’ve still had to provide.

He’s turned into a monster.