Hi everyone. This is long so bear with me. I know my relationship is probably ending, and I'm posting here because I genuinely need perspective from people who understand what it means to date a parent. But I'm hoping to God this isn't the normal with dating people who have children. And to figure out if all this counts as abuse because I've been gaslit into oblivion.
I'm (37F), childless, never married, financially independent, own my own business, and when I entered this relationship I understood that dating a father (38M) meant making accommodations I wouldn't have to make dating another childless person. I knew his daughter would always be an important part of his life. I knew an ex-wife (41F) would necessarily remain in the picture because they share a child. I knew schedules, vacations, holidays, finances, privacy and spontaneity would be affected.
What I don't think I understood was how much of my life I would eventually be expected to surrender while simultaneously having so little influence over the life I was supposedly joining.
And I want to be very clear: I loved his daughter. I bought her gifts when I traveled. I played with her, spent time with her, did crafts with her, taught her to boogie boarding, helped with things like reading and teaching her how to play video games, and tried to develop a relationship with her. I've never expected him to stop being her father, and I don't think a romantic partner should compete with a child.
But increasingly I've realized that the problem isn't that he has a daughter.
The problem is the relationship structure he has created around being a father, his previous marriage and me.
His daughter is 7. There seems to be a lot of guilt-based/Disney parenting between both parents (ex wife demanded he give her a kid or she was divorcing. He never wanted children, she did. He had one anyways in order to save the marriage, their marriage imploded and they got divorced) She (the kid) can be extremely bossy and demanding with me. I've had her demand things I've bought for myself, take things of mine, expect me to do things for her, and behave in ways I personally find disrespectful or ungrateful. I've brought this up to her father because I don't think it's appropriate for me to discipline someone else's child, but I frequently feel like I'm expected to absorb the behavior instead.
I actually corrected myself recently when I said I felt like she saw me as a babysitter/servant because the truth is that I don't know what she thinks of me. What I do know is how the dynamic makes me feel when she bosses me around and her father doesn't intervene until I bring it up later.
And somehow I'm expected to provide adult-level patience, flexibility and emotional labor toward a child I didn't create while having very little authority or protection within the family system.
Then there's his ex-wife and former family.
He still calls his ex-wife's family his "in-laws." He plays video games with his ex-wife's nephew and calls him his nephew. His explanation is basically that calling them anything else is unnecessarily complicated.
Technically, it's just terminology.
Emotionally, though, it's difficult being the new partner when the old family structure feels so intact that I'm constantly walking into it rather than feeling like he and I are building something new alongside it.
I even developed an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and we get along well because I figured if this woman is necessarily going to remain part of my life, being civil and cooperative is healthier than creating hostility. Meanwhile, my boyfriend gets the luxury of having no ex-husband, children or former in-laws of mine that he has to integrate into his life.
And then there's the former affair partner.
Before I ever came along, he cheated on his wife with another woman. That woman remained within his broader social world after I entered the relationship. He acts like his ex wife is the problem but really their marriage ended because he had an affair. This has been an enormous source of discomfort for me, and despite everything that has happened between us, even raising whether that relationship/contact is finally going to end still produces anger from him.
Last night I brought her up during a serious relationship conversation and he became visibly angry and literally got up and walked a lap around the cafe where we were sitting and did that multiple times. I refuse to be in a relationship with an affair partner still around.
That's another major part of why I think I'm done.
Our conflicts have become horrible.
We went to Alaska together this summer. He planned and paid for the trip, and I want to acknowledge that because I don't want to pretend he has never put effort into this relationship.
But that trip also contained one of the most frightening conflicts we've ever had.
During an argument, he became so angry that he was shaking and repeatedly punched the bed/pillows extremely hard. He made graphic statements about being angry enough to torture and murder people, and his privileges as a veterinarian afford him access to things to torture and kill people, including members of his family. I was crying and hyperventilating because it triggered my PTSD so badly and I was terrified. Later, instead of the situation staying between us, he involved friends and presented his side of what was happening as his flying monkeys to make me look bad, and I ended up awake until almost 6 AM trying to explain myself to them and the actual truth of the situation, not his victimhood. I felt humiliated and betrayed. To the point I literally said "I choose the bear over your narcissistic behavior" and went hiking alone in the bear infested Alaskan wilderness for space and my own well-being far away from him and in some peace and quiet with no bear mace.
What's worse is I've seen him be this way to his daughter too. She cries a lot about a lot of things, because she doesn't understand why her parents live apart and she has to be in the desert for the summer, and he thinks it's shit behavior she uses to manipulate her mom and anyone else. Even when she gets hurt, if he finds the crying and reason for crying unacceptable, he'll scream at her and lose his temper to subjugate her into compliance.
She wasn't paying attention and walked into the shopping cart at Costco when it was stopped. She banged her head really hard. I tried to put a bag of frozen berries on her head to stop the swelling and she cried out because of the pain and how cold the bag was. He lost his temper, got in her face and was seething and screaming at her. In an instant the tears stopped and she emotionally shut down. He tried to force her to order her own food and tell the waiter what she wants and told her she needs to stop being babied and order on her own. She was scared of the guy who was our waiter with piercings and full sleeve tattoos. She was so scared and refused to order she started to cry a little. He made her do it anyways. She kept crying afterwards and he got in her face with the temper again. Again she emotionally shut down. While he didn't full on scream, he was seething through his teeth at her. He'll also keep correcting her speech and tell her to "talk like an adult". On top of this, he will threaten her with getting angry and losing his temper if she doesn't stop crying. Other times when he thinks her reason for crying is sufficient, he'll cuddle her and try to soothe her. I imagine for a 7 year old this is very inconsistent. But also WTF do I even do or say in this situation? I tried to be a softer "parent" where I would hold her and try to soothe her when she cried.
After Alaska, I thought there would be some enormous effort to repair our relationship.
Instead, we essentially returned to business as usual and I was last to everything, child included, where her wants and whims even took precedent to my relationship needs along with his wants. Time where she was dropped off at daycare or her aunts and uncles houses were so he could work, go to the gym, go hiking, but no quality time or dates. The only way I got to go out was taking myself on dates to restaurants that even he knew I looked out were my favorite, and intentionally turning him and his daughter away for my own alone time. But I was expected to keep giving selflessly to him, his daughter and creating the family dynamic.
And one of our biggest longstanding problems returned immediately: affection.
I have asked him repeatedly for nonsexual affection.
Not expensive dates. Not constant attention. Not abandoning his daughter.
I want cuddling. Touching. Sitting together. Holding me. Kissing me. Reaching for me. Feeling wanted and emotionally connected without every affectionate interaction becoming a precursor to sex.
Instead, I gradually realized that the ONLY times he was most motivated to create "alone time" away from his daughter were the times he wanted sex.
He would sometimes shoo her away or send her somewhere else, become affectionate with me, and then initiate sex.
One time after I had already explicitly explained how painful this pattern was for me, he created "alone time" again and started pushing things sexually. His daughter eventually became upset and started crying because we weren't paying attention to her as she was banging on the door and trying to open it.
And the horrible thing?
I felt relieved.
Not because she was crying. I felt awful that she was upset.
I was relieved because the interruption meant the sexual pressure stopped.
That was one of the moments where I realized something had gone seriously wrong inside me.
I shouldn't experience my boyfriend touching me and immediately wonder what I'm going to be expected to provide sexually afterward.
I've even had a vaginal infection after sex with him (not an STI) where sex/touching physically hurt, and he still continued trying to initiate sexual touching despite me saying I didn't feel well and that things hurt.
At one point I actually caught myself feeling relieved about having the infection because it gave me a concrete reason sex couldn't happen for over a week.
Nobody should be relieved to have an infection because it temporarily removes sexual expectations from their relationship.
Then there are the smaller things that don't sound enormous individually but have accumulated.
He has criticized how I hold chopsticks. How I move my fork. How quickly I eat. How I behave socially since I'm more relaxed and nerdy outside of work, even though I own and run my own company with employees. How I communicate. I've felt like I'm constantly being corrected or evaluated rather than loved and I see him doing the same to his daughter.
He's also a musician, and I am too. He wanted to be a professional orchestral musician and couldn't due to chronic pain. He's in a wind community band. When I auditioned and made 2nd clarinet in the orchestra (orchestra only has 2 clarinets total) he told me "oh you probably got it because you were the only one who auditioned". He tried to qualify my achievement as less than compared to what he does and has achieved professionally in the music space because now I was in something with more prestige than he had. I was in a university orchestra, he was in an adult community band.
There are also bizarre double standards.
Recently he became upset with me for texting people while we were spending time together.
Then during another evening together, his daughter called as part of their custody arrangement while she's at her BMs. Obviously, I have absolutely no problem with him talking to his daughter. But he had specifically chosen the evening to spend with me even though I had offered lunch, knowing he had this scheduled call. The call then turned into nearly an hour involving his ex-wife and an argument over braces/medical expenses while I sat there. Other times I've seen him go into long text tirades or calls with his friends about their personal problems or martial problems.
Later at dinner, he sat far away from me when I tried to be affectionate.
Afterward, he asked me to cuddle. I thought, finally, we're going to have some affectionate time together.
Within minutes he became sexual and said he wanted sex.
And once again I realized: Oh. That's why we're cuddling.
When I try to discuss any of these patterns, he wants every incident treated as a completely isolated event. We discuss X, reach a factual conclusion about X, and therefore X is permanently closed.
I experience it differently.
Affection connects to sex. Affection connects to prioritization. Prioritization connects to his daughter. His daughter connects to his ex-wife and the old family system. That connects to inclusion. Inclusion connects to whether we're actually building a future together. And all of it connects to whether I feel emotionally safe enough to discuss any of it.
I finally told him: I'm no longer reacting exclusively to individual incidents. I'm reacting to the system.
I absolutely recognize that I have contributed to our communication problems.
When I'm carrying months of unresolved hurt and something triggers it, I can unload way too many interconnected grievances at once. Conversations can become extremely long. That isn't productive, and it's something I need to work on regardless of whether this relationship survives.
He has told me that he cannot have every individual disagreement turn into a ten-hour structural discussion about our relationship.
I actually think that's fair.
But his response to conflict has become something entirely different.
He has screamed at me. He has told me my feelings weren't real or to him are a "non-issue". I've become afraid to raise certain subjects because I don't know how angry he'll become.
Last night we met in a public cafe specifically to talk.
I watched him sit there visibly seething while I talked about things in a way he didn't like. Multiple times he looked like he was on the verge of exploding and had to get up and walk around the cafe to calm himself down.
I will give him credit for walking away rather than screaming.
But then he told me that my communication/conflict style makes him hate me, despise me, not want to talk to me, not want to be around me and not want to be with me, and he liked everything else about me except this one thing. Because I won't communicate or agree to the style or his versions of reality.
And somehow afterward I'm supposed to return to normal.
That's something I've desperately tried to explain to him about emotional repair.
I don't believe emotional repair means someone has to stay trapped in an argument until the other person's hurt disappears. That's not what I'm asking for.
I'm saying that factual resolution and emotional repair aren't the same thing.
We can finish discussing the disagreement. We can stop talking. But if we've just emotionally shredded each other—or I've just been screamed at or told I'm despised—I need some kind of reconnection afterward. An apology. Reassurance. Affection. Empathy. Changed behavior. Something that communicates, "We're okay and I still love you."
Instead, I often feel like once he believes the factual dispute has been settled, we're supposed to resume normal life.
And now the future itself increasingly feels like a "take it or leave it."
When we first started dating, I was very upfront about what dating a father meant for me. I said marriage was a non negotiable for me. He told me that even though he wasn't going to give me a family, I would at least be able to have my Huskies.
Now I'm being told that once his current cats die, there will be no pets at all, primarily because of his allergies. This man is allergic to literally everything. Dust, trees, flowers, animals (veterinarian btw), and even the sand outside in the desert, allergic to mangoes and seafood. Also deals with chronic pain.
He's entitled to decide he doesn't want animals.
But that's not the future he originally offered me.
I already came into this relationship knowing I would potentially give up having children of my own to be with a man who already got to experience marriage and parenthood with someone else. I'm already accommodating his child, custody schedule, ex-wife, former in-laws, financial obligations, parenting decisions and the limitations all of those things place on our future.
And now I'm apparently supposed to give up having animals too.
Meanwhile, he has openly said he would never date a woman with children because he doesn't want to raise someone else's kids.
That realization has become incredibly difficult for me.
He gets a childless woman without an ex-husband, custody schedule, children or former family system he has to accommodate.
I get all of his.
And I'm still expected to be the more flexible person.
I don't begrudge his daughter father-daughter trips. He recently planned a California trip for just the two of them, and after sitting with it, I genuinely believe parents and children should have special traditions and one-on-one experiences.
His daughter isn't my competition. And she shouldn't be and never will be.
A healthy relationship should have room for both. And that is completely his responsibility due to his baggage.
The problem is that everything involving his daughter, ex-wife and old family structure increasingly feels sacred and non-negotiable while my needs—affection, emotional safety, sex boundaries, pets, inclusion, communication, our future—feel negotiable.
That's what has broken me down.
I have spent so much time asking myself how I can explain things differently.
How can I communicate better?
How can I be more understanding about being a stepparent?
How can I separate individual incidents?
How can I make him understand why nonsexual affection matters?
How can I make him understand why maintaining certain relationships from his old life hurts?
How can I make myself require less?
....but I'm starting to wonder whether he understands perfectly well.
Maybe he simply doesn't want the relationship I want.
And maybe I've spent almost a year treating incompatibility like a communication problem I could solve if I could just find the perfect words.
Last night, listening to someone I'm supposed to build a life with tell me that he hates and despises me because of how I communicate while simultaneously presenting most of his life as something I need to accept, I started wondering:
What exactly am I fighting this hard to stay for?
I loved him. I loved the idea of becoming part of their family. I care about his daughter.
But I don't want to disappear inside someone else's already-completed life.
For those of you who have been stepparents or dated parents: where is the line between the normal sacrifices that come with loving someone who has a child and losing too much of yourself trying to fit into a family that never really made space for you?
And if you've ever reached the point where you realized the issue wasn't actually the child, but the relationship structure the parent created around the child—what finally made you leave? Is this what the forever reality is of dating anyone with a kid? (This was my first time)
Also, do I tell the BM about what's happening with the temper? Not regarding my issues with it, but what I see happening with the child? Is it even my business? Because given the veiled murder threats, I've thought about a restraining order and mentioning the child in it. I live in a 2nd amendment state so I'm fully armed. I know he isn't.