I love him but I cant carry on!

I love my boyfriend so so much we have one child together and he has another from a previous relationship, who causes nothing but trouble between her and her mother. This is one of the reasons for our arguments but lately he is just never home, his daughter refuses to come round our house so he takes her out 3 evenings a week which really upsets my son and me also. So that leaves 4 evenings free to which he then plays golf and goes fishing, I usually see him for an hour maybe two evenings a week. I sit waiting and hoping he will come home until mine and my sons dinners cold and we give in and eat it. He says i deserve better but he doesn't want to lose me and he will try but he never does, I really don't want to split up but i feel lonelier now than when i was single, how can that be? How can you be living with your partner and feel lonely, we both work full time jobs, he does not contribute around the house at all. I do all of the "woman" jobs as he says and work. I feel useless, like im no good but i also know he doesn't want me to feel this bad......ive told him how i feel time and time again but maybe love isn't enough this time. what would you do?

He's right, you do deserve better. I know you're hurting and I'm sorry for that, but the reality of is that he wants to do what he wants to do regardless of what he should do. He wants to do what he considers is important and fun. He helped make two babies so far and the way he's going - I'm certain he'll have another one sometime in the future. Life has consequences to the actions we take and do. If I were you, I would begin looking at this situation objectively and start a plan where you and your child are together. Once you have moved (or he moved) then get that child support case going - that, believe it or not, is important. This "woman's work" attitude is for the birds. He needs to get off his butt and help out. My wife wouldn't even consider allowing me to do the laundry, but cook and clean? I live in the house too, I help get it dirty, I eat off the plates... I can darn well clean, cook and do whatever needs to be done to help out.

Move on. I have also had the phrase, you deserve better said to me, and the truth of the matter is they say it in hopes that you will be the one to walk away, because they the ones saying it are the cowards. I think the daughter line, is actually an affair. Just using the daughter excuse to get away with it.

You see your husband maybe a hour twice a week? where is he? You say you don't want to split up????? Why would you want to continue this disrespectful arrangement. Of course he doesn't want to breakup- he's doing exactly what he wants and you tolerate this behavior from him. Why exactly? Agree with SUSIEQQQ you need start making a plan to move on with you life.

Agree with all of the above. You deserve better than me translates to, 'Like it or lump it', which means, you have no choice but to carry this burden so you may as well choose to (kid yourself that you) like it. Oh really? Is THAT what he believes? Pff! You're 95% split up ALREADY and that's the truth of the matter. Here's what commonly happens, ANGEL20 (mainly to men but sometimes women too): Man gets divorced. Man hasn't a clue how to be in sole charge as 'mum and dad rolled into one' for protracted periods, like entire weekends and school holidays. (Hell, some don't even know how to take care of themselves, let alone a kid!) He also, naturally, wants a replacement romantic relationship. "Two for the price of one"... He tries to combine the two (what-should-be separate) needs, meaning, he looks for a woman he fancies and reckons is falling-in-love-with material, but only out of the stepmother material bracket. Free-of-charge nanny/cook/bottle-washer come lover. Fast forward a year or less: The man has watched and learned from the woman child-care as well as naturally regained (or grown in) confidence, so no longer feels so anxious and kack-handed. He no longer needs her for his altered relationship with his child. The total 'desire pot' is now no longer comprised of a need to love/be loved 60% + a need for help with his kid 40% equals 100. Now the man wants and needs her only 60%. Not enough. Resultant lack of tolerance and lack of willingness to compromise leading to clashes and fights, ensues. The clashes as herald a need to fix, don't lead to fixing. The relationship deteriorates. She is NO LONGER his lover. Not having a clue how or being too mentally lazy to work out how to re-elevate things, the man decides to find a new lover, one that suits only himself and his own needs, not his kid's intermittent mothering needs as well. OR... the man does still need a childcare partner but this one (you) has unluckily proven to be a wrong match in that department. However/whichever, the over-entitled man decides to [a] supplement his now mainly practical relationship with a lover on-the-side that IS purely romantic or [b] find a replacement lover/relationship into which he can seamlessly, without hardship and inconvenience, slide. (It's called Lilypad-Leaping - avoiding having to endure time swimming between one pad and the next in that cold, dark water.) It could be that he and the daughter (whom HE SAYS refuses to try to get on with you and your son) are in reality sharing these weekends with another woman and her own kid (a daughter?), the rest of the time (evenings) being when she and he get to take themselves off to another room to be alone (assuming she's not likewise the non-custody-holder?). (See how he thinks? If his daughter does genuinely feel things with you and your son or that foursome set-up itself is off-putting then surely the solution is to FIX IT SO THAT SHE NO LONGER FEELS THAT WAY? At the least, this man is emotionally thick as two short planks.) HOWEVER, another woman being in the frame is just a symptom of the 'disease', not the disease itself. It's a frame of mind. An attitude. BECAUSE it is, a man can cheat with a motorbike; mates down the pub; a river; the gym; his career... You name it, he can cheat on you with it. So all we can see is that he is most definitely cheating, whether only with some-THING. Specifically/literally, cheating you out of time and interaction between you and he, against the terms of the 'contract' (i.e. does not align with all that was pre-understood to be what a relationship encompasses and mutually provides). We can't say he's cheating on you with his daughter because - explain the weekday evenings when she's not around. So she's not it. Something or someone else is. Logical fact! What might be one decider between whether there's another woman (and her own kid) in the frame, would come in the form of your answer to whether when he's with his daughter or out in the evenings "golfing and fishing", you're allowed to ring his mobile and expect to be able to have conversations with him (particularly lovey-dovey-sounding ones). Think about how he'd have to behave were he trying to con you into believing he was where claimed, rather than sat there with another woman earwigging (herself trying to work out whether he and you are indeed "as good as over, anyway", like he might be claiming). If when you call him he tries to move away to a quiet, secluded spot, tries to hide the nature of your relationship together, avoids saying those three little words, keeps his voice fairly emotive-less and 'business-like', is trying to hurry and foreshorten the convo, or indeed always seems unavailable ergo it goes to message and he has to call you back (and not quickly enough or only after he's left the place he was supposed to be (background noise not fitting)).... that sort of thing... then you'll probably be able to get a better sense. So this is yet ANOTHER imperative when it comes to waiting for post-divorcal recovery rather than leaping straight into another relationship. You need to next time agree to accept/choose only those men who already have a superb handle on being a part-time single parent (like clockwork!) so that the one and only need for you he has lives exclusively in the heart department. In other words, there shouldn't BE any "need" aside from wanting to be in love with someone. Once you fall, that is when the love becomes so great that you suddenly FEEL like you need them. I.e. your heart does. Not your homelife schedule, not your loathing of being solitary in the house, particularly in the evenings, not your bank overdraft, not your need to gain family approval, etcetera. Just your heart. "I really don't want to split up but i feel lonelier now than when i was single, how can that be?" Because at least when you're single for real you don't have all these expectations NOT to feel alone/lonely. Your stomach, on the other hand, has been stretched, meaning, your appetite stimulated and your hunger greatly increased... only for your so-called lover to nowadays suddenly be feeding you merely the odd crumb. So you're now starving. The psychological version. It is RIDICULOUS for a man to claim he's still having a cohabitational relationship with a woman when he spends 95% of his time trying to avoid being in the same house as her, let alone same room! He has full control over whether he "goes fishing" or chooses to give it a miss some nights for the sake of much-needed time with you. That he doesn't, equates to deliberate avoidance. Which do you want LESS when it comes to between feeling constantly starved or for a while not being in a (cough!) relationship? At least if you're single you're on the market, open to finding/being found by an automatically improved replacement (I call it The Automatic Upgrade and involuntary it most certainly is, assuming you're newly free of issues that can have you choosing an "Issue Cell-mate"). Now, then, he could well just be avoiding THE ROWS. But he's a fool considering its behaviour exactly mirrors that of a man who's committing adultery/avoiding the truth coming out! So what you need to do is sincerely threaten to permanently end the entire relationship unless he agrees to: [a] change his ways off his own bat; [b] agree to couples counselling so that you can get to the bottom of everything in order to decide how to or not to proceed from there; [c] agree to part (with him the one to move out due to your having a full-time kid) either in the form of [i] divorce Step 1, or [ii] as a formal separation path that eventually leads either back to the relationship (punishment = lessons learned = new resolves) or further out/away (baby-steps-style divorce run-up). How exactly he reacts in the instant then medium term will go a long way to telling you what's genuinely been behind his anti-relationship and you-avoidance behaviour. You've tried everything else, by the sounds of it, whereas he's trying NOTHING WHATSOEVER. So if an extreme measure, an ultimatum, is all that's left open to you (and is extreme only because his total avoidance behaviour's extreme, meaning you can't fight fire with a mere spark or mere drop of water) then - one way or the other - the measure will work. But 'one way or the other' is a MUST when your confidence is getting eroded as is the 'doorman' to your precious self-esteem. If you allow these two intrinsics to undergo such a battering, by staying put, it'll take you that much longer to recover AND that much longer to exude an alluring, lover-attracting vibe and you'll either remain single for longer than necessary OR attract another still-in-crisis or emotionally lazy/clueless d**khead. This is Rock & Hard Place City. But only in terms of you making a decision. What happens thereafter - so-called good or bad result - will still bring massive relief and a return to better emotional/mental health. You WILL feel better once out of the psychological torture chamber (- talk about stating the bleedin' obvious?!). And that is your primary concern for now because, if mum is ground down then so is baby (your son). During this separation, you and son can just FORGET about what he might be doing, not doing, whom with, where/when/how/why, and start to fill in the gaps of this man's departure with rival day-to-day and monthly routines and treats/highlights. You and your son can 'date' each other for a while. :-) I expect he's starving as well if all your attention's been on trying to work out this negative mystery (which it would be). Put it this way: if you were holding something but didn't know whether you still wanted it or not, you damn well suddenly WOULD know if someone then wrenched it off you. And if after a couple of weeks - certainly six - you found you DIDN'T miss it, then, what were you doing wasting your time AND ITS (hers) in the first place? So issuing then following through with the ultimatum is a win/win situation and anything else a lose/lose one. It may well be (usually is) that you realise YOU don't miss it and would rather stick pins in your eyes than ever take him back. "I feel useless, like im no good but i also know he doesn't want me to feel this bad" I don't want you to feel this bad at my hand is as I don't want you to feel this bad at my hand *DOES*. It's called, "considering no-one and nothing is stopping me, I'll waste no time in removing this hand of mind that is dealing her such emotional agony (because I care about her feelings and want only for her to be happy)"! Doesn't want you to feel this bad MY ARSE! His refusal to simply, easily, instantly remove his pain-giving hand says undeniably that he doesn't give a sh*t compared to taking care of HIMSELF and HIS needs. He is acting like a singleton. It is that simple. And that devastating. Sorry :-(