Hello . My problem is I have been with boyfriend for 7 years and we both left mates to be together. I am 48 and he is 53. My children were grown and gone and his were 7 and 9 ....he has them to raise on weekends at his moms because I work 1 am to 9:30 am and don't have weekends off like he does, he has a mother of 86 years he takes care of for his dad passed away soon to be 3 years and his dad asked him to look after her before he died.
When we met we moved in together and we both went through divorces and he pays for two children and alimony
until his wife remarried, he carries life insurance on whole family still, him her and both boys, he gets the boys every weekend and only has to every other, his ex-wife will not let me go to any activities the boys are in, she says she'll take them out if I do, the one boy is now 16 and loves basketball and is great at it and I have gone to games that I know she is not going to be at, but her husband told her and she was mad, nothing happened. I get nothing from boyfriend for any bills. I pay ALL bills ... dump I know ... but should I have to ask for money, shouldn't he jut give me some. He in beginning kept saying "I need to find weekend job to help you" and it just never happened. Now I am tired of it but still love him and I am lost as what to do.
He does pay for his own vehicle and insurance and all credit card bills but nothing to me. He doesn't want to talk about anything, he likes to boss me, and I see him maybe 3 evenings a week. He keeps saying it won't always be this way but how long am I supposed to wait?
My family are all aware of my situation and dislike the way he does me so they don't like him or have bad feeling towards him but all talk to him ok. I guess I am mainly at fault but now after this long I have grown to be hurt and tired of the load.... can you help?
I have also been volunteered to do 2 loads of his mothers laundry a week when he comes home... it's not that I mind but I do have enough to do to keep up with my own on my 2 days off .. which are Tue. and Wed. I have too big of
heart and easy going ..
TALK TO ME. THANKS GRANNY
Yes, you ARE easy going. You are easily going crazy and will need the patience of Job to wait out this man's plan. If he thinks things will change when his mother dies, I wouldn't count on it. In the first place she may be around for a long time, and in the second place, it's a stupid way to live - banking on somebody's death to straighten out his own affairs.
If that man loves you, as you say you love him, he should be thinking about your needs and wishes, and organizing himself to suit. He would do his mother's laundry himself. He would include you in his insurance plan. He would take you to his son's basketball games and stop letting his former wife run his life.
Seems he is loyal to his father's wish, that he care for his mother, exemplary of course, and he is loyal to his former wife, in many ways, but when is he going to start being loyal to you?
After seven years he still doesn't want to talk about your greatest problems. He's happy for you to pay the bills, and do
the laundry, but keeps you away from his children and doesn't want to talk.
Yes, you said it, you could dump him.
Unless you really DO love him. Maybe you have a deep feeling of sympathy for him and the way life has treated him, and if you respect him for the way he is caring for his mother, and also helping with his sons, and trying not to upset their mother. Perhaps that understanding of what he is going through, and your own natural sympathetic nature, has persuaded you that he's not such a bad person after all. Maybe letting that other woman determine whether you will or not attend a ball game isn't all that important in the larger scheme of things.
Perhaps you feel that at your age it might be impossible ever to find another man with whom you might share your old age. Maybe just having any man is more important to you than having a kind, considerate and loving man.
Leaving him might be more traumatic than going along with his strange version of togetherness.
You are on your own, financially, and you are not very high in the priorities of the man you sleep with a couple of times a week. I guess you need to ask yourself if it's worth it. What, exactly, are you getting out of this strange arrangement?
You have a job, which I hope gives you some satisfaction, and you have your grown children who, I hope, are still your friends and confidantes. And then you have this man who is still ruled by his former wife.
As you can see, I'm see-sawing here. Dump him. Stick with him. I wonder what you will do.
I suspect you will stay the course.
I imagine that the reason he won't talk with you is because he doesn't want to get it all out in the open about how she is still manipulating him. He's had a hard time with his wife. He may be having problems with his mother, who knows? At any rate, we do know that his life is very much regulated by devotion to, and responsibilities for his mother. Then there is you.
Think of yourself as the one woman in his life who is not trying to dominate him. Let his time with you be pleasure and laughter and no more serious discussions of all the problems that beset him. Poor guy deserves some fun. Do whatever it takes to bring some other friends into your relationship - another couple to lunch with occasionally. Play scrabble. Find a way to get out to a movie, or rent a video and ask neighbours in for coffee, or whatever.
In other words, try to have a social life with him, join a choir together, take up oil painting, volunteer at the hospital,
anything, together, no matter how little spare time you have, get some fun with people into your life together.
And keep it light; no heavy discussions. That man needs a break. You do too. I hope you can resolve it. And I do hope you stick with him.
Truly yours,
GG
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