Soon to be mum, soon to meet 8yr old step daughter
Hi everyone.
So, firstly, a little back story. I am 21, my partner (and father of my unborn child) of the last 10 months is 37. He is currently separated (not divorced) from his wife (they have been separated for 7 years) and he has just been granted visitation for his 9 year old daughter after only having phone contact for the past 14 months. I am very happy and supportive for him, however I have some concerns and need some advice from people who have done this before.
His visitation starts as supervised fortnightly visits for 4 hours on a Sunday then after 2 months will become unsupervised fortnightly for another 2months for 6 hours, then after that she will be able to come and stay with us overnight, I am concerned because, to my knowledge, she knows nothing about me. She knows she is going to become a big sister, but he refers to the baby as 'his baby' and our house as 'his house'. He has not told her anything about me, other than my name and does not seem willing to allow her to meet me until she starts her overnight visitations. I am nervous enough as is and I am scared she won't be used to the idea of 'sharing' her daddy with a strange woman and another child in a strange place and when I bring this up with him, he doesn't see it as an issue. He does not seem ready to 'share' that part of his life with me, despite me being the one who pushed him to stop being miserable and go to court to fight to see her. I was there for every court appearance and sat with him as he wrote and read affidavits.
Am I missing something here? Is there something I should be doing differently? How do I approach this from a different angle so he can see my point of view too?
Please HELP!!
Thanks!
Wow, firstly thank you for
Wow, firstly thank you for your honesty.
I never pushed him for my own needs, I told him to stop bitching about it and change it. Which he has.
He's got his own issues with abandonment, his mother left him when he was quite young leaving him with an abusive alcoholic father and not bothering to contact him until 2 years ago. I suspect that he will try to keep up these visitations (they aren't supervised by the court, but the maternal grandmother whom the child lives with) and the mother has the same deal, more so just to piss his ex off.
And I figured she was already somewhat unstable, she is manipulative and uses his guilt for not seeing her against him, BIG TIME, I've had to confiscate his bank cards and all but the smallest amount of cash when he goes to see her, otherwise he blows so much money.
Sucks to realise there are so many red flags
He's started in the sense
He's started in the sense he's gone and collected the paper work he needs, he did that about 6 months ago, it's still on top of my fridge with not much on it filled out :/