He certainly does seem to be in fairy tale land that everyone is going to be super happy in the end. He's the glass is half full and I'm the glass is half empty. 

Any conversation is compeltely forced. DH tries to facilitate it sometimes, but it just doesn't really go anywhere. He and I usually spend dinner just talking to each other and they just sit there quietly, poking at their food (they are the pickiest eaters and I actually WON that battle. I privately told DH I was sick and tired of cooking for kids that would pick at my food and make faces and complain to him with me right there. I told him it was rude. Flat out that they are rude children to act in such a disgusting manner. He was a little horrified by how pissed I was about it, but low and behold....next dinner he reduced one of them to tears because she made a face and called something disgusting. Never again have I heard a food complaint and I told DH I was pleased with how he handled that).

Sometimes I'll excitedly tell a story at the dinner table with a lot of animation, and sometimes I'll get smiles out of them, but nothing else. It's just odd...but since things aren't getting better and I'm just losing interest completely, it's causing DH more frustration. I'm sure us being locked up in the house all the time doesn't help. I am super sick of him just brushing off many of my irritations because 'I don't like them' and that 'I need to see a counselor to help with my resentment'. 

Hah, yeah he makes the excuse that 'he was shy when he was a kid too'. I'm pretty sure his mother would have told me about that (considering she too finds the quietness odd). Normally mothers make that connection and go 'oh, he was just like that as a little sprout!' I'll have to ask her one of these days so I can use it as ammo against him the next time he claims they are quiet because he was quiet. 

They've graduated to mostly the bare minimum of conversation with family, but you have to ask them either about school and what they did, usually they give a short answer. If you ask about a video game they may give you a bit more. Basically, there are very few things they will actually hold a conversation about. 

I recall telling him that they might need therapy. I know one of them did have to see a counselor at some point because she was crying during the day at school and at night that she missed her mother (whom she is with half of the week when she's not with us). So, either they have super anxiety or something else going on, I don't know. DH has anxiety and his ex wife has depression, so I imagine it could make a nasty mix if the children got BOTH! 

But no- husband wants me to see someone on why I can't connect with his kids and why I resent them being in my house. Heckin A, maybe I will go see a therapist and see if they tell me, 'well, shoot, you aren't nutto, he is!' :D 

Oh gosh, tell me about it. It's mine in name and in heart, because I bought the thing myself with a very hefty downpayment. He replaced some appliances and pays half the mortgage, so it's slowly becoming more his....but very slowly. 

When we originally were looking at homes, his ex wife actually had the nerve to complain that we didn't bring the girls with to see houses with us. I was literally blown away that she thought they had an opinion in the matter. I think I almost cackled like a witch when I heard it bothered her. I was sitting there thinking, 'lady, if you think I care what your antisocial kids want in a house that I'm buying, you have another thing coming'. 

Honestly, I wish it were that simple to simply say he should be glad they are allowed over. Seeing as we're married, that never goes over well. I have threatened to go rent myself an apartment though if thinks ever get bad when they are teenagers. That bothers him immensely. Honestly, the man is always worried I'm going to leave him, so I don't understand why he can't just do one simple thing, like having them at the house one day less during the week. That would make such a difference.

LOL! My father makes the same jokes about them

I wish DH saw it that way. He has tried to get them to be more talkative, but it just doesn't work. Sometimes I'll get a sentence or two, but nothing much more. He claims I'm 'intimidating', but that they both look up to me (yeah, yeah, whatever). I'll take the intimidating I suppose, even though I don't enforce any rules or do any sort of scolding. Not sure how that makes me scary. My migraines, maybe, when I feel like death and just disappear like a ghost to my room? Who knows. 

I suppose I found my father intimidating when I was young and I never knew how to talk to him back then...but my father also had an outragerous temper and an intense personality, so I had some serious reason to be intimidated by him. These girls have never even seen me angry (and I try very hard to make sure they never know when I'm irritated, because that would 'scare' them more). 

It is definitely noticed by so many people around us. Basically, the whole family (mine and his) notice the oddity, but he just brushes it off that they're 'shy'. They do talk to kids. They will open up to adults who 'act like children' aka silly, but forget it if you don't have the personality to get down on the ground and make goofy smiles and gestures to make them feel comfortable. Even then, they are relatively reserved. 

Sometimes, he has gotten embarrassed by them not replying to people, angry enough to yell at them, but it is a rare occasion. I think he just doesn't want to admit there might actually be a personality issue here of some sort. I can understand being shy, but why not speak to your aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc? 

That's interesting to me that you have the 'be closer' issue and you both have children! I'm surprised your DH would even ask that of you if he isn't very close to your children. Men...funny stuff. 

It's tough. I mostly do disengage from a lot of stuff, because he understood from the get-go that I wouldn't be their mom. I don't clean their room, I don't do their laundry, I don't take them to school, etc. He does quite a bit in the department of 'dad', almost to the extremes, because they live like 40 minutes away from us and he drives back and forth to get them to school and the like. He goes above and beyond for them in my opinion, because he fears being 'a bad dad'. It's just unfortunate that he believes his kids will build long-lasting relationships with other people in the family when they simply don't have the personalities for it. I mean, they wouldn't even hug DH's parents when they came to visit, and they had certainly had many 'sleep overs at grandmas' when they were little...I gently corrected that behavior and told them to hug their grandparents...I simply couldn't fathom children not hugging their own family that came to visit! They hugged them after being told to...like I said, well-behaved...but very distant to everyone. 

My favorite is when DH claims he was like this as a kid as a way of excusing their behavior towards people. I intend to ask his mother about that LOL! I think she would have mentioned it to me, because she also thinks it's quite a shame that the kids are so distant to people. She's always like 'and I'm their grandma and they don't say much to me!' 

It's good to hear from other people that how I feel isn't unusual. It sucks that I have to feel the resentment on my end that I just don't want these kids in my house more than necessary, but my fingers are crossed that eventually they won't want to come here as often because all their friends are too far away to visit (aka, their friends parents don't want to drive 35-40 minutes one way just to drop their kids off at a house for a short playdate. I certainly don't blame them). 

I have told him many times that they are rude. Sometimes, it does get through his thick skull, to his credit. I did win a fight about one of them being very rude at the dinner table (as in making faces at the food, no matter who made it, making snide comments to him that it was gross etc). I told DH in private that SD was rude and an incredibly disgusting child and that I was sick and tired of being at the dinner table with her and wouldn't do it ever again until he put a stop to it. He screamed at her the next time it happened and she wailed and cried in humiliation. I honestly loved every second of it. The rudeness at the table never happened again. I told him that sometimes fear works wonders into shaping a child up. 

But, mostly he is adverse to acknowledging that their unwillingness to socialize is rude. This is literally the man that was still wiping their butts when they were 6 or 7 years old! I laughed at him and he was delusional enough to believe it was normal that they 'couldn't do it themselves'. I told his sister and she laughed at him too and told him they need to grow up and wipe themselves, because what do they do at school, ask a teacher? That shamed DH into changing that pretty fast. Basically, he babies them. 

I agree that his gaslighting it BS, though he likes to claim I'm the master gaslighter. Who knows, maybe I am, because some occurances bother him for days and I just stop caring about them five minutes after they happen, because I disengage from it. 

The worst part about the whole situation is that there was a time when he actually thought things were going well. I didn't voice any disagreements for like a month and he literally thought 'things were getting better for me'. That pisses me off.