Me and my boyfriend have been together for about 4 years now. We've had two children together who passed away from SIDS. The most recent one passed away this past January, almost a week after I found out I was 5 weeks pregnant again. We had never lived together prior to this, but two months later we finally decided to get a place together.
He has three other children of his own, a 12 year old boy whom he has 24/7, and 8 year old twin girls that he gets every other weekendish. His son is a really good kid, very respectful, and usually keeps to himself. His twins I never had much of an issue with before, they were hyper and a tad immature and annoying, but I didn't really mind them too much.
This summer, without discussing it with me, my boyfriend decided he wanted to take his daughters for the whole summer. I was highly irritated with it as my last child had just passed away just a few months before, i'm on high risk pregnancy, and now I would have to sit and watch this other womans children all summer since my boyfriend works 5/12's. But I figured I wouldn't say anything, after all we just lost our two boys, he probably just wanted to spend as much time with the rest of his kids as he could. But his twins are horrid! They absolutely do not listen to me at all, they don't follow any of the house rules, anytime I would tell them to stop doing something they would tell me to shutup, have some sort of little attitude like backtalk about it, or throw a raging fit
(throwing/breaking things, the whole works). It was just so overwhelming. Also, they're 8 years old and they can't run their own shower, or wash/style their own hair, so I would have to do that for them everyday. I've tried talking to my boyfriend about it and letting him know that they are old enough to be at least learning to do it instead of just doing it for them, but he disagreed. I feel like their babysitter, not their step mom. And they are not at all bratty when my boyfriend is around, they act like perfect little angels, so when I try to talk to him about it, he gets all angry and doesn't understand.
I dealt with all this for about a month, then one weekend they went back to their moms to visit and told them that i'm always yelling at them (which I don't) and that I just lay in bed all day (I did on 3 occasions because I was having fainting spells, and i'm supposed to be on bedrest anyway) and their brother watched them those days. So I had their mom and grandma calling and flipping out on me for it, so I finally told my boyfriend I was done, there is no way i'm going to continue to watch them, if he wants them to stay the rest of the summer than he can put them in daycare while he works. So now he just goes back to getting them every other weekend, and I absolutely cringe at the thought of them coming. Anytime he tells me he's going to pick them up, it instantly puts me in a horrible mood, and I end up staying in my room all weekend.
I feel horrible that they irritate me so bad, but I just can't help it. I can't tell if i'm overreacting, or if i'm just purposely despising them because I should be taking care of my own precious little boys, not some other womans little monsters.