Hi everyone, this is my first post - I'm really hoping for an outside opinion from people in a similar boat to me.

I've been with my wife for 8 years, lived together for 7 years and married for 5 of those, she makes me very happy and we are best friends. My two boys are now grown (19 and 22) and off doing their own thing but lived mostly with their mum after our break-up with just the odd weekend/holidays with my wife and I and a weekly dinner so it hasn't been a true blended family from that side of things.

My wife has two boys, 13 and 14 who are with us about 2/3 of the time and the other 1/3 are with their own dad who is on a roster system with work so can't have them more (has been this way the whole 8 years). The 14 year old turns 15 soon and has recently started to drop nights staying at his dads to suit himself (ie. the pattern is usually along the lines of 2 nights at mums, 1 night at dads, 3 nights at mums followed by 3 nights at dads) - he has decided to drop the 1 night at dad's in the middle as it makes him feel "unsettled" with school etc. But really it is just that he prefers mums as she is easy on him, let's him and his girlfriend sit in his room watching movies, cupboard full of food etc.

Now he has started to drop other nights here and there ie. this weekend he should go to his dad's for 3 nights starting Saturday. His girlfriend's mother rang yesterday and asked my wife if she could do a huge favour as they have to go out of town on Saturday for a wedding, can girlfriend stay night (don't ask - they are still "innocent" supposedly) as they have no other options. Instead of wife saying "it's not my night with my boys, let me check with their dad" or "can I check with my husband to see if he has other plans" she says "sure" as she is terrified to say no to anyone (apart from me). So I am really upset, there goes one of my precious alone nights with my wife. She says "but we can still go out for dinner with friends as planned, you are going away to visit your parents early Sunday morning anyway, we'll still be "alone" but there'll be 2 people in the house, it's not like we would run around naked or anything". She doesn't seem to get it, I just crave having the house completely empty and to ourselves.

We've had the discussion of what would happen if one/both boys wanted to fully stay here in the future. I told her I could cope with one if we perhaps change house (so I had a separate section of the house to get away to) but not with two.

The boys are okay, it's just that they are teenage boys that are not mine. I don't "parent" them, just live alongside them. They are messy (although not in common areas, wife is strict on them about that and she does keep on about their rooms too but I'm very very tidy so any mess even in their rooms annoys me), are developing loud man voices (instead of young boy voices) so it is hard to drown out the sound of them no matter where I am in the house. Wife's solution was to buy me noise-cancelling headphones.

My wife and I are arguing more and more, mostly about small stuff (her up in the kitchen talking to them at 9.45pm the other night while I'm trying to read in bed, again voices are loud), her not being appreciative enough of things I do around the house and the not consulting with me when she is asked to have son/girlfriend for one of our nights. She said the girlfriend isn't as comfortable at the dad's house so wouldn't want to stay the night there - why is that my problem?

Sorry for the length of this, I just wondered if anyone had any advice on how we could improve things? At this rate we are arguing over something every day it seems whereas if there were no boys we'd never argue. But it is probably 5-7 years before there are no boys which is a long way away.