Traveling when you’re in a blended family…
Hi everyone, I have a small predicament that I’d like to hear input from others on.
To preface, I’m F32 and my SO is M37. We have 6 kids in total. Two shared (3&4), my bio (16) and his bios (15, 13 & 11).
I have a family event coming up, it’s a huge deal that I cannot miss. I told my SO about this over a month ago. He told me he was happy for my family member and that it was exciting but he’d not be able to get off work for as long as I’d be gone(10 days). I told him I completely understood and didn’t expect him to do so. Last week, I told him that I purchased plane tickets for me, our two littles and my bio. I spent $4,000 on 4 round trip tickets and was excited to have that part done. He met me with disappointment and frustration. I was kind of taken aback because he knew I was going and he knew I was taking our small children because he works long hours(10-18 days) and they need lots of care at their ages. He told me he feels his kids would be feel left out and I told him I think it would be a good opportunity to spend alone time with them because he is always at work and when he isn’t, me and our small children take a lot of his attention away from them. He basically told me he didn’t agree and that I was wrong. I told him that I felt me leaving with 6 kids in Maine(we are from Texas) while he was home alone for 10 days seems like a big ask and unfair. He went on to tell me that I am favoring because if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be taking my oldest. My oldest is going because he has cousins that are his age that will be there and again, this is an important event for my sister that I don’t get to see often. We ended up agreeing to disagree and now I just feel icky about it. Should I have planned to take all of the kids? I’m not sure there’s much I could do now as it would be a huge pain to cancel my current flights, add three more tickets and repurchase. Also, frankly, I was looking forward to spending alone time with my bios. Of course I wouldn’t say that out loud. And I guess I just don’t understand where he’s coming from because if roles were reversed, I’d be excited to be home alone with my kids and plan fun things with them while they were away. Not sure where to go from here. Am I awful? 😓 what would you do?