Dear Amy: I have been with my 43-year-old boyfriend for two years. He works two jobs, so we have zero time together during the week (we are both teachers).
On weekends, he goes to his mother’s house at around 5 p.m. and stays until 2 a.m. playing video games with his 13-year-old nephew. I have a 10-year-old son. My boyfriend enjoys being with my son, and my son also enjoys spending time with the nephew. But on many weekends, my boyfriend goes by himself to his mom’s on both Friday and Saturday nights.
He says that I don’t get to say anything about his time with his nephew because I am unwilling to have a child with him. I do not want to have another child, but my boyfriend says that he does.
But back to the original problem: It’s not the amount of time he spends with his mom, it’s the lack of balance that bothers me. I go to sleep earlier than he does, and his nephew stays up late, so why not go to his mother’s at 9 p.m. instead of 5?
Am I wasting my time with a man who doesn’t want to prioritize me?
Amy says: Yes, the way you are spending your time — resenting your boyfriend for his choices and sitting at home while he goes out on the weekends — is a waste. Your boyfriend does not want to hang out with you. If he did, he would.
The way you describe the situation, the way he chooses to spend his free time, as well as the way you frame his response to you, makes him sound like an adolescent who is acting out. His evident motivation and justification for being disrespectful toward you is because he doesn’t like your response to the most serious question a couple can face, which is whether to have a child.
Fortunately for you, that will be another woman’s problem once you finally figure out that this is not a healthy relationship for you and your son to be in.
