What to do when your partner’s children don’t like you

What to do when your partner’s son(s) and/or daughter(s) don’t accept you

You’ve found your way here because your partner’s kids don’t like you. It probably means you’re worried about the future of this relationship.

Will you be able to stand getting the cold shoulder, disrespect, manipulation and downright nastiness much longer?

Just to reassure you, here’s how other people have found this article:
” My partner’s daughter doesn’t like me.”
“My partner’s son doesn’t accept me.”
“His kids hate me.”
“Her son doesn’t like me.”
“His daughter ignores me.”

So, you’re clearly not alone!

My aim is to help you understand the situation from all four perspectives – you, your partner, the kids and the other parent’s position.

Why so?

Because without first understanding, you’re unlikely to find a solution and make the right decisions.

We’ll start with a request for help I received from a visitor to my article on what to do when your children don’t accept your new partner.

Then I’ll give you lots of tips and steps to help you hopefully turn the tide.

(Be sure also to read my article How to prepare to meet your partner’s kids for the first time.).

Let’s look at the position of each of the parties, starting with Julia’s.

When your partner’s son(s) and/or daughters(s) don’t accept you

How are your essential emotional needs met?

How long can you carry on with a relationship when your needs are only met when there’s time in your partner’s schedule?

What has happened that you’re looking for what to do after sticking it out for three years?

We are all born with essential emotional needs. We have to aim to meet those needs in balance for optimal well-being.

We have an inborn need for giving and receiving attention, being part of a wider community, safety and security, self-esteem, privacy, love, friendship and laughter, physical intimacy, meaning and purpose, and a sense of autonomy and control.

Here’s what might be happening to you with regard to those essential needs:

• The giving and receiving of attention happen when it only suits your partner.
• You’re not part of the family – a little community.
• You don’t feel safe and secure.
• Your self-esteem is likely undermined not only by the rejection of the children. Your partner’s, too when he puts his children’s needs before yours. I’ll come back to this point a little further down.
• Fun, friendship and laughter seem to come in morsels, as does physical intimacy.
• Regarding meaning and purpose – well, there doesn’t seem to be a direction in this relationship.
• You have very little autonomy and control in this relationship.

So, when we look at how your emotional needs are met in this relationship, you appear to be doing very poorly.

We asked in the heading: “How are your essential emotional needs met?”. That more or less implied that you’re dependent on your partner and the kids for those needs.

However, we’re not only born with emotional needs, but we’re also innately endowed with the resources to meet them. Together we call them the Human Givens (link).

In other words, you have everything you need on board to ensure you can meet as many of those needs as possible elsewhere! I don’t mean you necessarily have to end this relationship, though it doesn’t appear to lead anywhere (yet).

However, you’ve waited long enough. And it appears you’ve been patient and understanding in bucket loads.

So, you might now want to consider investing more of your energy into your relationships with family and friends, doing voluntary work, self-development, etc.

Though I doubt this is the kind of advice you’re looking for.

So, let’s then look at the situation from the children’s point of view.

Why your partner’s children won’t accept you

Your boyfriend’s children do not dislike you as a person because they’ve never met you.

They resent what you represent – the breakup of their family as they knew it, their shaken sense of security and their lost innocence.

Your partner’s kids behave the way they do because they have a problem, not because they are being a problem.

• They suffered a significant loss (the loss of the family as they knew it) with all the emotional pain that entails.
• It is easier for them to blame you than blame him because they love their father.
• They witnessed their mother’s pain. That would have been particularly difficult to bear if it was their father’s decision to leave.
• They may see you as the ‘monster’ who caused the breakup of the family if the two of you knew each other before the marital breakdown.
• They may see you as the person who makes it impossible for their parents to ever get back together.
• Getting to know you and potentially liking you risks upsetting their mother.
• They’re torn between their parents. Not meeting you and not recognising you is the easiest way to deal with that for them.
• They appear at the behest of lingering feelings of resentment toward their father. Not acknowledging you seems the most effective way to punish him.

What about your partner’s ex?

How the other parent might sabotage the relationships

Your partner’s kids are prevented from seeing you

Suppose the mother was left by the father. You don’t write about when and how the two of you met. But if you and your partner were having an affair, it would have caused her immeasurable pain.

Even if you didn’t have an affair and your partner didn’t end the marriage, his wife would have felt, rightly or wrongly, that she had reasons to do so.

Clearly, in this instance, she’s not processed the marital breakup. I am assuming that she wasn’t told that your partner just wanted a temporary break to find himself or for them to find a way to rekindle the marriage.

She continues to feel resentful and vengeful.

Sadly, she delivers her revenge via the kids. Their perception of their dad has, unfortunately, therefore, appears to have become quite toxic.

Your partner now probably feels he cannot ever win in this situation.

Your partner’s attitude may not help

Your boyfriend is torn between you and his children, as you say. Here’s what might be going on for him:

• He probably feels guilty about having broken up their family.
• If he was the one that filed for divorce, that sense of guilt might have led him to overcompensate and spoil his kids to reduce their distress. Once the spoiling has started, it becomes a way of life and difficult to stop.
• He may be worried that he may lose them if he insists on them seeing you.
• Navigating kids through their teenage years can be a hair-raising ‘adventure’ at the best of times. Your partner has three teens who’re bound to influence, support and encourage each other to conform to the norms of their ‘tribe’. He may worry they all turn against him.
• He clearly doesn’t have the support of their mother in a cooperative co-parenting relationship. And that, after three years, won’t be changing soon.

It seems your partner feels trapped between three parties – his ex-wife, his kids and you. No wonder he’s stressed.

Why does he appear so powerless and unable to set appropriate boundaries around the kids’ behaviour?

Here’s possibly why…

As human beings, the more emotional we are (and your partner sure is), the less we’re able to use the logical, analytical part of our brain.

The stress of it all appears to have beaten him down. He seems now only able to choose the path of least resistance and no longer able to see a way forward.

Unfortunately, time in itself rarely changes anything. It’s what we do with that time which makes a difference.

In the meantime, I would argue, he is perhaps using you to fill in the gaps. I suspect he’s made a ton of promises, few of which would have come to fruition.

So, it’s time for some action. Let’s get cracking…