When X and I were together, we usually shared a week off together and usually traveled. Alone time as a couple is really, really important!

Hi Mary,

My answer is none. And not because of my spouse, but because of me. I am a single mother to a 7 year old and we now have an 8month old. My SO has days he resents us not being alone before the LO arrived. However he knew this is what he was taking on.

The same as I have to accept now that EOWE we cannot go out. Not quite what I thought would happen but hey that's step life. If we end up with SS full time then we will be unable to go out as a family unit ever/ until SS' decapitation/ hitting/punching issue is resolved - which as I said may be never. We cannot even leave him with a babysitter so that we can go out.

This is step life. Try let go of the jealousy of what was and live with what is. Being unable to travel the world for the next say 6 years isn't the end of the world. It's an expectation change. Make pin boards, folders etc and plan together where you will go once they are in I think you call it college/ varsity.

Good Luck!

Never. Maybe a weekend a couple times a year.

With five kids (2 mine with my ex -here 90% of time, 2 his with his ex - here 50% of time, 1 my adopted - here 100% of time), our life is mostly kid-related.

We take kid free weekends a few times a year. But our actual big vacations are family trips.

Your step kids will be grown in less than a decade. Plenty of time for alone travel then.

I dunno... I get it, sort of. You want time to reconnect with your husband, and that's normal. I don't think you need any sort of big vacation to do that though. He's giving you a week, you said. Why isn't that enough?

I'm looking at it this way - my DH and I have 3 young bios, so we don't get ANY vacation together. We don't even get a weekend alone, not EVER. But we get evenings after the kids are in bed, and maybe a sitter once a month or so. We go to dinner, we drink too much wine, we have amazing sex. I don't feel disconnected from him at all. Soooo.... why are you feeling the need to REconnect with yours? What's going on? Whatever it is, I don't think a vacation is a magic pill to fix it. Get to the root and fix THAT.

BM gets Thanksgiving week and we get Xmas week every year.
So we can plan something for ourselves.
We sometimes rotate New Years but they are almost always at BMs so Yay for us!

Spring break is always us.

Summers used to be split about 40% BM and 60% us. They would go with BM for a whole month and we'd have lots of play time, but that's not going to happen this year. We'll have about two weeks in July on our own and are going to plan something alone so we get some down-time together.
Then we'll likely have them for most of August as usual - going to visit DPs family for about 5 days is in the works.

So although DPs custody is 50/50, with breaks we actually have them MORE. I suspect by the time they are both in middle school (SD11 starts next year) we'll have them both mostly full time. Which is a reason why we are moving. We now will have a house with a master suite and a private deck - and I fully intend to use it!

To keep sane, DP helps a lot. He's improved his parenting a lot since last year so I rarely sweat the SDs coming over. And I make sure I do not clean up after them (only to get rid of things they leave out), discipline or do too much cooking. On our spring break trip this year it went super well. They were great for me (had to travel alone with them on the first leg) and DP and I split the work with them - although I took on a bit more than normal b/c his father passed away the week before and he had to take care of some things.

Make time for yourself and don't back down.