DH is continuing to wallow in his daddy guilt about the lack of time he’s spending with his kids. I know it hurts him that he can’t spend as much time with his boys as he wants - but he has a stepson who absolutely adores him but he doesn’t seem to understand that or see the time he spends with his SS as being as valuable as the time he spends with his kids.

My DS sees DH as his dad, calls him dad and absolutely loves him and cherishes the time they spend together. But my DS keeps getting ignored and left out and DH even seems pissed off he’s spending more time with his SS than his kids

DH and the boys’ BM have been discussing possible new visitation schedules since it is becoming difficult for them to constantly be driving back and forth between houses with all their activities and sports every other weekend. DH doesn’t want to have them less, but is trying to figure out a way to minimize travel - such as having them for all 3 day weekends.

DH put together a spreadsheet with different options trying to figure out how much time he would have with various options. He’s now gone Excel crazy and expanded into creating a spreadsheet showing how many days he estimates he has spent with each of his kids since they were born.

You all know that DH has been away a lot and those numbers are not very good. He knew the boys had spent more time with their stepdad than with him but he didn’t know by how much. And even I was surprised at how little time he really has spent with SD15 (less than 350 days, only 1 Christmas and 3 birthdays)

He also calculated that he has spent more days with his SS than with any of his kids by considerable amount.

Both SD15 and SS9 like to accuse DH of loving my son more than them and have gone on jealous rants about things that DH has done with my son like he’s playing favorites.

I’ve been trying to rationalize things with him since there’s really no good solution to this. He should be happy that the boys have a dad in their lives - even if it isn’t him. His boys love their stepdad and they get along great. It’s one of those really good stepfamily situations. The same with DH and his SS.

Yes, DH has messed up with SD15 and nothing is going to change that but he has the chance to make a difference with his SS but he continues to waste his time chasing after his kids. DH is more focused on sucking up to SD15's half-siblings trying to get them to like him than he is spending time with his SS.

I don’t know what else I can really do or say. DH hates that he looks like an absentee father and is all eager to be a superdad, but he’s coming to the realization that he can’t be involved in his kids’ daily lives and that his kids really don’t need him. But his SS does and I wish I could convince him of that.