[grandrapidsgirl]

I am a forty-one year old woman with two children, six and seven. I left a violent eight-year marriage a year and a half ago. Soon after my divorce I met a wonderful man of 52 who has never been married or had children. We soon became a couple, as we enjoyed our time together immensely and he and my children adored each other. After about ten months we began to speak about marriage and children. A couple of months later, and with four days' notice, he told me he was taking in a three-year-old foster child. He had not mentioned his interest in foster parenting before. I was shocked and told him that I would support the decision but that we needed to prepare for this together, and to prepare my children for the new child. He refused to even speak to them about it, saying they would "get used to it." Needless to say, there was nothing but fighting, pouting, crying and that sort of thing for weeks.
It has been about eight months now since this happened, and everything is a mess. We do not live together and it is not possible for him to come over to see us much anymore, though we live very close. My children felt and continue to feel betrayed by him, as they had grown attached to him and now see him walking with, holding hands with and living with and caring for this child who came from nowhere, when they felt he was going to be a father to them. My boyfriend takes the child to visit his friends, on vacation with him, etc., and the child is given gifts, clothing and taken on outings by his family and friends, even though I am struggling to care for my own children on one salary and give them a happy life and a solid family structure. My boyfriend seems to enjoy immensely being seen as the hero to this child by his friends, though few of them know that he kind of has two other children they have never met. He and the child have the home life that I longed for us to have together, but our own plans have all been put on hold indefinitely.
Also, the night he told me about the child coming, he promised we would care for him together, but instead when he goes out he leaves the child with a babysitter who has become like a mother to him. My boyfriend takes none of my advice about raising the child, although he has never been around a child before. I have tried so hard, as shocked and hurt as I was about his solo decision, to bring our families together, but my boyfriend has totally shut me out. When I complain he says, "You never wanted him. You don't want him." And it's true though I have tried to overcome it. When I look at this child I think of the terrible life my girls and I had during my marriage and how happy my boyfriend and we were before this child came. I don't know what to do. He admits that he should not have taken the child without discussing it with me, but now it's "too late" he says and I have to deal with it. He says, "Don't you have enough love in your heart for a poor, helpless little boy?"
I cannot help but feel that this child has become more important to him than our relationship and our future together. He told me that he didn't know if we were going to work out, and that he wanted a child, so he took this foster child to assure that he would. He agreed to start trying to have a baby with me, but he seems to deliberately avoid me when he knows I am ovulating, or at least doesn't care enough to see me. I had a fertility test done last month and it was borderline; the doctor said, don't wait. But my boyfriend doesn't seem to be worried at all. We were about to get engaged before the child came, and since then my boyfriend pretends he was joking about marriage "so fast." I don't know what to do. My boyfriend puts the child in daycare for nine hours a day, and then takes him out socializing with different friends almost every night, when I am here waiting to be a loving mother with open arms, cooking meals, playing with and helping the children with their homework, going to church with them, etc. Most baffling, my daughters thought of the child as a little brother at first, until he was taken out of our lives.
Why would a man not want this child to have the company of two other loving children and potential siblings? What would you do in my situation? Just leave? My boyfriend took the child to Florida last week for seven days and left us home again. It's now been three weeks since I saw the child, and when I saw him on Saturday he did not even remember who I was. It breaks my heart. I just don't know what to do anymore. I thought perhaps someone from the fostering community could shed some light on this painful situation. Thank you so much.