First vacation w bf’s 8 yo son

The last five days have felt like the hardest month of my life. There is so much to tell and I just need to get support advice maybe a super strong edible.

My boyfriend and I have been together about two years is eight year-old son is with him 50% of the time. I think with his son regularly for about a year and a half. I live with my boyfriend so the weeks that we have him (every other week) we are becoming a little family of three.

Son has adhd combined type and is medicated. The last few months have been a struggle - some issues at the end of the school year and some trouble with a friend. And this fall he is moving into a new school and 3rd grade. While we are all hopeful we think it may be a bumpy ride for awhile.

So the vacation was the three of us and another family we are close friends w and who basically know all our business. The other family also has an 8 yo that may have a little adhd…but not nearly to the level we are dealing with. And they have a 2 year old who is the cutest but also she’s still 2 so she’s a lot.

All of us share a house at the beach for five days.

Our drive to the beach was rocky… boyfriend almost turned around at one point. Truth be told when this vacation was suggested I was very hesitant because it seemed like a mindfiend. My boyfriend and I have never traveled solo as a couple… so doing our first trip with his son and another family is like doing a vacation on extra hard mode.

There were some really wonderful moments on the trip and some really really bad ones. I’m not gonna tell you about every breakdown or fight or tantrum except for the last one that happened the day before we left.

Boyfriend, me and his son get up early like 630 and go down to the beach to collect shells. We have a lovely time. Unfortunately, we forgot to feed his son before we left the house so by the time we got back from the beach, he was hangry. I don’t exactly remember how we got to this next point, but Dad had to leave for work (he was working remotely from the coffee shop) and I was tasked with getting his son breakfast. The other family was doing their own thing. It’s all bit of a blur now, but suddenly his son is screaming at me calling me a fucking bitch kicking me slapping me with his watch strap and telling me he wants to kill me. I’m trying to get him to come with me to pick up toilet paper from the store and to Walk and get some breakfast.

At some point, he calls Mom from his watch and now it’s the two of us talking to him well mostly her… I basically was just on the couch more or less trying to sit in the way he could hurt me the least. Mom text me and tells me he really needs a win to get over this and he’s just so hungry. He cannot function. She tells me if I can give him a choice where we eat breakfast that will feel like a win and I tell her absolutely there’s like four places within them walking distance he can choose from. So I offered that to him and he says no way he has now decided that he wants to go to the boardwalk for breakfast. I tell him and mom the dad has the car key so I can’t take him to the boardwalk even if I want to.

Mom continues trying to talk him down. I continue trying to minimize damage. And honestly, there’s a part of myself that is holding myself back from slapping the living shit out of him.

Apparently, while , this is going on mom and dad talked to each other separate from me (not sure why) and they decide that the “win” they are going to give him rather to pick out the restaurant because he doesn’t seem to want that anymore is to have me take him to the boardwalk for breakfast.

So all of a sudden, Dad shows up at the door, hand me the key and asked me to take him to the boardwalk. My reaction makes him realize that his ex-wife had not communicated this change to me and he apologizes for it in the moment but says they really think it’s the best.

At this moment, I’ve become so overcome and just say “I cant”. I grabbed the key from him and get my shoes and get out of the house as quickly as possible, leaving him alone with his son.

Apparently, his son was happy I left and then calm down pretty quickly. When dad told him he would take him to the coffee shop and get him breakfast there. Apparently he was basically a perfect angel for the rest of the afternoon. At some point, he asked why I left. Dad explained that I was feeling very overwhelmed by everything that was going on. Apparently there was some discussion and my boyfriend says his son wants to apologize (this was as of Thursday afternoon). It’s now Saturday afternoon and no apology has come. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I’m going to be asking my boyfriend and his ex-wife to explain their logic to me about the boardwalk thing. I don’t understand how they felt that was an acceptable thing to do. And it opened it up to so many more concerns. Was it safe for me to drive in the car with him in that state if he’s hitting and kicking me is there anywhere actually to eat on the boardwalk for breakfast? Or any of the stores on the boardwalk even open this early in the morning. And then once we’re at the boardwalk, he’s going to want more and more to go to the beach to get a souvenir to get candy to play mini golf. Am I just supposed to give into all of these things? What are we actually teaching him?

I know the ADHD brain is different and I’m learning more and more about it every day, but I also have to prioritize my own mental health and well-being. I did not grow up in a family were screaming was common and now I live in a house where someone screams almost every day on the weeks that we have him. This dynamic was amplified over the last five days and I’m just so emotionally and physically exhausted from it all.

If I wanted to say goodbye to my boyfriend and leave today, I don’t think anybody would blame me. But I don’t wanna do that. He’s the greatest man I’ve ever met and the love of my life so I want to work on this and I want to figure this out. My boyfriend has assured me that he learned a lot this past week from seeing his son in new situations and from watching our friends parent their kids he says things are going to change going forward and then he’s going to be a better parent I want to believe him and I’m going to try and be patient but I feel like I need to see some action pretty quickly maybe some written plans. Something to show me that he’s really hate this process and also how I can be involved in it.

Sorry this is so long. If you made it this far, I would really appreciate hearing from you.