not_on_the_family_booking

His family holidays still include his ex, not me

I’m 45 and I’ve been with him for eleven months. He is 48, divorced, and has a thirteen-year-old daughter. Before we met, he and his ex-wife had kept doing one family holiday a year with their daughter. Separate rooms, no pretending they were still together, just the three of them going somewhere she already loved. He told me about it early on and I said I thought it was good that they could co-parent without making everything hostile. I meant that. What I did not understand was how it would feel once I was his partner. They went to Cornwall in April. We had only been seeing each other for six months, so I did not expect an invitation. He messaged every day and brought me back a ridiculous lighthouse mug. It was fine, or close enough. Last week he told me they had booked Greece for next summer. He said it while we were cooking, as casually as if he was mentioning a dentist appointment. His daughter had chosen the hotel. His ex had found flights. They had already paid the deposits. I asked whether it had occurred to him to talk to me before booking. He said he had not realised it was something I needed a say in because it was a parenting arrangement that existed before me. I do not think he is secretly still in love with his ex. They argue about school shoes and handover times like two people who are very definitely divorced. His daughter also should not have to lose something safe just because her dad has a boyfriend. But I felt outside his life in a way I had not felt before. We have talked about taking a holiday together, but nothing is booked. I have met his daughter four times. She is polite and a little wary, which seems completely reasonable. I am not asking to be inserted into their family photographs after eleven months. I am asking whether there is ever going to be room for me in the plans that matter. When I said that, he heard an ultimatum about the Greece trip. I heard him defending a permanent structure in which his ex remains part of the family unit and I get the weekends around it. We stopped the conversation because his daughter was arriving. Since then we have both been painfully normal. I keep switching between feeling childish and feeling furious. He has not broken an agreement because we never made one about this. I also do not want to become the person who proves he can only have a peaceful divorce until a new partner objects. We are talking again on Wednesday. I am not going to ask him to cancel Greece. I am going to ask what he imagines family life looking like if we are still together in two or five years. Does every major holiday stay reserved for the original three? Could I ever come too? Would we build traditions of our own, or would those always be fitted around the old ones? I can respect the family he already has. I need to know whether being with him means I can only ever visit its edges.