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I live very close to my partner. He's a decade older than me, and divorced from the mother of his three daughters. The mother is an alcoholic, and the youngest two (20 and 16) are largely estranged from her; occasional text, card, etc, but they've seen her twice in two years. Their eldest sister, 21, lives with the mum. My partner is ex-forces - aviation. They divorced seven years ago. The wife went after her then husband with a knife, while he'd had an affair with a woman down the road and was about to leave the marriage.  We've been together a year. 

Because of his affairs, they verbally abuse him for 'wrecking our home.' But both very reliant on him. He does everything for them. He won't go up against the middle one (20 years old) in particular, as he says he's walking on eggshells around her. He doesn't want her to say things that hurt him. I get this. We all protect ourselves. But she takes the absolute piss. She screams at him for the entire duration of a 2 hour car trip, and then he gets up the next day at 2am to drive her to the airport. He is a total doormat to them, always at their beck and call, always ready to their bidding.

I run two businesses, so I can't just drop everything because his girls have slunk off together down town. There's a lack of communication regarding them; if we sat down and talked through the forthcoming week, we could maybe alleviate some of this, but I know that his girls won't necessarily have their social calendars set up in that sense. But it's this uneven, 'I'm free,' attitude and I'm not, but on Saturday, he disappeared to fix his car and then drive 20 miles further on to have supper with them. He says, 'can't I have supper with them?' Of course he can - but then he has to respect when I'm not free, or if I chose not to communicate my plans.

I don't dislike his girls - I don't know them.

I love him but I don't like how he's behaving, and I can see that he doesn't like being 'called out' on any of it. I understand that it's very difficult, and they've been behaving in this way for a long time. I know that I will always come after his girls. I wish that the communication was better, that he could brave the boundaries needed to make this work for everyone. I suspect as an ex-pilot, he's used to being in control; certainly, I've talked to a few spouses of men who had similar careers, and they all seem to tip-toe around their husbands. Our relationship is generally easier and better when the middle one isn't around, but I also can't expect that to always be the norm. I have always been very supportive about him spending time with his girls, but the balance has gone wildly out of sorts of late, and I don't know what to do.