My partner and I work for his company (established before we met) and his ex, unfortunately, has a share in this. This led to her assuming that he could up and leave work at the slightest notice, with me holding the fort.

After just three months, his ex moved her new partner in (as you can see, she was just demolished at the breakdown of the previous relationship!) and my partner became the childminder on those days that he visited - she was always late returning to her house so my partner was always late returning home. Eventually, after six months and many arguments, it was agreed that his son would come to our house every other weekend but that my partner would continue the midweek evening visits, where his ex continued to treat him as a glorified babysitter. The weekend visits proved to be a more acceptable arrangement, as at least my partner and I had time to ourselves every other weekend.

A year into the relationship, his ex decided that she would begin working for the company at it's main office, where we both work, rather than at her home office. As you can imagine, this was definitely not a good decision for the company as it left the three of us working very closely and to this day, I still can't really see what she got out of it, apart from of course, causing many, many arguments between my partner and I!

Six months ago, her partner, tired of my partner 'invading' his ex's house once a week, insisted the son stay overnight at our house midweek rather than my partner visiting. This was the beginning of what I am now considering could be the end - it has put a huge pressure on my partner as he has to leave work early to collect his son from school every Wednesday and return him there the following morning arriving at work late, in addition to leaving work early every other Friday afternoon to collect him from school and returning him there on the Monday morning. His ex assumes that this causes no problems at work as I am there to cover in his absence - this is far from the truth!

As of today, my partner and his son are out, somewhere - I am not sure where, as we had a huge row before they left and I left him with the ultimatum that maybe he should consider seeing his son elsewhere, i.e. not in our house. Retrospectively, I am wondering if this was such a good idea (!) but I really had reached the end of my tether. Pressure at work has led to my partner not sleeping during the night but wanting to sleep in the morning, leaving me to organise his son with constant requests for food that he then refuses to eat, claiming "it's not like Mum cooks it". I raised this with my partner this morning and he can't see a problem with it - apparently I should just ignore it!

We brought our house, with a garden, rather than the converted apartment that I had my eye on, for his son to play in - never once has he played in it, and now my partner is claiming that we should move to a bigger house so that we have more room - for 'we', I read 'his son', as when he is not here, we (my partner and I) have plenty of room.

After years of searching, I am less than three months away from starting a new (dream) job which will involve me travelling for over two and half hours each day, no longer working with my partner and continuing to try to jungle the fact that my partner and I have very different ideas as to how to bring up children.

I suppose that our backgrounds don't help - my partner's mother died when he was fourteen and he had to grow up quickly with a father who found it very difficult to cope after his wife's death; my partner at 21 fathered another son who, two years later, he felt he had to cease contact with following a complete breakdown with his ex-wife; my parents split up when I was twelve and although both have re-married, my teenage years consisted of argument after argument, where I felt that the new step-parents were far more the focus of my parents attention than I was; to top it all, I am only 25 - sixteen years younger than my partner and eighteen years younger than his ex!

I feel very alienated as I sit and type this - I DID NOT cause the breakdown of his relationship but continue to be made to feel like I did; despite my age, my partner and I are in love and I am not a gold digger looking for a father figure and he is not having a mid-life crisis - ideas that his ex has often suggested to me, whilst at work, where I can't escape. Except now I can, I'm leaving their company but I really don't want to leave him as well and I so desperately want to resolve our issues so that we can move forward.