I have been with my boyfriend for almost 2 years now. When we first met, he did not have any sort of custody of visitation rights for his kids (11f and 8m) due to his past and a strained relationship with the children's mother and her not allowing him to see them. Finally, a few months ago, he got rights to see them after 7 years of not seeing them.

Let me start of by saying, I love the kids. I have no problem with them. I have no problem with children at all! I am a teacher for a living, and BF and I have talked about possibly having our own in the future. On top of that, his kids are polite and well mannered, and there's no issues with them whatsoever.

Here's the problem. For WHATEVER reason, every time he brings them up in a conversation (when they're not here) it makes me shut down and distance myself from him. I don't do it purposely, I actively try not to do it. But I just can't help it. Just now he was talking about buying school pictures from the kids school, and I just didn't want to talk about it. I changed the subject and dodged the topic all together.

Its hard to describe it, but every time he talks about his kids it makes me uncomfortable. Maybe it's because the way he always says "my kids" "my responsibility" "I'm a parent, you're not" (this was in regards to a disagreement about the kid's Internet usage.) So maybe I feel this way because he keeps on ostracizing me from the relationship with him and the kids, even though I'm involved with them? I don't know. I wish I didn't feel so uncomfortable.

I don't know how to talk to him about this because I don't know how to even bring up the topic, especially considering I can't even describe my own feelings on the matter or pinpoint what's causing me to feel like this.

Any advice? Any step-parents or partners of people with kids from previous relationships feel something similar?