Stepdaughter and Daughter's Wedding

This. Having dinner with your children a few times a week is not ‘maintaining a close relationship’ with them.

I feel really sorry for this man’s children. OP sounds extremely selfish to not see it from their point of view. Her husband sounds like just another crap father, but because fathers seemingly only have to take their kids to the park for half an hour, followed by feeding them a McDonald’s to be seen as a good dad by many, some people will think all of this sounds ok and that his children are the bad ones. Depressing.

Neither would I but OP did.

I’m sure they’d have found issue with that too to be honest. Maybe because their mum moved on to such an extent and had more kids they felt their dad shouldn’t be allowed to do the same (understandable but you’d expect more understanding as adults).

Well we assume she still lived with them and raised them - so no. But if she shipped them off to stay in another household and just went out for dinner with them a few times a week then yes I'd she was a shit mum.

It wasn’t even 80:20, is the point not that the kids didn’t appear to be comfortable enough to want to stay there.

What is appropriate then if the children who are teens/tweens say they want to live with their mum and don’t want to stay overnight regularly? Do you coerce them to stay anyway and enforce some sort of 50/50 regime against their will?

So many people on here say how 50/50 is awful and disruptive for kids and they need a base and a home. And then in the same breath they say that a dad who has EOW is a deadbeat and they’d not consider a relationship with someone who took such a part time approach to their kids.

Or could have lived apart from the OP, given his kids somewhere to stay with just him where they could relax, let OP raise her child, and moved in when the children finished school.

The idea of putting your children’s needs first shouldn’t be so alien.

We normalised broken families and adult entitlements ahead of childrens.

Do grown women really need someone to 'give them away'? Could she not walk down the aisle herself?

What does “even the OP” mean? Maybe the OP is wrong?

Being more to his actual kids than a dinner date while living full time with someone’s else’s.

There will be a reason they stopped wanting to sleep and he obviously didn’t care and it clearly wasn’t just having a new wife as mum having a new husband didn’t make them move to dads full time or even visit more.

They both of his children clearly feel that the ops daughter in their minds stole their dad from them the surname thing shows that as well.

It sounds as though your SD has confided her feelings to her mother and her brother. For her, he is her one father and their relationship is as father and daughter. SD and SS seem to be very clear on their father belonging to them. They have lines which they think should not be crossed as evidenced in your further posts.

Life has thrown in the situation where he has remarried and has raised a SD in another home. It is lovely that she regards him as her father and is happy to fulfil that role. Presumably he loves her very much but she is still not factually his daughter. He has a different relationship there.

I grew up in a blended family. We siblings do care very much about one another and thankfully don’t do things to upset each other. This situation wouldn’t occur with us but that doesn’t mean I can’t understand how your SD might feel. There are distinctions for our parents and us. My SF is very fond of me but would obviously have a deeper bond with his own children and do more for them in life. Likewise, my DM did all the motherly things that she should and cared deeply for her DSC, however, she felt a stronger connection with her DC. It is part and parcel of parents remarrying and can bring about a lot of strong feelings in all the DC. They aren’t necessarily easy to negotiate at all and the DC are typically just expected by their DP to get on with it and adapt gracefully. I would love to see more understanding on the difficulties experienced by the DC and more attention and recognition for their feelings generally.

I hope that your DD is happy to have you walk her down the aisle. I don’t think your SD is being completely unreasonable to feel as she does, although I get that these feelings are not convenient for everybody else and may cause your DD some disappointment. I don’t think she should be castigated for them and nor should your DH. Perhaps, if you can avoid seeing it as a big drama yourself you can make sure everything will just go smoothly.

I know. I meant his ex wife had more children with her second husband. Was she a shit mum for doing that?

I wouldn't marry a man who thinks a couple of dinner dates a week is an appropriate way to maintain a relationship with his 11 and 13 year old children. Why is the bar so low for fathers?

He didn’t have more children. DD is his wife’s child.

But what would have made him dad of the year? Remaining single until they were 18 and not being able to have a relationship despite their mum having a whole new family?

I don't get the impression she is blackmailing him. More saying to her mother and brother if he walks her step sister down the aisle she is done with him. We don't know she asked anyone to pass it on to her dad at all - or that she even knew it was planned - more just expressing her thoughts about what it would mean to her. I don't get the impression it's a great relationship anyway so probably wouldn't take much for the daugher to give it up.

Well they slagged her off behind her back so not that kind really. But is it such a heinous thing that the dad remarried (after his wife had already remarried and had more children)? Why is that so wrong?

My sister was an evil shit to my stepdad when I was a teen. As an adult she realises she was 100% wrong and feels awful about it (sadly he’s no longer with my mum). She had some issues going on. He also had two daughters and she would laugh and call them chavs and fat. Again she realises what a bitch she was now that she’s an adult (they had done absolutely nothing wrong). She was also horrible to my mum and various other people. The difference is she grew up (at 18 she was already ashamed at how she’d acted and apologised).

And his children then stopped wanting to visit overnight. He became a dinner dad.

Their dad moved in with a child their age and raised her. It’s not a crime but it doesn’t make him dad of the year either.

Sounds like he stopped being a parent to them and became more the fun uncle who takes them for dinners while your daughter got him as her daddy.

Sounds like they have always had issue with you/your daughter.

Really feel for your husband.

You would divorce a man who stepped up and became a good husband and dad to your daughter because of this?

You used poor judgement with your daughter’s natural father. You are doing the same here.

I would give my daughter away myself in the circumstances.

Of course but they didn’t say it to her.

The son’s reaction to the name suggests there was a lot of emotion around DD.

Well if he’s a shit dad, he’s a shit dad isn’t he? If my dad was shit, I’d reduce my involvement with him. I wouldn’t try to blackmail him and say if he does x then I won’t speak to him but I will do if he does what I want. Especially when the person my blackmail is aimed at hurting isn't even my dad but my stepsister.
If he’d forced his children to stay overnight at his house I’m sure people would have had an issue with that too. They were fairly old when their dad remarried - old enough to choose whether to stay or not. There isn’t anything that suggests he was shit. In fact maintaining weekly contact suggests quite the opposite. I guess his crime was to get married to someone else and be kind to her child. Maybe he should have remained single forever. What an asshole.

It’d be an exceptionally harmonious family where a dad moving in with a child of a similar age didn’t cause any issues.

Outwardly they were polite and kind.

But they were clearly upset.

Referring to someone BtEC Betty is not polite or kind - it was meant as an insult.