AIBU to be upset he has cut off my eldest daughter?

okay.. I’m confused… is OP not the mother of the two girls. If not then, I changed my mind on the above. Has he a biological daughter before he met OP? I guess I don’t know the backstory well?

So, you had a child with a deadbeat dad. Then met a rich man, fell pregnant quickly, forced him to marry you, and treated his existing child as an inconvenience. You didn;'t make her feel welcome into your home so much so that she doesn't stay there and sees her dad elsewhere. What you ideally wanted was to her to be shunted aside and your own DD to be slotted into her spot. You almost achieved this with her dad, but did not manage to completely do this with the in laws. There were a million things you could have done with your existing DD when your joint DD and DSD were together, but you wanted your existing DD to have the same significance to your in laws as their own grandchildren, including inheritence. It's very grabby and opportunistic. I am glad the man and his daughter are free of you.

I mean there’s one thing ops made fair between her daughters. Neither get to live with their dad now 😅

I think a big part of the issue which the OP just can't see is that she wants it to be equal when it benefits her DD but doesn't care when it's her DSD. Which is fine in a way, we all favour our own, I think but she can't accept that in the same way that she favours her DD, her ex and his family were always going to be more interested in DSD

In her posts on this thread she is very clear that her ex spent more time with her daughter than his own but also snipes about him having plenty of time with her that somehow took away from her DD.

Yeah, I remember those threads. The OP didn't really seem to register that her younger daughter has two half-sisters. Instead, the OP seemed to view her own daughters as "real" sisters, and her stepdaughter as stepsister to both of them, even though she was actually the half-sister of the younger one.

Honestly, being a child in a blended family sounds like an utter nightmare. I'm so grateful my parents stayed together while I was growing up rather than put me and my siblings through this shitshow.

The step daughter is only 13 now and the youngest is 6 - some from at least the ages of 7 to 13 the step daughter has had her dad live with another family, including a new step sister, on a full time basis, whilst she only visits intermittently. That can be tough for a child and it sounds like she did struggle and wanted time with her dad and her younger sister without her step sister there. And her paternal family tried to support her - with the unfortunate impact of making the OP's daughter feel left out. However I think the solution to this would have been for the OP to support her daughter and help her understand why her stepsister needed to be with her dad and her dad's family - not to try and push for equal treatment for her daughter. Because the situation was intrinsically not equal.

@GeorgeClarkefan I really think AIBU isn’t the right place for this post, you’d be much better talking about these sorts of things on the relationship board.

I actually think this whole situation is incredibly sad. Did you and your husband ever explore counselling? I really think relationship counselling could have really helped this situation.

Personally I think his family treated you poorly and should have made you feel more welcome and some of the things they excluded your daughter from are cruel. I was brought up in a step family and my step-dad’s family always treated me equally and didn’t differentiate. However I think the hobby lessons, you should have let go and weren’t the hill to die on. I get you felt bad for your daughter, however arguably she’s in a worse situation now and has lost her father figure.

Where I think you have gone wrong is that as his family repeatedly tried to push you and your daughter out, at that point you should have sought relationship counselling and decided together how you were going to tackle this and put on a united front. I also think family counselling may have been beneficial with your stepdaughter. It seems there was never any real work of integrating her into your family life, or you into her life. She can only have been 5 when you met, unless things changed recently, a lot more should have been done to blend the family more. She comes across as jealous of your eldest daughter and I imagine that stems from her having grown up with her Dad, that is completely natural.

I actually think it’s incredibly sad that the marriage has ended over this.

Exactly, OP has said it’s poor form to look at previous threads but this thread is a little disingenuous because taken at face value anyone who hasn’t recognised the OP will think it’s awful that a man can just cut out a child he’s known for 8 years.
All the previous threads, and those of us who haven’t looked at them because we remember the previous posts know that this situation is almost entirely of OPs own making. She chose to end the marriage because of the inequality of treatment between non related siblings.
If I was the MIL and money was no object then personally I would have treated the three kids to same hobby, however OP can’t expect the eldest step child to want to hang out with her own eldest child, they are not related, don’t live together etc
Blended families are never going to be exactly fair, instead of rocking up to things they weren’t invited to, OP and her eldest daughter could have been doing something just for them, without a smaller sibling tagging along.
My children are all full siblings they are not all treated exactly the same due to ages/interests. Their treats are relevant to them, not equal. My 13 year old would be mortified to have to hang out and do an activity with my 6 year old.

There is a lot of history that the OP hasn't mentioned in this thread but in a lot of previous ones. The exh's oldest DD has been pushed aside for years by OP so that her two kids could always be together. The DSD has not been wanting to come to their home because of OP and her oldest DD so she has tried to spend time with her younger sister and dad at her grandparents place but then OP and her oldest DD would show up unannounced too. The exh really has been put in an impossible place by OP where he has basically had to choose between OP and his DSD, or his own oldest child.

I never understand the Mumsnet POV that more is expected of step mums than step dads. What I see in threads is an expectation that step dads pay for everything, treat their step children as their own, including their family and for life because they "come as a package". But a step mum paying for an ice cream or doing an occasional school run is "being taken advantage of"

The OP clearly wanted both of her children to have the same financial resources and the ILs not being willing to pay for her DD is a huge part of this.

Sorry to be brutal but if you want two children with the same circumstances - then don't have two different fathers. It's always going to be different in some way

The weight off the ex husband’s shoulders will be enormous. Not to have this endless needling from wife about forcing his family to to treat her child from a previous relationship 100% identically.

And the in-laws are now probably enormously relieved that they can go about having a relationship with their grandchildren without the dark cloud of the Op hanging over them trying to distaste things.

and the person who will be most relieved? The step child who the OP seems to think is some kind of devil incarnate.

Oh and as I say upthread… it will be a relief for mumsnet posters not to have another thread from the OP bitching about her in laws not paying for lessons for her child from a previous relationship and so on.

Imagine when the time came for university and the in laws perhaps offered to pay their grandchild’s tuition fees. The poison that would have dripped from @GeorgeClarkefan would have been unreal

Her mother’s ex husband.

You are not together any more you do realsie that?

Not really, go read her previous threads. There a lot of backstory and her ex was a way between Father to her daughter than her real father was but OP destroyed the relationship for her own weird obsession with "equality"

This is an example of you being snide about your stepdaughter, GeorgeClarkenfan.
If you fully accepted your stepdaughter as part of your family how could your husband's time with her be at the expense of time with family?
Every single time you and your mother have gone out with your daughters and left out your stepdaughter, that is the equivalent of your husband and his mother going out with his daughters and leaving out his stepdaughter.
There is a real lack of objectivity on your part in all this. Your ex is following your lead, and involving his stepdaughter in his family activities just the same extent as you involve his stepdaughter in yours.
I'm surprised at how many replies seem to agree with your double standard about what should be expected of stepfathers versus stepmothers.

Why did you split?

@GeorgeClarkefan I can’t imagine an 11 year old caring what a 6 year old is up to tbh. Are you sure this ‘exclusion’ she’s feeling isn’t just in your head?

No, it sounds like the SD never took to either of them. Got a feeling the whole family never really liked OP, were just civil, and this then extended to the OP DD. The DSD sounds like yet another family member the OP tried to push her daughter onto. Trying to force and control things only made things worse.

I dont think any adult has behaved great around any of these children. The relationship shouldn't have got off the ground as it never worked from the off.

Sadly some parents seeing their new blended families not working, think a new joint child will pull everything together, and be some kind of magical solution.

The younger child looks to have been used as some kind of bargaining chip, if the family (including DSD) wanted to see the yongest, then they had to spend time with the eldest too. But that didn't work to plan.

No… she’s not made her welcome in her “faaamily” home, she’s blocked or caused issues with her youngest engaging with her sd.

But has the op treated her ex step daughter the same?

I feel for your daughter for all the rejection she must have felt during the relationship and now this. But a clean break now will be easier in the long run.

I get you felt you wanted your child treated equally. But when you saw that wasn't happening with the 1st few instances you should have drawn back and done fun things with your family and kept his family as just polite but not close relatives through marriage type relationship. Pushing her onto them and trying to insert her to occasions where she was not wanted only further damaged the relationship and her self esteem.

You have been fixated on this issue for some years now and it isn't doing any of you any favours. Your ex probably knows if he had any sort of relationship with your eldest then he would have to keep on having these arguments and tensions about why your daughter isn't getting what your youngest has. You have already done it with the magazine. If he wants to treat his daughter to a holiday, or new toy, a day trip, it would soon be well what about my DD. Your SDD has always felt uncomfortable around your child for whatever reason, so to share part of his contact days with your DD will be at the expense of his eldest.

Then there is what will happen if he gets into a new relationship, she may not accept the ex step child into the mix so your DD could face rejection here or cut off at an even later date. There has been too much drama in this blended family for the relationship to continue problem free. Things may have been different if there had never been any tensions and all family members loved and accepted each other.

The best you can do now is use his contact days as fun one on one time for you both. As you should have done years ago when he wanted to take the little 1 off to see her family

He is wrong.

I am still a massive part of my step kids lives from my dd's dad. They have zero claim on my estate.

They were 9 and 7 when their dad and I first got together. They are 23 and 21 now. I split from their dad officially 8 years ago. I have been in their lives longer than not. I was with dsd on monday for lunch. They are all at mine for father's day on sunday, are with me for Christmas and Easter .

They are my dd's family. I have assisted in raising them.

I could never walk away from them.

I dated someone who couldnt accept that they were part of my life. Then I met dh and he loves them as much as he loves my dd.