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

He’s avoiding any claim of OP’s eldest being legally considered a child of the family.

I also imagine that he, rightly, has no intention of indulging the same constant dramas that blighted his marriage. Even if he wanted to keep some type of distant relationship, it’s hardly like he could trust OP to not expect and/or push for more. So it’s better to make a clean break on that front.

OP’s daughter isn’t his, and he never claimed her as his or led her to believe that he did. According to OP, she didn’t call him dad, and was quite aware that the relationship he had with her was entirely different to the one he has with his children.

Pressure came from extended family.

Pressure came from you.

You got in the way of sibling bonding by trying to force your SD to interact with your eldest. You got mad when your husband took youngest to his arent's house and SD was there. You got mad about the activity. You got mad when SD tried to get your eldest to back off when she was trying to play with her sister.

You were the one getting upset and causing upset in the home and your marriage when your in laws wouldn't pay for eldest to do the same activity your SD and younger were doing. Did you secretly think he'd cave and ask his mom to pay to keep your marriage? Your husband stuck by you even when he was getting bypassed for family money because of you. You've been here multiple times being upset about some situation or other and I can imagine your home is a place of great tension because of your discontent and feelings of entitlement for your inlaws to do for your eldest what they do for their grandkids. You felt like your eldest should be everywhere the youngest was and that was extremely unrealistic. You initiated the split because they wouldn't pay for some activity for your eldest. That's entitlement.

Your in laws saw you coming and while they were pleasant to your eldest, they didn't see her as their granddaughter and you couldn't see past that, even though your mom did not regard your SD as her family member and you seemed somewhat snide about her. I think you low key resented her because she didn't want to be besties or pretend sisters with your eldest.

Now there's going to be even more inequality and there's not a thing you can do about it. You got the house, but it sounds like he's ring fencing his and his daughters' interest in that and that's as it should be. A lot of posters warned you that his relationship with your eldest would change and now, again, you're upset when you knew this was going to happen.

I think a lot of men tend to be very focussed on what is present right now and can be reasonable step parents to DSC living with them full time (often more so than to their bio DC living elsewhere).

But then if they leave the home, they tend to just leave that relationship behind.

A lot women seem determine to believe in blended families and the dream that you can create the perfect family unit with step parents and children but in reality its so rare. Most people aren't really interested in taking on a parenting role of DC that don't belong to them and only really do it (or feign doing it) to perpetuate their romantic relationship with the child's parent.

It’s how the cookie crumbles.

He cared about your child while he was sleeping with you. Now he doesn’t sleep with you she doesn’t matter.

You’ve known for a long time your oldest wasn’t seen as their family. You’ve knew he didn’t want to marry you. You knew his daughter wanted no relationship as a family with yourself or your daughter.

Your youngest should totally be allowed to do things with just his daughter they are siblings and also even in a fully biological family at times different sibling groups go off together to do things that are their interests.

I remembered your previous threads when I read this post, it looks like you went ahead with the divorce to "protect" your older daughter and I remember you were told repeatedly that divorcing would be depriving your older daughter from the only father figure she had and yet you went head and now you're upset he isn't maintaining a relationship with her.

I think divorcing was the wrong move but its your decision, your daughters will still have different paths and material opportunities irrespective of the divorce and now your older daughter has lost the relationship to the father figure she had and she still doesn't have her own father in her life. And your younger daughter also has to deal with the consequences of a broken family and potentially more step parents and siblings in the future if either of you get into other relationships or marriages creating a further complicated mess.

Unfortunately you can't force him to maintain a relationship so just focus on your daughters and move on.

@GeorgeClarkefan
She's not his biological child
So she's not really his concern even though you all had lived together
Another thing?
Could she really "assert rights" because he showed her some compassion/awareness?
Utter tripe
He just wants well rid;
Sorry.

Some posters are remarkably sentimental about stepchildren unless it is the husband's children and the woman's step children. In which case the same posters drop any pretence at sympathy for step children.

The OP is being remarkably quiet about the role of her own mother. She insisted the OP and her husband marry although the husband didn't want to get married.
There is an awful lot being omitted from these threads from the OP. As the previous poster wrote, it was all about the financials. She wanted as much money as she could from her ex to give her own daughter somewhere to live. She has managed to keep the house. No wonder the in laws saw through her.

Ahh op your getting a bit of disagreement on this thread . For what it's worth after having had a brief nose through your other threads I understand you . I've been in this position and it's hurtful especially when you wouldn't behave that way yourself. I think you've done the right thing ending the marriage and think of the quality time you can spend with your eldest daughter whilst your youngest has nice times with her dad and other half sister . When it happened to me I had a oldest son and 2 shared sons with ex ,when we split I took the decision that my son wouldnt be involved as I didn't trust he'd be treated fairly or appropriately (I'd observed things on a family holiday with his parents esp his mother ,,and things she'd done and said had hurt me to the point I had to fight tears that made FIL look devastingly uncomfortable (he was lovely )and contributed to the relationship ending ) .I do t know what ppl get our of leaving certain children out especially when the cost isn't a issue ,,step kids/grandkids being excluded under these circumstances is designed to make a point and it's shit but some ppl are pieces and lots of them exist . Just be grateful your not one of them . I'm in a lovely relationship now ,,I have 8 (😬)kids of my own and 1 step son . I will inherit significantly more than my partner all WE have will go between OUR 9 kids cos I love my step son not as strongly as my own my own but I believe in fairness and he's not just my step son he's 2 of my daughters brother . Blended families only work with acceptance and fairness across the board . These ppl where not your ppl ♥️BTW my partners family don't give or even really acknowledge my kids anything and that's fine too . Me and my partner have vowed to do better and forge our own family .

Wow I have just read the OP’s past threads!

The OP’s opening claim that “none of this bothers me” about the financials is a load of cobblers

This was pointed out to you by numerous people when you made a post announcing you’d decided to separate over your eldest not doing the same hobby.

It was always going to happen.

You made it worse by trying to force his hand and trying to force your daughter on his family, when it was obvious they were not interested.

I honestly don’t know how you can be surprised at this outcome.

You broke up your marriage because you didn't like the inequality between your DDs. Fine. But you surely can't have been mad enough to think a split would improve the inequality?! It was only ever going to make the division worse and cement the fact your eldest DD isn't part of your XH's family.

This really nails it. Along with the issue of
not allowing SD and youngest DC to see each other without the eldest.

But you weren’t
otherwise you wouldn’t be divorcing

I’m sorry that your eldest daughter has lost the father figure in her life, but if you’re the OP who had a MIL that wanted to pay for the expensive hobby for the youngest and your eldest step daughter, but not your child, the dynamics were always going to end up this way because you wanted your child to be treated exactly the same as the biological Grandchildren and for whatever reason the Grandparents were unable to and your DH wouldn’t disagree with his family.
Rightly or wrongly you decided to end the relationship because you felt your daughter was being treated as a second class citizen in comparison to her younger sibling.
Im not at all surprised that he’s cut contact with your eldest, he was always in the middle of 2 sides constantly disagreeing, and he now wishes an easy life.

As @Sassylovesbooks says this is the crux of the matter You wouldn't allow your youngest and your step-daughter to spend time together without your eldest, and this has caused friction between your husband and you, as well as your step-daughter.
yet you had no issues with your daughters spending time together without sd, and were a bit “meh…sd doesn’t really like coming here” re why sd saw her dad and youngest at inlaws

I completely agree with this. I’m shocked at some of the responses on this thread.

None of this bothers me but I am shocked and distraught that my husband never asks about eldest or includes her in any outings he has had with youngest.

so if “none” of the financials bother you, why do you open your OP with a very detailed outline of supposedly what doesn’t bother you?

Why did you end the marriage out of interest?

Well, it’s her half-sister and step-sister.

You wanted a happy blended family where all the children got on and were treated equally by both sides of the family. This is the image/fantasy that you wanted but the reality has been very different.

Your in-laws are happy to have a relationship with your step-daughter and your youngest, because they are their grandchildren. They aren't in the least bit interested in your eldest daughter... polite, give presents at birthday/Christmas but that's as far as they wish to go. You can't force them to have a relationship with her, rightly or wrongly, that's not your choice to make.

You wouldn't allow your youngest and your step-daughter to spend time together without your eldest, and this has caused friction between your husband and you, as well as your step-daughter.

You are obsessed with everything being split 'fairly', and everyone being equal but that's never been the case since day one. It must have been obvious to you that your in-laws weren't going to treat your daughter as part of their family. You must have realised that this would cause issues? Having a child with your husband, has made those differences even more glaringly obvious.

It's no one's fault that your eldest has a deadbeat as a Dad, who doesn't see her and she has no contact with his family. It's circumstances that are out of anyone's control.

You've split from your husband, and you're still wanting everything equal with regards to the children!! It wasn't in marriage, it's not going to be in divorce! Your husband's obligation is to your step-daughter and youngest, not to your eldest. He's legally protecting his daughter's, and there's nothing wrong in that. I think he's stepped back, because if he continued contact with your eldest, your obsession with equality would never stop.

You should have never continued in the relationship, as soon as you realised your expectations weren't going to be met. It would have saved your eldest daughter an awful lot of heartache.

Yes this is hard but the op will need to ensure she sets up special things for her to do during those days. She will adjust.

One of my friends as a teenager had a step-dad do this to her. He'd been in her life since she was 2 and he was the only dad she had, she was distraught. I'll never understand how step-parents can be so cruel in separations and just completely cut a child out of their life.

I find this really sad. Your poor dd watching her sister and half sister go on days out with the man who she once saw as her dad, and being excluded

I feel sad that anyone would treat a child like that.

Regardless of any back story, the immediate issue is a little girl, who is seeing the break up of what she considered her family for years, and is now cut off, hearing her sister excitedly talk about plans with her dad.

These things are as complicated/easy as people want them to be.
Is your older daughter's father in her life? I'm assuming not as you say ex has been a father figure to her.
Also the age of your oldest is relevant. Did your ex come into her life when she was a toddler, or much later?
If there is no birth father involved, and your daughter was very small, I would have hoped the wider family would have embraced her as an equal, blood or not, and that relationship would have continued post split.
Unfortunately it would seem they never saw her in that light, and therefore expecting better of them now is unreasonable.
As upsetting as it is, that is a choice they have every right to make. I think all you can do is make sure that when the youngest is with her Dad, you do special things with the oldest that maybe you couldn't do with both. Ultimately you can only control your own actions.

Blended families are incredibly difficult.

It’s sad that he doesn’t want a relationship with her and I don’t know why he can’t have a small relationship with her but he doesn’t have to.

He sounds like a great dad and a pretty good guy overall.

It has only been a couple of months, so chances are he’s just laying the boundaries now and will relax it in the future.