Does anyone else struggle with their stepdaughter and feel uncomfortable admitting it?

[AnnoyedOtter]

Is there anyone out there who can’t stand their “stepdaughter” ?! Just being honest!

Which relationship do you feel is more important here? A dad and his struggling 13 year old ,or you and him ?

Personally id back right off. This man gave life to this girl she didn't ask to be here and she's going off the rails. She needs love and support she's a young child and what happens now will affect the rest of her life .
He needs to wake up and sort himself out.

I cannot stand one of my sd's (at the time she was 18)

I tried,I really did but she was determined to break us up

The more I gave,the more she pushed

It's a long story but I had a massive 'him' problem as he buried his head in the sand and refused to say 'your out of order' to her

She got worse (while being egged on by her mother) and I was lining up everything so I could leave

Her dad got wind of this and panicked,he finally stood up to her,told her she needed to get a job to earn money,i wasnt her personal bank,he wasn't jumping to give her a lift whenever she demanded one,she wasn't to be rude (we didn't have to get along but manners mattered),she wasn't to sit and record us rowing so she could send it to her mother to cackle over,she wasn't to wait until he'd gone out and ring her mother to loudly slag me off and she had to clean up after herself/not destroy her bedroom (loads more but I'd be here a long time if I wrote it all out)

She started screaming at him,he refused to back down and she flounced back to her mother

But not before she found some photos I'd taken for his eyes only on his laptop and sent them to everyone-her mother,my whole family (who im nc with),my friends,my work colleagues and she put them on the Internet

She's very lucky I didn't report her for revenge porn-i had nothing left at that point

I understand it wasn't her fault her parents marriage broke up and she had no say in who her dad lived with after that,but I'm damned if I'm having that sort of behaviour in my home,manners cost nothing and I tried to make her welcome and get on with her

The second we both drew together and laid firm boundaries is the second she flipped and kicked off

I get on great with the other sd,there has been bumps in the road but we try to work together and sort things out

I've never claimed i was perfect and maybe I could have done things differently but I couldn't take her behaviour anymore

OP is not a step parent 🙄

I was you @AnnoyedOtter except it was a step son.

I tried and tried to like him but I just couldn't and I left as a result. I had to remove myself from his environment before I became part of his problems too.

I have no idea how his life worked out but I couldn't be around someone so demanding, manipulative and scheming. It was making me ill and I was already manoeuvring my work and life to avoid spending time with him.

I felt a sense of peace that brought me to tears as soon as I hit the motorway even though it meant I was moving back in with my Dad at 36.

Why doesn’t he apply to be the resident parent then? Given the mother is doing terrible job. It seems obvious to me.

She’s not your stepdaughter. She’s your boyfriend’s daughter.
She probably realises you don’t like her - kids aren’t stupid - so likely may play up more.
Just date her dad and keep the kids out of it. Weird you call her your stepdaughter though.

Might it be better to find a boyfriend without kids?

I can’t stand mine either

My step mum can't stand me and I'm NC with my dad as a result. I think it's because I'm a girl, she was better with my brother although would much rather prefer we didn't exist.

@AnnoyedOtter

How long have you been with her dad? How long has he been separated from the children's mother?

Where does he "live", if not with you? And why does he only see the kids EOW?

Feels like there is a lot of missing information here and I'd be incredibly interested to here the child's side of the story. And yes as 'vile' as she is, she is a child.

If my beloved children were with someone who was spoiling them and turning them in to ‘vile’ humans 90% of the time, would I

A) see if I could help them by organising my life to have them more than 10% of the time, or

B) carry on doing whatever the fuck I wanted in my 90% child free time, dating etc, do absolutely nothing in my 10% of time to help, and slag off the person doing all the parenting instead.

and if I then as a woman had chosen to go out with such a delight as B, would I

A) blame the girl entirely

B) have a modicum of intelligence to work out that this isn’t a good man, and leave the relationship

My step daughter is now an adult. She recently apologised to me for making my life hell when she was a teenager and didn’t blame me for not liking her at the time. I couldn’t stand her and no, I didn’t have parental love to carry me through because she simply wasn’t my daughter. But the point is, she now acknowledges how challenging it must have been for me.

I cant get my brain around the challenges here...one is a child born into a terrible situation ,we have no idea why the parents broke up ,terrible long unhappy breakdown ? Affairs ? Maybe they made a mistake and we're never together ?
This child has had to endure all of this and now has a feckless dad and has foisted his gf on her and she's suffering with it all ,different homes /rules etc.
V a girl friend who can choose any bf she likes ?

A devil child ? Jesus my Dd was like this @13 she is now on a gap year, a wonderful kind and thoughtful young women off to med school in September. Many 13yos find life difficult. Poor girl.

She’s being failed by her parents and taking it out on you and everyone else - I don’t see how you can fix things but how do you know she is vaping at her GF’s . If you don’t live with her much how do you know what’s going on. Are you and her father sharing critical stories? Why not step back and leave her father to it. Is her bedroom in your house? If not why do you care? If she isn’t going to school her future isn’t promising - perhaps you should leave

It's not going to work out. You need to remember age 13 is a notoriously difficult age for some teens and if you don't have the maturity to back off a little and be non judgemental then that's on you. Do yourself and this poor girl the favour of walking away. So glad I never had a 'stepmum'.

They are not a blended family. She's not a step BN parent

She probably despises you too. You come across as a petty little child. Do better.

13 is the worst age. It's hard to like them even when you love them! You need to recognize that this normal and be an adult, control your emotions.

I think in a normal loving family where parents are supportive and set boundaries, yes, 13 can be hard and then they start to grow up. But, we’re talking about a 13 year old who has zero support from either parent (although tbf we only know about the zero support from the father, the op saying the mother is equally bad doesn’t make it true) plus she is forced to spend time with an unrelated adult who thinks she’s vile. These 13 year olds get worse.

If it’s any consolation, my best friend’s stepdaughter was an absolute pain in the arse at that age too. Rude, bratty and just thoroughly unpleasant until about 20, she’s 27 now and she’s been lovely since about 21.

I feel your pain!!! Mine lives with us and has done in and off for the last year or so and now more permanently!