SM doesn’t want me in the house

[Eggandbeans]

I am nearly 30 and I’ve had a SM since I was 13. She wasn’t the OW and we always got on pretty well. I have 3 half sisters who I love but I don’t feel much for my SM. She’s always been good to me but as with any family there are things that I’ve resented, like when they go on a family holiday and I don’t get an invite. I’ve not rocked the boat but being honest I have maybe made a few subtle shots at her for it. I’d have liked to be closer to my DD and DSs but they moved to Cornwall before my DSs were born and I live in Kent near my DM and her family. I used to enjoy the “holidays” down to stay with them but as I got older I felt pushed aside and that I ultimately missed out because of the geography of it all.

Now my SM and I have had a little spat - she says it’s my fault and I don’t see it as overly important but she is very upset with me. My DD is trying to mediate but has now said that I can’t stay in the house anymore and he will have to meet up with me elsewhere. This has shocked me because I thought that whatever went on with me and SM wouldn’t have any bearing on my relationship with my Dd and DSs. Aibu?

I became a step parent to two children a long time ago. One of them was 13 at the time. Recently one of the step children became a parent (am trying to be a bit vague to avoid outing myself). DH and I had talked about the grandparent aspect before the baby was born, and we just assumed I would be called by my name. When I was told that I was most definitely a grandparent as far as the new parents were concerned, it felt absolutely wonderful. They said to us, the more grandparents the baby has to love, the better. So lovely of them and I think a baby can only benefit from its parents being so inclusive.

Bearing in mind as you say, this is all hypothetical at the moment, I'm struggling to understand why you'd say anything. Better to wait until (hopefully) your IVF is successful, you might feel completely differently by then. I'd apologise if I were you. A baby might be just the opportunity to bring everyone closer.

I’ve clearly missed a trick. I’m away to phone my mum and tell her how upset I am that she didn’t pay for me to go to the Caribbean with them last month. Never mind I’m a bloody grown up, I want to go!

Of course you can decide whatever you want your family to be known as to your children but you clearly wanted to hurt your DsM by having the conversation which was completely unnecessary.

Your anger is misplaced and should be directed at your DF who clearly has form for prioritising his newer family over you. Why would he change this now and take your side over hers? You should be suggesting your future children call him by his real name if anyone!

You have upset her and it is her house not yours so she is quite within her rights not to want you there.

Therefore YABU.

Its sad you have been excluded for all these years and I feel your hurt. Your SM obviously only wants your Dad and her own children in her life. You need to break away before the hurt ruins your life. Take care.x

@DuLANGMondeFOREVER
Flowers ?The sm should apologise imo . She’s the one who threw her toys out the pram when she heard something she didn’t like . Also the father is the one who buggered off so far in the first place , I’m not surprised op feels resentful . I don’t think the op is wrong in how she feels , she feels pushed out. Doesn’t matter whether she is 14 or 30.

Op , I would walk away from this situation . It hurts , but I would focus on yourself.

What a nasty attitude you have OP. I wouldn't want you in my house either and I totally understand your father taking her side on this. It's not like she's just your dads girlfriend, she's been around for 17 years! You've admitted to having 'digs' at her but I wonder just what kind of SD you've actually been because it doesn't sound like you've been nice at all.

You reap what you sow I guess. You've made it clear to both her and your father just how little she means to you. Something better left unsaid, not rammed home like that. I'm amazed that you are questioning not being welcome in their house. Surely you should have grown out of this kind of behaviour by now?

I get that the issue should be with the OP’s dad. Absolutely. But I’m not sure that means she should therefore feel more kindly towards her step mum.

My own children have been treated very poorly by my ex, first and foremost, but their step mother has played a massive part in that. My ex did, eventually, remove his partner from our children’s lives (i.e. he did the right thing), but he only did that when forced to deal with the issue head on, in other words, his children got old enough to vote with their feet and he could no longer expect a court to side with him over contact. They are angry with their dad but she engaged in piss poor behaviour towards them herself. Furthermore, Had she not liked how he treated his children, she had the option herself of not putting up with it. She didn’t.

It is fine to lay the blame where blame is due. But it is unlikely after 17 years this is something that is one-sided from dad alone.

OP, it reads to me that you have unacknowledged resentment towards your father that you haven't dealt with.

Possibly feelings of abandonment when he moved away, which is really understandable.

Him not at least asking you to join them on summer holidays is very poor. 14 is an age when feelings are sensitive.

He certainly wasn't sensitive to your feelings.

I think all these emotions have become entangled with your SM.

She sounds as if she was doing her best while juggling her own young children.

I think you need to admit to yourself that your final pop at her, age 30 has pissed her off, and probably really hurt her. She probably feels she has tried to do her best.

Your father is married to her and it's no surprise he puts himself ahead of you.

I think if you want to make life a lot more difficult for yourself, you will continue on this path....or you can really examine who you are mad at.

I would figure these things out, with help perhaps and make amends.

Wishing you well.

Call her glamma because she is gorgeous

Dear god pass the sick bucket

OP literally says SM has always been good to her. It’s right there in the first paragraph.

Sorry, no.

I hate this bullshit of a woman somehow being responsible for a man’s action or inaction.

She must have been influencing him.

Still HIS choice not to prioritise HIS child. That’s 100% on him.

OP doesn’t have to be nice, civil, or even adult about it.

And SM doesn’t have to have a hostile and rude adult in her home. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Doesn’t matter whether she is 14 or 30.

Yes it does. Standards are different for adults. Saying deliberately hurtful things to parents and stepparents is normal for teenagers, but people mature and grow out of it.

If OP cannot get over her childhood and grow up into a responsible adult, she needs to seek therapy. No one can do that for you.
The resentment felt may will be valid, but it’s going to ruin OPs own relationship with her father and sisters. She’s self sabotaging.

@SmallChickBilly

Nope, you couldn't be more wrong. He was, is and has always been desperate for more contact, but has been thwarted at every turn. The reason he hadn't moved closer initially was because he spent everything he had to get an inadequate court arrangement just to get contact because DSDs mum didn't want him seeing her. He was forced to live with his parents just to finance court costs and the move. He has persistently tried to have more time with DSD, and actually has a pretty decent relationship when he sees her, but has been really hurt by her lack of interest. I won't go on about it, but I really don't think he could have tried harder in the circumstances and I just hope that when she's old enough she'll see it for what it really was. We moved to the area we could afford, that would give DDs a chance of a decent start, with the hope that DSD would benefit from regular visits and great opportunities. When I say I encouraged it, I mean it was a huge financial step for him, having been so badly off, so he was nervous about it. He never lived near them to start with, she moved away after a very brief relationship and failed to alert OH to the fact that she was having a baby. After thirteen years of fighting for some time with his daughter he's disheartened and exhausted and I can't say I blame him. We haven't moved physically that far away, but infrastructure between the two places is rubbish so it's quite a drive.

Not saying OP is in the same circumstances, but just trying to give some perspective

You're not wrong to feel the way you do or to not want her to be called grandma.
She's not wrong to be upset about it.
But you must have known there would be consequences for saying what you did?

Sorry if I’ve missed anything as I haven’t read the whole thread, but I was in a similar circumstance with my dads wife.

We were polite for years. We had a spat. I wasn’t allowed in the house to see my father. Had to meet elsewhere.

I blamed him for not reminding her that the house was half his and he’d see me there if he wanted, and she could go out at whatever time i was to visit him.

I later found out he couldn’t tell her that as she was secretly physically bullying and abusing him. And he couldn’t bring himself to admit it at the time or hit her back, so he took it and hid it, feeling there was no other way as nobody would believe that this lovely lady was a violent bitch.

So perhaps your step mother may be abusing your father so he cow tows to her.

If you want to be part of their lives you can either profusely apologise and agree she can be granny Jenny, or you can see him out of the house and be done with her.

Knowing what I know now, I find it a great relief to never have to see my step mother again.

Reading between the lines I get the strong impression that you don't realise how rude the way you phrase things are, and this is the last straw. The way you have described why you don't want her to be called that on here sounds rude and antagonisticx and you make it sound like you said it similarly to her in person, and yet "it wasn't designed to hurt her". You also say it is entirely practical and yet it couldn't be plainer that you do resent her and it is a personal slight because you feel she has excluded you in the past. That is fair enough, but you don't seem very self aware.

If it was truly just a matter of semantics to you, a totally innocent basic adherence to blood relations, then you wouldn't have felt strongly enough to bring it up now when you're not even pregnant yet. It obviously was an insult to make a point of it now.

You either need to be more open with them about things that have upset you in the past to work through it, or be more polite to her if you want a harmonious family life and to be able to be in her home. You can't expect to go there and make sly digs and still be welcome.

You're an adult, hopefully soon to become a parent. Instead of all these juvenile "shots" and holding onto past resentments, how about giving your head a bit of a wobble and just TALK to them? Being civil is social skills 101, and it sounds like you missed that class.

Maybe she's a shitty person who's manipulated your Dad into effectively abandoning you. Or maybe all those "subtle" digs actually weren't subtle at all, and in fact she's been weathering you being a shitty individual to her for the past 17 years. The answer is probably somewhere between these extremes, but if you want any sort of relationship with your family, you need to calmly and respectfully talk out your issues.

As for the "granny" point. Sorry, I think it's a bit ridiculous that you'd make a big deal of forbidding your child from calling her granny (yes, you did) it's not your relationship, it's theirs. Your dad and SM will have been a family unit for the entirety of your child's life. How long do you carry on that resentment for? Will your sisters be "half-aunts"? If you ended up in the same situation down the line, remarrying with a 13 year old in tow, or into a family with a hostile 13 year old, would you be happy to take on the respective roles your dad and SM have had to take on?

I think you sound deeply hurt by your dad's choices in the past and you've been taking it out on your step mum for years. And now you've pushed it too far and your dad has hurt you yet again by failing to prioritise you.

He shouldn't have excluded you as a child. As an adult, you're showing an alarming lack of empathy which I doubt we'd see if you hadn't been hurt in the past. They're right to make an issue of it. You cannot have failed to know it would be a bit of a knock back and now she's hurt you don't give a shit. Putting aside what's been done to you, do you really want to be that person?

Whatever your step mother didn't do, she is probably aware of more than you in terms of what she did do and has put up with.

Separate the issues. Explain how you've been hurt in the past and how it made you feel.
Make sure they understand how important it is to hear you.Acknowledge you've reacted in less than appropriate ways. Accept that as an adult, your dad is going to put his wife first, especially if you're saying hurtful things and pretending you don't know/don't care about the impact. You need to do this or you'll push them further away and it's clear your dad will not cover running after you, I'm sorry. He is probably more torn than you realise.

A shot is a shot whether subtle or otherwise, and the recipient usually gets the message.

You're a grown up now, hoping to become a parent. Cop on and stop taking childish, teenage digs.

People who are saying op is a adult need to realise that feelings can come up at any age .
I had some trauma in my childhood and I’m 30 now and it’s only now I have been able to reflect on it fully. Maybe op realised she felt left out, something could have triggered the feelings of abandonment . Should she just sit on it and say oh yes to everything the sm wants ? No .

Personally I will say again I think the father is weak and under the sm spells. It’s his house too. Banning op from the house is ridiculous. That would be it for me . I’d personally walk away for good .

SM isn’t a witch. She didn’t cast any spells. OP’s DF made his choices for which he’s responsible.

And no, OP doesn’t have to be polite to SM, or choose not to be deliberately hurtful.

But then SM doesn’t have to have someone like that in her home.

I can't believe this is all related to holidays. You had holidays with your mum, why are you entitled to twice as many holidays as your sisters. Then you say you didn't want to go on holiday until Florida. By then you were an adult so should have paid for yourself.
You know what you said was hurtful but just don't care. Tbh you still sound like you're 13. Either apologise or accept your relationship with your dad and sisters will suffer.

OP - I’m divorced and your feelings chime in that I think my daughter has similar displacement feelings. I’m also the child of divorced parents with a SM of my own so know what those feelings are like. However, I think you’re not being entirely honest about your feelings. As others have pointed out she seems to be taking the burden for all your feelings and your dad is off the hook. I can see why she feels upset. My daughter has been having therapy and has found it enormously helpful in untangling all her ambivalent feelings. I think you should consider that as you sound stuck in childhood patterns and feelings.

OP can I ask, did you live with your Mum? How often did you see your Dad before he moved to Cornwall? Did you go on holidays with your Mum?

My sister didn't come on holiday with us when she was 17 and could be left alone in the house for a week. However, you at 14, were probably living with your Mum so your Dad decided to go on holiday with his wife and other children.

Florida is incredibly expensive, flights alone are incredibly steep. Did you offer to pay for yourself to come too as you were in your late 20s and presumably working? Did your partner want to come too? Or were you wanting to go away on holiday without him/her?

All your anger seems to be aimed at your SM, and even when you say you blame your Dad too you then say but it is the SM's fault because without her he wouldn't have had to make that decision. I do think you would benefit from some counselling to talk through your teen years.

Your SM is upset because she sees her relationship with you differently. My best friend is a SM and whilst her biological children were paddling in the sea ages about 7 and 5, her SM was dressed all in black, on a beach in France, completely silent. She carried a cloud over her head the entire holiday because she just refused to join in with anything but they couldn't leave her for an entire day at the villa as she didn't want to be left out. It was incredibly frustrating. So the step-daughter will say you are not my Mum, but my friend tried everything to be kind to her.