To think my Dh was a selfish twat last night?

[bettyfretty]

It's playing on my mind but I can't work out if it's being selfish in what he said or not.

My step daughter is 17. Get on with her mum and family on her mums side great. No issues with co parenting. They did move away - 35 min drive from us a few years back but not caused many issues.

So dsd is 17 now, in college, part time job. She was coming to us every other weekend and extra when she wanted but that's stopped now. She has a key to our house and just comes when she wants too. There's a good bus route for her to come and go as she pleases. Sometimes we don't see her much at all, especially now she has a job and she likes to spend all her free time out with her mates doing god knows what....teenage stuff. Her life is at home with her mum. She has everything there and she's just growing up.

The past year or so she only really comes to us when she feels like she has too but we understand that. We include her in everything we do - or at least ask if she wants to join us on days out etc. When she goes coke to us, she's usually rude, acts like she doesn't want to be here. She recently had her birthday and we tried to amke a huge fuss but ultimately she came for her gifts and then buggered off into town with her mates and didn't come back 😂

There always been an issue where she plays her mum and dad against each other. If she falls out with Dh, she will go crying to her mum and vice versa. She falls out with her mum quite regularly which results in a phone call to Dh announcing that dsd is coming to live with us. It lasts a couple of days and then she goes back to her mum.

It happened again a few days ago. Rang up Dh saying she's had enough and was coming to live with us. She said her mum had had enough of her and told her to come live with us. Turned up at home with her little handbag - no clothes etc. She then asked if she could invite a boy round to the house. Dh was firm and said no, he wanted to sit down and talk about what's happened with her mum and there was no way she could just turn up with a random boy and act like nothings happened.

Spoke to dsds mum who admitted she maybe over reacted herself to dsd but she was fed up of her attitude. She's just had a baby herself so she's tired and I feel for her. I have huge respect for her mum, she's great and tries her best. The attitude of my step daughter is pretty bad at the moment. It has been for some time.

Anyway the next night as per, she starts hinting she wants to go home. Bearing in mind it was late, Dh had been working 1.5 hours away from home so done lots of driving, hadn't been in long or had his tea, he offered to take her home.

But then he said: 'this isn't fair on me all this, you expect me to take you home now. You do this all the time and just expect me to run rings around you, it's not fair on me'

The amount of times he said 'this isn't fair on me' I thought was quite selfish of him. He then said how 2 nights in a row he hadn't spent anytime with our son (who is only young) because she had turned up yet again after a fall out with her mum.

I felt quite bad for her here. If her mums telling her to go live with her dad but then dads making out like she's a burden then my step daughter will surely be feeling a bit shit?

DH drove her home and I pulled him up on it when he got back. I said that DSD is his responsibility too and not just her mums. I also said that while it's meant he hasn't really seen our son for a couple of days, she is his daughter too and she hardly sees him - fair enough it's her choice now (she's always always welcome at our home). He said he didn't mean it in a selfish way, he just meant that he knows dsd doesn't want to or have any intention of living with us. She is just using us when she falls out with her mum and that's what he feels is unfair on him. He would rather help her learn how to communicate properly instead of the whole drama that it creates when she just turns up announcing she's living with us.

Opinions? I don't know if I'm right to pull him up on what he said or not. He handled the night she turned up absolutely great. But the minute she wanted to go him he just started what I thought was being quite selfish and like she's a burden.

I just felt like we could of done a bit more really and tried to take it off her mum a bit.

I appreciate you’re well-intentioned but the time and the place for easing the burden on mum is having a conversation when things are calm and settled, not pouncing on an opportunity which undermines mum’s parenting by letting DSD stay purely because she wants to teach mum a lesson (I don’t believe DSD for one minute that her mum told her to go live with dad - if she did then it’s mum that needs pulling up, not your DH).

I think it's lovely of you to want to take some stress off DSD's mum. BUT, the issue here is that you are doing DSD no favours by 'catering' to her tantrums. I don't mean not to let her come stay for a few days if she and her mum need some 'space', but it needs to be made clear to her that she needs to talk things through with her mum when they have both calmed down AND that she needs to make her own way to yours and her own way back. No more lifts or driving her to and fro.

She's soon to be 'out in the world' and she needs to learn that the world isn't going to cater to her and that there will be times she needs to sit down, calm down, and learn to hold her temper and make rational decisions if she does become angry, rather than stomping off. Uni isn't going to put up with tantrums, neither are her future employers, and (hopefully) her future life partner won't either.

I suggest that you and/or DH discuss this new 'strategy' with her mum so she knows that things may be a bit different on your end.

I was just seeing through her eyes but she is very very selfish and thinks the world revolves around her.

All teenagers are self-centred. They also engage in risk taking behaviours. Lots of psychological studies on this stage of life and brain development as to why this is so. They do grow out of it, thankfully. So, while not something to encourage, it’s also not something that is a failure on her part either. She’s still learning to be a human being.

I agree with you (and you sound like a lovely stepmum!).

She probably already feels pushed out if both her parents have much younger children at home. She needs to feel wanted in both homes, even when she’s being an annoying teenager.

You sound like a great step mum OP Could it be that their are new babies in each home that is causing your step daughter'sd present behaviour?

'there are'

Your husband was in the right, you should be backing him up.

She's a madam but ultimately still only young. I wish my step mother was as nice and understanding as you! I get where your husband's coming from but he needs to discuss it with her properly.

She recently had her birthday and we tried to amke a huge fuss but ultimately she came for her gifts and then buggered off into town with her mates and didn't come back 😂

Why is it funny?

He should have said “it is too late for me to drive you back to your mums now, so you will need to get a bus home tomorrow.”

no further discussion needed to be had at 17.

Oh I don't deny that dsd needs putting in her place. Her attitude is awful, she looks down at everyone and has no time for her family on either side. I fully backed Dh in not having the boy around the hose and it frustrates me massively when we get a call saying she's coming to live with us.

Her mum speaks to me about it quite often and I back them both up. It's a lot to do with her best friend fo about 2 years. She's not a good influence unfortunately and dsd is not part of a good crowd.

I did say that I couldn't fault Dh on the way he handled it. It was just his outburst of 'this isn't fair on me' continuously made me think 'well she's going back to her mum in a minute and we won't have to deal with her again for god knows how long'

It sounds like all parents have been letting her get away with rude and obnoxious behaviour for a while and now they're getting fed up with it. This girl has learned she can be a dick to one parent then go running to the other one. It doesn't sound like co-parenting at all.

I have totally backed him up. He was right in the way he dealt with it over the 2 days she was here. I just thought he also sounded quite selfish too

He's completely right. She sounds like a right madam. The birthday thing I would have found infuriating and not funny in the least.

Well, her behaviour and attitude does make her a burden, and her behaviour towards her father is unfair. She is 17 so plenty old enough to be responsible for her behaviour and honestly to know better.

And it's not so much that DS is more important than her, so much as it is that she is not the only one that matters, that he is important too, that she is not the center of the universe.

It was frustrating but we chose just to make light of it. She was told by her mum and dad that we wanted to spend time with her but ultimately if she's going to just sulk and moan then what would be the point?

I wouldn’t have driven her home, I’d have made her stay.

she’s been a teen but it doesn’t mean you all have to accept it

I agree with you. Your DSD is being selfish, but she’s a teenager, it’s in their nature especially when it comes to their parents.

But it wasn’t her choice to have separated parents and it wasn’t her choice to have her separated parents living 35 minutes drive apart from each other so she deserves to be accommodated. Your DH needs to accept this is just a consequence of having a child he no longer lives with. He presumably has had much more time with his son recently than he has his daughter and he was out of order to tell his daughter that she shouldn’t have come because it means he doesn’t get enough time with his other child. I’d find that very hard to forgive in his daughters position and he needs to apologise.

@samyeagar yeah I maybe didn't see it like that. I just worry that she thinks her siblings (on both sides) are more important than she is. When I started a relationship with Dh, I made it very clear that she would always be priority over me as that's how it should be. Now maybe I'm finding it difficult as we hardly see her and her mums at her whits end with her.

I think you are out of order calling your DH a selfish twat tbh.

She’s running rings around all of you. She’s acting like a spoilt madam and needs to grow up. She certainly can’t keep going between houses like she does because she’s had a strip and using you both as a stop off point because mum has had enough of her attitude. She can’t just decide that clicking her fingers she can stay at her dads and dad will drop everything for her.

The daughter knows she has a safe space at her father and step mothers house as evidenced by the fact that she takes it for granted that she can just turn up and flit off as she pleases.

This would be a whole different discussion if the father had demanded the daughter leave, but he didn't. She was the one demanding she be taken back to her mothers house.

The daughter has not taken any steps to become a more regular and permanent presence in her fathers and step mothers home, even though it is crystal clear that not only is she welcome, but also very wanted. Her words and behaviour show she takes it all for granted and is nothing more than a safety net to her for when she gets into it with her mother. And even with that all clear, her father and step mother still welcome her.

It's perfectly acceptable to pull up teenagers who are behaving like spoilt, entitled knobheads which she is right now. Tbh if my dd turned up for her.birthday I'd made an effort for, grabbed her gifts and left that would be the final year I'd bother to make an effort until things improved massively.

She’s 17, she’s being a dick. 🤣 We all were. Sounds like your DH was right to pull her up on her attitude, which sounds quite entitled. You sound like a really lovely stepmum. Is there a big gap between your DSD and her siblings on both sides? This will be hard for a bit until she gets a bit more mature, at which point she’ll hopefully realise that playing off mum and dad won’t work and she will stop it.

Don't really have anything to add here, but just wanted to say you sound like a lovely step-mum op!