Daughter not invited to wedding

[Tinogirl]

I have been married for five years with a nine year old from a previous relationship. Ex sees his daughter two or three times a year.
She lives entirely with us.
Husband and his cousin are like brothers and husband was asked to be his best man at the end of the summer.
Cousin and his partner have often been guests and know my daughter very well.
Invitation arrived with just our names on which upset me but that’s their choice but husband collected his daughter who is 10 and turns out she is a bridesmaid and other children are invited.
I think he needs to ask cousin to include my daughter.

You’ve done the right thing, OP. If your daughter isn’t their family (and their loss if she isn’t), then at least she knows she’s yours. Your husband needs to realise that if he feels bad because he doesn’t live with his daughter, performatively ostracising yours is a cruel and shitty way for him to deal with that. My heart hurts for you both.

Personally, no matter what "little things" your NVDH does for your DD, the fact that he corrects people like he does and thinks nothing of not having your DD invited to a wedding of people you know and have hosted at your house, makes me think your NVDH is just as nasty as the rest of them.

Just because he pays a few dimes towards her care does not make him a good man and he is proving that with his behavior often.

I hope you and your DD go out the weekend of the wedding, stay in a nice hotel, near a few things to do and have the time of your life.

I also would not do a thing ever for the cousin or his "wife" if they come to your house. In fact, I would pointedly leave with my DD if they ever stopped over and I would not visit them. They have shown their true colors and they are pretty ugly.

If a child is adopted would they be left out because they aren’t a blood relative? Of course they wouldn’t. And this is the same thing. They are horrible people

Sure, it's their wedding and their choice. I usually agree with this. I understand the issues around numbers and costs. But inviting a couple and just one of the daughters who live with them is awful. It really is hurtful and thoughtless. I am hoping it is an oversight.

Op you must be so hurt by this because it's clear now what you husbands family think of your daughter, including your husband.
If it was me I wouldn't have anything more to do with any of them. To exclude a child like this is just cruel and worrying that none of them see an issue with it.
To be honest, I'd also be reconsidering my relationship with my husband.
It all sounds very dysfunctional and potentially damaging to both kids in the long term.

The more I think about your DH still asking you to attend the wedding, means that he KNOWS it makes him look bad if you don't. So he knows its wrong but he wants you to go along with it.

I hope you are not running about doing Christmas shopping for them. Spend the money on your DD instead.

Or he doesn’t want his family to think badly of his wife for making a fuss over what he and they all see as a non-issue.

Clearly OP has never been under the illusion that he considers her daughter to be his any more than she or he considers his daughter to be hers. If it’s important for a parent that their child be ‘taken on’ by a stepparent and/or their family and considered the same as a biological child, then it’s up to the parent to make that clear in the beginning, and not have a relationship with and marry someone who doesn’t hold the same opinions. You can’t just expect that will happen.

Husband did ask cousin if my girl is invited and he said he would ask fiancée but no not invited. Mother-in-law said to me “Oh Darling I wouldn’t think they’d think she was related and can’t your sister-in-law have her?”
Husband asked me if I would reconsider going but I won’t. He just accepts that they don’t see her as family.
My husband always corrects strangers if they assume she is his daughter saying to me it wouldn’t be fair to his own daughter

In the interest of fairness to you, does your dh tell strangers when they refer to his dd as his dd that she is indeed his dd but only because of a ONS or a burst condom and not the product of a successful relationship.
Only fair to you to make sure people don’t make the mistake that you are a 2nd wife, but a 1st wife

Why on Earth did this guy marry you and why did you marry him if he wasn’t able to take on your dd as a part of his family. You came as a package.

It seems in his mind, when he married you he didn’t gain a wife and stepdaughter but gained a wife and an expense

Does he realise how much of a prick he sounds to strangers when he explains that your dd is not his daughter

It’s their choice but I would be hurt by this and wouldn’t be going. If my child isn’t invited but others are then I don’t want to be part of it. Don’t make a big deal out of it tho just get dh to say you can’t get childcare then going forward I would be keeping my distance from them

Or perhaps he explains that his daughter isn’t his wife’s child. That would be analogous.

He isn’t her father. ‘Taking on’ OP and her daughter doesn’t automatically mean ‘taking on her daughter as equally his, no different to any biological child’. That clearly isn’t how many, if not most, blended families work. They aren’t nuclear ones, and forcing them into that mould isn’t going to work for everyone.

There’s nothing to suggest he holds OP or her family to a different standard either - he’s not insisting she consider his daughter his, or that her family consider her to be equal to their actual grandchild/niece. I doubt he expects her to be invited to every event on OP’s side.

He isn’t wrong for having a different opinion to OP. If it was/is important to her to have a partner that steps into the role of father then it was/is on her to make that clear before she enters a serious relationship.

I wouldn't leave the child out, to be clear. But I don't think it's the same as being adopted - if the child was adopted, then there is a legal link to both parents that would carry on in the case of a divorce. This isn't the case when it's a stepchild - there is no legal link that would carry on in the case of a divorce. The relationship might carry on post-divorce, but there's no legal link that would carry on.

Or perhaps he explains that his daughter isn’t his wife’s child. That would be analogous

No that wouldn’t because it doesn’t make it clear that his wife is his 1st and only wife and the dd was from a ONS or very short relationship before he met his wife.

He isn’t her father. ‘Taking on’ OP and her daughter doesn’t automatically mean ‘taking on her daughter as equally his, no different to any biological child’. That clearly isn’t how many, if not most, blended families work. They aren’t nuclear ones, and forcing them into that mould isn’t going to work for everyone

But he is her step “father”. And the successful blended families do take on, especially very young children as their own.
When you marry someone especially with very young children you do take them on as your own and you expect your family to treat them the same as your own children. Anything less is just going to cause problems.

There’s nothing to suggest he holds OP or her family to a different standard either

So why doesn’t her dd have a wedding invite, like his dd?

he’s not insisting she consider his daughter his, or that her family consider her to be equal to their actual grandchild/niece. I doubt he expects her to be invited to every event on OP’s side

Just because him and his family don’t think the biological and non biological dc should mix doesn’t mean it is right
Maybe other people can see what this insular family can’t see and that the damage they are inflicting on their biological family will have consequences

He isn’t wrong for having a different opinion to OP. If it was/is important to her to have a partner that steps into the role of father then it was/is on her to make that clear before she enters a serious relationship

Well that spells the writing on the wall for his marriage

The problem seems to stem from how this husbands family separate out biological and non biological children.
If you honestly believe you can have a successful family life by treating your young step children after 5 years of marriage somehow other to your children and the extended family goes out of their way to separate biological and non biological children from family and friends events then very soon choices have to be made or will be made for you

I think the problem here is that the OP's husband doesn't really consider her daughter to be his family. Not properly. Because he is OK with his family not considering her to be their family.

If he was really raising her daughter as his own, then when his family treated her differently for not being a blood relative he would call them out on it. By accepting their view of her as not being part of the family, he is tacitly agreeing with it.

I was at an event recently with some colleagues and during the coffee break a group of us were discussing our children, how many we had etc.

One of my colleagues is a little younger than me, in his early 30s, and has a two year old daughter with his partner. But when we were talking about our kids he said, "The eldest is 9 and he's really into X, the younger one is 2 and she wants to do everything her brother does so she gets frustrated when she can't."

I happen to know that the 9 year old isn't his biological child, he's his partner's child from a previous relationship, whereas the 2 year old is a child they had together. But nobody else in that conversation would have known that from the way he spoke about them.

Of course it does - he clarifies that he’s a stepfather, as he likely clarifies that OP is a stepmother.

“There’s nothing to suggest he holds OP or her family to a different standard either

So why doesn’t her dd have a wedding invite, like his dd?”

I said he likely doesn’t expect his DD to be invited to events held by OP’s family. That is what I mean by not holding their respective families to different standards.

And yes, he’s her stepfather. That’s different to father. ‘Stepfather’ simply means he’s married to the mother of a child that isn’t his.

You don’t need to agree with him. You not agreeing doesn’t mean he’s wrong either. There’s no one set rule for how blended families should operate, what works depends very much on the individuals involved. Plenty of blended families that don’t meet your particular ideals work very successfully. If it doesn’t work for you that’s fine, it doesn’t need to. Your approval isn’t required for any family other than your own 🤷🏻‍♀️

Like I said, if it was important for OP to have her husband consider her daughter his own then it was her responsibility to make sure he did before she, you know, married him.

I used to hate it when my step Dad allowed people to believe that he was my father. I found it very insulting to both me and my Dad.

Don’t assume that step parents pretending to be real parents is always a good thing.

I agree! As a child, I always corrected people who assumed I was the daughter of my stepmother. Nothing against stepmom (very nice lady!) but my mum is my mum.

This thread has surprised me quite a bit. The OP is clearly passionately and fiercely protective of her daughter but brushes over the issues with stepdaughter. A child not feeling comfortable to stay over is a huge worrying problem! As a mother and a stepmother, it’s hard to read people falling over themselves to berate the family for not inviting the DD (I think the family were wrong btw) while forgetting the step DD is also being dealt a poor hand.

I couldn’t be in a relationship with a man who didn’t fight tooth and nail to make his own child feel safe and comfortable to sleep over.

this little girl barely knows her bio Father.

step dad is the only proper Father figure she has, I’m assuming from what you’ve both said you had relationships with your parents? So, not the same thing at all.

It’s ok for kids to lead these things and point it out or ask stepparent to point it out, I don’t think it’s ok for the step parent to make that decision particularly when the reason is that he wants his own child to feel more secure.

Why wouldn’t his priority be the security of his own child? She’s already deeply unhappy with the situation, is he supposed to completely dismiss that and conform to OP and her daughter’s preferences?

It isn’t his fault OP’s DD doesn’t have an active father in her life.

Of course he gets to decide what does and doesn’t work for him, same as OP gets to decide what does and doesn’t work for her. She clearly decided that she was willing to accept his preferences though, given that she married him. If that’s changed then she needs to decide what she’s going to do about that, but that doesn’t make him in the wrong.

Well now that you are fully aware of your dh TRUE colours are you still going to stay with him. I'm not being dramatic, it's the truth. Are you really going to subject your child and her childhood to people who don't consider her as family? How do you feel as a mother about this?

Of course, but he needs to find other ways of making his daughter feel secure about her place in his life and the wider family without condoning the exclusion of another child who has done nothing wrong and just wants to be accepted.

Who says there are other ways to make her secure that would alleviate the impact accepting another child as his own (assuming that he wants to, and that the only reason he isn’t is because of his daughter!)? That the damage caused by doing so wouldn’t have far more significant and long lasting effects?

Why are the wishes of OP and her daughter more important than the wishes of him and his daughter? Why does his daughter need to suck it up and get over it, yet OP’s daughter can’t be expected to? It seems it’s a case of “kids must always come first! Except that one”.

It's best you don't go; with their attitude they probably don't see you as "family" either.

Could you afford to leave?

You're actually saying you don't think there is a way of supporting one child which doesn't involve being shitty towards another?

Wow.