DD20 says she would still live with me if I had given her that option

[Mastmw7g]

I want to ask if I was unreasonable for allowing the way DH encouraged her to move out, but that's probably an unreasonable thing to ask. I felt sometimes like he was almost manipulating her. So it was her choice, but she was very hesitant to make that choice.

Living with her was awful. It wasn't good for my younger children, so I know it was the best choice for the rest of us. But I doubt it was the best choice for her. I've had this surge of anxiety since she moved out and even started therapy. It's possible I'm codependent. Why else would I worry about her when I should be sleeping?

Regardless, yesterday I went over her home and she said she would still live with me if I had given her that option. In therapy I was asked if she chose to leave or I made her leave and I truthfully didn't know the answer, but I suppose now I do. I made her leave because she felt she had no option to stay. Now I'm still distracted from everything I do because I'm nervous and worried for her, but I also feel deep guilt for making her fly before she was ready to leave the nest.

He said it would depend on her reaction. What that means to me is that if she'd received it well he would have been fine with it. If she'd blown up and had an outburst he would have been upset with me. He was satisfied with his way of dealing with it where he just remained silent and felt miserable.

I met my husband in December 2008. She met my husband in May 2009. We married in June 2010. Her siblings are half-siblings. What seems to be disregarded here is that she has a good relationship with him and a bad relationship with me. She's not angry that he's set boundaries. She's angry that him doing so means he's put her in a situation where she's more likely to interact with me when she wants help.

In what way does your DD have a good relationship with your partner? Following him around when he's trying to avoid her and having outbursts until he agrees with her isn't a sign of a good relationship. It's very toxic behaviour. Is this typical of how they interact or just a particularly bad snapshot?

OP, I'm wondering if you can really appreciate how horribly dysfunctional this all sounds. Do you think this way of living is normal?

Imo your daughter probably feels safest with you and that is, conversely, why she is kicking you the hardest.

Also, are you autistic any chance? I am myself and some of your writing style/words give me that impression. You're trying to be very logical and I don't think this is a logical situation.

But your DD cannot always have had a bad relationship with you. She had six years when you were her sole/main parent. And then what happened?

I don’t know. There are two things which strike me.
Firstly, it seems quite quick that you and your husband got married when you were presumably a single parent with a young daughter. This is not a criticism or something you need to defend, but an observation I make. I think generally single women with young children are vulnerable in a society which still judges and expects them to be in families. There is a pressure to meet someone and have a ‘proper’ family. Maybe I am projecting here, but I think this makes you vulnerable to predatory and quite controlling men.

It seems to me almost like your husband took over your DD. I mean, she is your DD. It was not his place to do everything for her or to overrule your parenting or anything like that. I mean he is putting up boundaries now but he did not respect yours. (And actually, putting up boundaries now is a cop-out because he is leaving you to take the flack from a confused young woman who had a father figure, albeit an overly indulgent one by the sounds of it, and now does not).

My DD is about the same age as your oldest. I am trying to imagine a situation where I let a man into our lives (a privilege he should respect) and he took over the parenting, overruled me, and then discarded her and his responsibilities for parenting whilst bleating on about his boundaries. Like, WTAF? What actual rights did he have to do any of this?

You don’t have to answer this. It’s a rhetorical question. I was going to say that I am glad that you have some therapy, but then it struck me whether your husband also has therapy? Or is it just you and DD who have come out of this situation with this need?

None of my comments are helpful, I know, because you are where you are - and in fact, I think you are carefully navigating a way through - but I am not surprised you were angry.

No, food wasn't locked away from her, and she could have made herself something. I can't say why she would do it, but I think as an adolescent she believed that it was my husband's job to make sure she ate. She was in a relationship for three years and would often complain that he wouldn't feed her on time. She has gotten better about that.

That's what happened the one time he asked her to leave, so he's never asked her to leave since then. She put it that 80% of her interactions with him are good, but 100% of her interactions with me are bad.

I'm in therapy and everytime I say we're so dysfunctional I keep getting told to reframe it to we have our challenges but we're working on them. I don't think that's true, though. I may be working on changing because nothing will change unless I change, but who else is working on this?

My daughter definitely feels safest with my husband. She says she can't trust me.

No, I'm not autistic.

@DaffodilsAlready No, her relationship with me wasn't always bad. She did favor my ex-husband to me. He tried to be her main parent as part of the divorce and we all had to submit to a psychological evaluation. She put in her report that my daughter was more verbally oppositional to me, but I was the only one setting limits on her. Then her dad stopped seeing her when she was eleven. They have reconnected now and message each other often on the phone. But she had a hard time and I was just very strict and my husband was much more indulgent. That led to a lot of fighting where she was always terrified I would divorce him and she'd be left with no one but me.

My husband is very confident in his decisions, so I don't see him seeking out therapy.

I was thinking this. He was all over her as a child/teen and when she became an adult he wanted rid of her. It’s all kinds of sinister. And would explain her mental health issues. It’s like all the evidence is there but no-one is joining the dots.

Honestly this. I'm actually questioning if this is a genuine post because it literally reeks. A young woman who is is stuck emotionally as a young teen, constantly trying to gain back the attention of her formally completely over involved step father 🤮

If this is real you need to talk to your daughter and seriously question your husbands motives in all of this.

Sounds like the right move but you feel guilty about it