Partner too close to teen daughter?

[VivienneBMama]

This is complicated so I’ll try and make it brief and please no hate I’m genuinely confused and trying to do the best by everyone.

DP lives with me and my two boys 12 & 15 and he has a DD age 19 at university, she comes home to us in holidays etc . I honestly feel love towards her as do the boys, known her since 14 etc we do nice things together as a blended family , she’s fully integrated into my huge family etc.

DP and DSD ( call her that for now) are incredibly close, they speak daily , and had a few years living together when her parents split before they moved in with us ( her mum is a doctor and works mad hours)

She gets on well with her mum but she’s not around much , has new partner and new child . I’m very aware of this and make sure she has plenty of time with her Dad and always feels completely welcome here. I actually love her being here.

BUT I feel sometimes that their relationship is a bit much emotionally and sometimes physically too (NOT sexually obviously) but sometimes very cuddly - she sits on his lap - they are both tall - she is 5.9 and he is 6.4 so sometimes it looks a bit strange . They hold hands sometimes whilst we’re out. She is very emotional and calls him sometimes 5/6 times a day . She fills him in on every thing happening at uni and runs all decisions by him. She sometimes gets a bit upset if we are alone and kind of plays him off against me wants to be alone with him a lot and says things like ‘ I need some time alone with my Dad ‘ quite regularity for dinners out etc but in quite a dramatic way rather than just them hanging out . Ira hard to explain but my sisters ( all have kids) have also noticed it they love her but feel likes it a bit much.

Its hard but we have a lovely relationship , she seems to love being here but I feel like she’s more confident and even happier when he’s not around, or when she is making decisions without him - he works away sometimes and she’s here with me and the boys so it makes me feel like the boundaries with them are a bit blurred. The physical really bothers me - once someone thought she was his girlfriend when we were out and it mortified me - maybe I’m just jealous but I’m also just a bit creeped out to be honest . I don’t want it to cause a wedge between us so I haven’t said anything I have to be really delicate. Don’t know what to do!

High time she starting getting over it bit harsh.
It probably would have been more preferable to her if her parents hadn't split in the first place.

This is what I keep thinking and why I haven’t approached it so far

I agree

I see you have learned about emotional incest.
I think that might be what's going on here.
It is creepy, so you're not being unreasonable on that. A 19 year old girl should not be on her dad's lap, calling him five times a day or be jealous of your time with him. It's not normal.

@Abigail47 calling someone a 'mumsnet bully' when you've spent the entire thread picking on the OP calling her jealous isn't really a good look.

Sorry I don't understand what you mean. I've never seen it 'banned' from here, and it's pretty accepted in every step parenting board I've ever been on. I'm living it right now, so it's not nonsense to me.

You must be fairly new here. The weird people obsessed with this horrible "mini wives" credo spread really extreme interpretations of normal things for a while a few years ago and eventually it was stamped out. It's sick. You won't catch mainstream therapists using that expression.

I have a 19 yr old girl who really loves her dad but they would never hold hands cuddle or sit on laps. Just no way. My husband would not think that was atall appropriate and neither would I. It just wouldn't happen. This is very strange.

Nope, been here since 2012 and a SM since 2016. Never heard of therapists not using the term, like I said it crops up on virtually every step parent board I've been on, some UK sites some US. It's pretty accepted as a real thing everywhere I've looked.

Anyway, I hope OP gets looking into some research about her blend, it sounds like she's having a tough time.

A good look to who?

And as you cam see if you do a quick read back, I'm far from the only person who told the op that she could be wrong

What an ugly, ugly post.

I'd be worried for the poor stepdaughter.

Because of the Stepmum

This is what I keep thinking and why I haven’t approached it so far

It's true.

Honestly, it might be irritating but you can cope with irritating. Don't escalate everything tenfold by calling it any kind of "incest" or "inappropriate" (and definitely not the vomit worthy "mini-wives".)

If you say things like that out loud you'll explode your marriage (how would you react if someone suggested there was something inappropriate about your relationship with one of your sons?), and if you just think to yourself, you'll hype yourself up excessively.

It's a developmental stage. It's the final wobble before adulthood. It's your DH's last bit of really hands-on parenthood. Even if it grates on you just smile and nod. If he's amenable you could talk to him generally about how to encourage increasing independence in all the teens as they grow. But don't poison the well.

Are you ok?
OP has made no indication of wanting to “chase her off”. In fact she blames her husband for any inappropriateness as the SD is/was a child.
There seems to be a lot of projection from people that have their own dysfunction going on, here.

So what? Familys have different habits and traditions with these things. Some families share hotel rooms until they are 30, or walk around naked all their lives or whatever else.

As long as everyone involved is happy and comfortable, it's nasty for onlookers to cast aspersions or impose their own definitions of normal.

I didn’t want to be crude but I’m pretty well of myself thanks.
This take on it says more about you than it does about the genuine problem I have posted about .
This is what you take from my whole post? Bizarre

What's more bizarre is talking yourself in to believing the man you share a bed with is incestuous, becuse of your petty little jealousy

Putting the Freudian weird crap aside, my concern would be that she is behaving a bit young for her age. Perhaps she is feeling insecure at the moment. I agree with a pp about focusing on her building the confidence to make her own decisions and trust her own judgment and exercise autonomy. It might make her feel more secure and less reliant on her childhood attachment to dad.

Honestly, if the OP is still here (and I hope for her sake she isnt reading some of these posts), she needs to take herself elsewhere for some actual helpful advice and gentle guidance. There's plenty of places where people actually know what they're talking about.

All the best to you @VivienneBMama

Now this is an ugly ugly post.
Shame on you.

You see yourself. You're probably just projecting, considering how bizarre and misplaced that comment is.

An incel now! That's a new one. If you're going to use insults use the right term.

Use the term correctly love. Intel means involuntarily celibate.

I'm 40 and I first had sex over twenty years ago.

Bog off.

Idiotic posts on here