Anyone else experience a weak dad and wicked step mum growing up

[Youtookmehigher]

Out of curiosity, did anyone else’s dad re-marry and have more children? Anyone else have to experience their dad doting on his younger children and you just getting the scraps of attention left? Or not being invited on their family holidays abroad, including Disney might I add! Or had an absolute ice queen of a step mum who basically made it clear that you were a nuisance for even existing and imposing on her perfect family every other weekend / 4 nights a month? Or has anyone had to sleep on a blow up bed while your younger and clearly more precious siblings sleep in their nice comfy beds in their beautiful bedrooms? Or the one that hits the most, watching your step mum and dad going all out on Xmas eve for your younger siblings with matching pjs and personalised stockings and plates for Santa, while you have to sit in your pjs from your mums just watching :(

anyone else experience this growing up , if so how did you turn out?

sat in alone tonight and stuck in my feelings,
I could write a book on how this has affected my whole entire life :(

Yes, I totally get this. My dad remarried and had another child, I always felt like that was his 'real family', from the age of 7 onwards. We were excluded from all the big holidays and the fun stuff. It still happens now - I asked if they were doing anything for his 70th birthday a few years back (would have loved to have celebrated with him) and was told no, nothing planned, only for my stepsisters and half sister to post pics of a family meal out to celebrate all over FB.

I have stopped asking or expecting and basically have resigned myself to seeing him twice a year and the odd phone call in between. He has really missed out on the opportunity to form decent relationships with half his grandchildren due to his weakness in this regard. The rejection hurts, and I feel for you, but increasingly as I get older I just feel angry rather than grieving for what I've missed out on.

I can understand the bed part. It's not your full time house and if there's no room for a bedroom then the child sleeping there full time should have a bedroom over someone sleeping there 4 nights a month. But the holidays and Christmas Eve behaviour wasn't nice.

How long did you sleep in a blow-up bed at their house? How many bedrooms did they have? Did you have to share a bedroom with your siblings? Did you stay longer during the school holidays? Did you ever tell your dad how you felt?

I didn't have this op. But your post made me feel really sad. I'm so sorry you experienced this. I don't understand how anyone can treat their children so differently

it was a 3 bed house: so my dad and step mum in one bedroom then my 2 siblings had a room each. I slept on the blow up bed in one of their bedrooms. My step mum made is very very clear I would be in huge trouble if I disturbed either of them sleeping. I totally get that the children living in the house 100% of the time should have their own bedrooms but to not even have a decent bed or even a pull out i think is cruel to me.
as I got older and realised that it wasn’t normal to be treated that way and after my mum backing me up I did tell my dad how I felt. That’s when I realised that really my dad just couldn’t stand up to his wife and my step mum made it crystal clear that her children must come first to her and in their own house

Not a bad step mum but had a bad mum and weak dad. She had her golden child and the rest of us were emotionally and physically abused.
Fortunately as we had each other we have grown up into very close siblings as adults. I have looked back and really resented my father, not once did he step in and say anything, not once.

My Dad remarried, he didn't go on to have any children with her but days after their wedding he disowned his children and has told us he has a new family now.

I'm sorry your dad did wrong by you OP. Men can be incredibly weak and follow the path of least resistance. I hope you had a good relationship with your mum and she's still around.

I never stayed any longer in the school holidays , just the standard every other weekend. I remember I went to to a caravan with them and my dads whole
side of the family, and it fell on a weekend where I should have been at my mums, and my step mum said there wasn’t room for a 5th person in the car and I had to travel with my grandma, and then my step mum said to my dad (infront of me) that I needed to miss the next two weekends to make up for them having me one extra weekend! That was the only kind of holiday I had with them, a caravan, I was never invited on any of their abroad holidays and they even went to Disney and never invited me. My own mum could never afford those kind of holidays. I feel like my siblings had a much different life from mine

I could have written this myself, especially the part about making it clear you were a nuisance and not wanted there. I am also too familiar with the lasting effect it has on the rest of your life.

I’m so sorry you had to go through this too. Please know it was never your fault x

Yes can relate. Sadly there are dads who do this / allow this as they want to keep the new wife/partner happy. You are not alone.

Yes sadly, very similar. Excellent dad to his second family, ignored me and did very little. Made to feel like a pain my whole life. Now he has dropped my children and it’s had a huge impact on them. Haven’t spoken to him in 5 years. I will never get over this.

Did you stop going to their house after you had that conversation with your dad? Have you kept in touch with him or your siblings? I wonder how your siblings feel about it all now or if they remember how you were treated.

Maybe your dad will regret what he did one day. Maybe he would if he knew how much it has affected you.

I’m sorry this is your experience too :( can I ask what kind of adult did you turn into and your personality traits? I have such low self
esteem which has held me back. I find it difficult to even project my voice and speak confidently. My two siblings are 5 and 6 years younger than me, and whenever I see them, I can’t help but notice how confident and outgoing they are. not cocky or anything but They seem to thrive at everything they do and are such secure young adults. My step mum really doted on them and I can always remember how much love she showed them. They had the best of everything off her and my dad. Not spoilt as such but they were showered with love and always made a priority to my dad and step mum. It makes me
so angry that my dad just couldn’t do that for me. They had good jobs both of them
so could afford all the nice things for my siblings whereas my mum was a single mum on a low wage

This is so upsetting to read OP. You can hear the hurt in your words even though you are not obviously a grown up and can do life your way.
My dad fecked off before I was born. No contact and even though we struggled financially I definitely had it better than you, having to live through this and his ‘new family’.

My dear friend met a new man (having raised her son alone until he was 9) and she made it clear to him that there would be no more children (even though he had none), no ‘second families’. Her son had been let down once and he was her priority. If he didn’t like it, she wasn’t the woman for him and she would accept that.
He adopted her son, married her and he helped raise him.

Sort of… you need to let it go though fir your own sake.

my situation was different in that my ‘dad’ was my step dad but he was the only dad I’d known. My mum left him and he found someone else with two older children (in my teens). They became a family unit and it’s been made very clear I’m not a part of it. I do still have a relationship with him but it’s a strange dynamic as there’s a whole family I’m not a part of. There’s been a catalogue of incidents that make it clear I’m “at arms length”. I seem to have been framed as some sort of villain but tbh that’s their narrative not my truth.

to give you some advise:-

-how people treat you is never a reflection of you
-people are all complex/ nobody is all good or bad we just have competing wants and needs
-holding on to anger is like holding onto a hot coal, you burn yourself

• you’re saying this has effected your life, I would seek professional help if you don’t want it to effect more.

-find your calling, once you are living your life to your fullest and happiest you do genuinely find you care less about it- in my experience anyway. When I look back on some of the “digs” I feel sorry because I think “happy secure people don’t do that”.

No sorry, this is wrong. Haven’t read past this but must point out that all kids are equal and providing for some, not others, isn’t ok regardless of how many nights a month they stay.

Speaking as the eldest in a blended shitshow that has finally come good, 17ish years later.

Yes, me too. For years, I kept explaining to my dad how x y and z made me feel… then I realised that he did know. He just chose to let his wife get on with it, as standing up to her (especially about me) made her furious.

He called me on my birthday. Christmas sometimes. Any other times, if there was something he wanted / needed to discuss, we had to have ”phone appointments” (”she’ll be out tomorrow between 3-5PM, we’ll talk then”… ”I told her I’d gone to the shops so calling you from the car park”) and after he got whatsapp, he’d message me with ”I’ll delete this after I’ve seen you’ve read it”.

Aside from obviously being hurtful, it’s impacted my self-image and relationships in ways I’m only beginning to comprehend.

This doesn’t help you, I know. I just wanted you to know you’re not alone.

DH and his older sister were treated less favourably when FIL remarried and had another child. Unfortunately for them, FIL had full custody, so there was no escaping the inequality.

It’s really affected SIL and she’s grown into a very bitter woman. She’s not pleasant to be around, but I completely understand why she feels the way she does. DH appears less affected, but since having our own children has spoken about how he doesn’t understand how his father could have turned a blind eye to it all. SIL tried speaking to FIL about it a good few years ago, but he’s in denial.

We don’t have a relationship with younger SIL beyond polite chit chat cos she’s not nice person and we only see PIL every couple of months. I think it makes DH sad, especially because of how close my family are, but he rarely talks about it.

so sorry you had to go through it OP. I will never understand people who turn their backs on their children

Seeing it from the other side DH's wife #1 wouldn't let us have DH's kids overnight, at Christmas or for holidays as much as we would have loved to have included them.

This was 30 years ago, before 50/50 parenting arrangements etc.

I’m so sorry.

I cut contact with my dad/step mum when I was 18. For most of my late teens/twenties I also suffered with terrible low self esteem (always believed my boyfriend would cheat on me or my friends were not really my friends, because who would want me in their life?)

I still do to some extent, but things have improved for me in the last couple of years. I’ve had my daughter and she’s the light of my life. I cannot understand how any parent could treat their child that way, and I’m using it as a strength to make sure my little girl never grows up to feel how I felt.

For now i’m still a massive over-thinker, always worried I will say the wrong thing and upset people. Definitely a people pleaser, all learnt behaviour from when I was young and just wanted to be loved.

But I’m learning to recognise this behaviour and stand up for myself more. Because I deserved better, but unfortunately it’s only me who can help myself x

Absolutely can relate to what's on this thread. Lots of helpful things to think about on here already. I'll just add that it's made me proactive and independent, and I don't think the way my step siblings have been parented has done them any favours. I actually like having the distance because I feel no obligation to them.

Did your Dad & Mum alternate Christmas Eve?

I always find it difficult as my stepdaughter would not be allowed to stay with us every Christmas Eve, but for my daughter we still need to celebrate it as a household. I'm conscious that for her it may feel as though she is missing out when we do things, but without full custody unfortunately it is inevitable.

Similar situation here around the same era. DH and his ex were only teens when she fell pregnant and after they split up 2 years later he had very little support or guidance from his own parents about how to navigate the contact situation. Back then EOW was quite a normal arrangement and he was only ever allowed Boxing Day visits and no school holidays.
By the time I met DH and we eventually married and had kids his DC was late teens but I think there is a resentment that the relationship with Dad was different to the DC that live with us

OP I am really sorry this was your experience but please know that you did nothing wrong

My daughters have been treated like this, I do wander how this will affect them in the future.
Their belongings were kept in a plastic box, slept in a cabin in the garden and cut out of alll holidays. They went over two nights a month at and he hasn't bothered with them at Xmas for over ten years. They are young adults now, one sees her dad out of a need to be loved and accepted, the other goes months without bothering with him