To book tickets to see same show as husband and step-daughter

[Tinogirl]

Every year husband’s niece is in a pantomime and SiL buys tickets for DH and stepdaughter and the rest of the family but not me and my daughter. They then go to a Greek restaurant.

I am fed up of the exclusion so this year I am going to book tickets and a table at the restaurant for me and DD.

When I confront SiL she says that her kids don’t get to see step-daughter that often, and I said that my daughter won’t get in the way of them seeing her just by being there.

DH can’t see what the fuss is about and why I want to go.

DH thinks if I go ahead with my plan it will be embarrassing for me. I don’t think so.

I can see that it’s incredibly hurtful for you, but if I were you, plan something amazing for you and your dd, not the same place.

OP has a daughter from a previous relationship. She married a man with a daughter from a previous relationship.

OPs husband has a sister (SIL) and her daughter (his niece) is in a pantomime each year and SIL invites her biological family to the pantomime and then they go out for a meal.

OP thinks she and her DD should be invited because she is married to SIL brother. SIL has said she and her DC don't get to go out with their biological family often so would like it just to be bio family.

I'm not sure why you think this would make her 'weird'.

OP decides this is unacceptable so wants to stage some kind of passive-aggressive point-proving by going to the pantomime anyway and booking a table just for her and her DD in the same restaurant.

Other posters seem to recognise OP from PPs and say her DD doesn't have much relationship with her bio-family so OP frequently posts about wanting to force her DHs bio family into including her DD. And that the girls involved don't get on well anyway which adds an extra layer of complexity. I haven't seen any of those threads but that seems to be the jist.

Honestly, that would be a shitty thing to do to your DD. Much better to take your DD out somewhere else and spoil her.

Your SIL is being unkind and deliberately excluding you but your DH is also enabling that. Why doesn't he speak to his sister about her behaviour?

Nah mate stay classy

This.

that is literally asking your DH to prioritise your daughter, his SD, over his daughter's relationship with her blood relations.

In our family my brother has a son who isn't his but who has been in his (and our) life since he was born. We don't treat him any differently to any of the other kids in the family. But if we already had traditions, the child came into his family at age 10, and he didn't get on with my DCs? i would be highly unlikely to impose him, for form's sake, on my DCs. For his sake too.

All families are different. But trying to force your extended family to treat step-children the same as the children they have known all their lives? meh.

Its pretty damn tacky to demand someone buys you two more gifts.

I would offer too PAY for your own tickets with the family... if she then refuses it reflects badly on her not you but you can't demand she BUYS you more stuff.

Please don’t waste your money on tickets and a meal, go and do something different with your dd for the day.

however I do know that if this was dh’s family, dh would remind sil to get 2 more tickets to include us in it and wouldn’t leave us out.

do other partners of the siblings get invited?

are you always excluded from his family events?

It's not nice of them to exclude you but I am cringeing at the idea of you showing up anyway to make a point. Please don't do this. Your husband is right, it will be embarrassing for you.

OP please don't do this!

It's unkind your SIL does not include you and DD but depending on DD's age she is either going to be embarrassed or confused.

Book a lovely panto or show for you and your daughter or another Christmas activity she will enjoy and book a table somewhere nice and leave everyone else to it.

Why would you come as a package?

Why wouldn't he be allowed to have relationships or events with his biological family that don't include you?

If that's his choice and they love you then fine, no problem.

But insisting that is what should happen because of some idea that you 'come as a package' when maybe not everyone in the extended sees it as that way is what most people on this thread who disagree are objecting to.

If you have DC and marry someone with DC you do so without the consent of the extended family, it's not an agreement that they have entered into that you now 'come as a package' anymore than someone who has an existing relationship with anyone that then marries should have to consider that they now 'come as a package' as a couple so can no longer have individual relationships or attend individual events.

And my Dad did what you're saying, with the pressure and control of my Step-Mum and insisted the blended family 'came as a package' .

It caused lots of trauma and resentment and now my step-Mum is dead my bio family are all loving being able to spend time with each other and individually, and rebuild our relationships. And to be able to verbalise how much damage my Step-Mum did.

I'd like to say i'm a better person but it seems i'm not as I have taken some pleasure in the fact i'm now the one helping my Dad get rid of all of her stuff and change their mirror-wills and our bio family has come together to enjoy each other.

It's not just me, her own DS hadn't spoken to her for years and didn't bother to attend her funeral.

It certainly wasn't a 'blended' funeral, none of my bio family except my Dad and one uncle attended and my Dad is one of 4, his Mum is still alive and I have 8 cousins.

She reaped what she sowed.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of whether this is the SiL excluding, the husband not standing up for his new family, or the second wife being so insecure in her position, unilaterally deciding to book separate tickets on the same night, a table at the same restaurant etc just to make some petty points is cruel for the child caught in the middle. Adults using their children as pawns in their dramas is always wrong, regardless of what the original problem is.

Don't drag your DD into such an awkward situation.

I think that's fair. It's not an either/or situation. He can want to see his own family with his daughter, too -- that relationship doesn't always need to include you or your DD, especially if this is a longrunning tradition.

And to be honest, the OP deciding to book tickets for the same performance and another table at the same restaurant is such a weird, performatively passive-aggressive thing to do that I think it suggests reasons why the SIL organising this outing is adamant she doesn't want her there. Because she sounds like an immensely difficult person.

I remember at least one of her other threads as being about a significant birthday of her DH's cousin's wife, to which only this woman's friends and family were invited, but an exception had been made for the OP's DH who was very close to his cousin, though the OP and the woman having the birthday party had only a superficial acquaintanceship. Inevitably the OP was incensed she wasn't invited, and there was something else about some other cousin taking no interest in her, and her DD not being invited to a wedding while her DH's biological daughter was. I just don't think the OP is the right person to be in a blended family situation, which needs a certain amount of realism about some situations involving different treatment of stepsiblings.

Your SIL and her children obviously do not want to spend time with you: why would you go and create a more awkward situation and spend time with people who don't want to see you?

I think the fact that your DH hasn't sorted out the obvious rift is a problem and he needs to be less of a wet wipe, but don't embarrass yourself or your daughter.

OP don't do this, its putting a child in the middle of a family row which is not kind to the child. I do think though that your partner could be more understanding of your feelings. Would you feel better if he expressed understanding of how this hurt you and arranged to do something special with you and both your children and making that your annual activity as well as what he does with his family? I get why he doesn't want to get into a disagreement with the rest of his family but he has to find a way to navigate through this.

Wasn't there a hilariously odd thread not that long ago about a hotel meal for some occasion organised by an OP, who was posting about whether she was unreasonable to resent the fact that several relatives who weren't invited were planning to book tables in the same hotel restaurant, and/or to sit with a laptop in the reception area in the same hotel?

Your poor daughter, why would you be such a bitch to inflict this upon her ? Your child is going to be sat in a restaurant on a separate table from her father stepsister, aunty and cousins all because you won't accept that your sil does not see you as part of her family 100% of the time.

Are you thinking they will take pity on you and / or your daughter and ask you to join their table thus you ' win ' by being part of the group.

Does your stepdaughter live with you and your husband 100% of the time ?

If you really really really want to see / support your husband's niece in her pantomime, then book seats on a different day, but I rather suspect you don't actually want to go to the pantomime, you are just trying to make a point.

Not sure what this is supposed to achieve. It will just be massively awkward.

I think you’ve answered your own question there. OP wants to cause a scene, make her SIL squirm and ruin her plans.

Unfortunately, OP has decided to ignore that this will actually be way more upsetting for her daughter - the person she’s supposed to care about in all this - than for her SIL. Upsetting your own child to make a point is really low; especially when that point is supposed to be about NOT upsetting her.

And what about the stepdaughter and niece? Even if OP doesn’t care about them much, they’re still the innocents in this. Why ruin their evening with a scene over an issue someone else created?

I suspect OP isn’t coming back because no one has said this bizarre plan is a good idea. But if she is still listening, I’d say to take this up directly with her SIL - and her husband, if she thinks he shouldn’t have accepted the tickets - instead of upsetting three children, including her own daughter.

This, you married your DH... he consented but no one else got a say, they did not choose to take you on as family.

Where does it end?
If you have a good relationship with exH should she invite him because he is you DD dad and thats family?
What about his wife and their new kid which is DD half sibling?
And then can't leave out her kids from a previous marriage right?

Your DD has her own family, which is you and her dads family... this is your husbands family, your step daughters family, it is not 'your family'.

You cannot demand anyone spends money on buying you tickets to see their kid performance... It's utterly insane frankly.

Do you never ever see or do things with your family without DSD?
Would you insist your family invite you SIL & niece to say your nieces birthday party or cousins wedding etc... they are family after all and her brother and niece maybe got invited. No because its crazy.

on the other hand part of me (the absolutely petty and vindictive part) wants OP to do exactly what she said, and then come back and post about how the SIL had a cow...

It's incredible the way some people think. I don't know, but I'd guess it would be to do with lack of self worth, and dignity, but who knows?

And those posters who go on saying that "we come as a package" and the husband should "step up".

It's really really embarrassing, but I suppose if you think that way you can't see it as people who don't think that way do.

The OP sees it as a demonstration of her lack of worth, and the "getting invited" would miraculously mean that she was "accepted" and was "worthy".

It's truly sad really and although I believe it's best to say it how it is, especially on a forum like this, I can't help feeling sorry for those people who feel the need to battle to belong instead of cherishing their own relationships.

There is nothing good to come out of what you are suggesting.
Find another Pantomime and take your daughter, then go out for dinner. Make it your thing for the 2 of you.

She’s taking her brother, her niece and the rest of her family. To watch her daughter in her play. This is the SIL and her family event to support her daughter, not an extended family get together.

The OP’s daughter isn’t related to SIL. She isn’t the daughter of OP and her DH, she’s from a previous relationship. She doesn’t get along with the DH’s actual daughter.

Why would SIL invite her niece’s stepsister when they don’t even like each other?

Perfectly summarised @JustinThyme

OK. I came up with this in the middle of the night trying to stay up for the results and I now know it was a stupid idea and won’t do it but I will book for another evening and wait to say hello afterwards.

My DH was not in a real relationship with his daughter’s mother so there is no misplaced loyalty to her from my sister-in-law.

Everyone is nice to my daughter when she sees them but nothing really comes out of this niceness with follow up invitations etc If we were at SiL’s house niece would come in and ask about SD and just go about her business if she isn’t with us.
My stepdaughter is never ever rude to her but very polite but there is no warmth.
My MiL never includes her in grandchildren treats and outings etc.
I don’t think for one minute that stepdaughter would actually mind if my daughter was included in the trip to the panto, that’s the irony.
I am going to book for another evening though. I think this is a good idea.