Stepdaughter and Daughter's Wedding

[WickedMotherofthebride]

Decided to become a member as it seems to be Stepchildren and wedding season on Mumsnet and sobbing uncontrollably to my sister isn't giving me the unbiased opinions I am after.
For the first time in our 22 year marriage my husband's ex invited him to dinner. We were very curious thinking she must be ill or something. I admit after a couple of hours I used my iphone to track him and he was at Charing Cross, then an hour later in the pub around the corner from us, he rarely drinks but came home the worse for wear and completely ashen.
Essentially if he goes ahead to walk my daughter down the aisle he can say goodbye to a relationship with his own daughter who is apparently devastated by this. Something that has been confirmed by his son.
I am one of those women who let a loser impregnate her, I thought the odd splif wasn't a big deal but he turned into an absolute stonehead who was in and out of my daughter's life until she was 8 when I married my husband. I don't know if her father's absence and my getting married was a coincidence but I think it was.
My husband is to all intents and purposes her dad.
At 15 a strange man arrived at the door wanting me to talk to him without my daughter present., obviously I wouldn't but my husband went out. It was the husband of my daughter's aunt to tell us that her dad had died.
She was given the chance to have a relationship with her family but chose not to saying that my husband was her dad.
Stepdaughter has a long term partner but there are no wedding bells.
My husband is adamant now that he can't give my daughter away something that I will not forgive him for. In fact I will divorce him if he doesn't.
The wedding is in 18 weeks.

Reach any further and you’ll topple over.

Or maybe for once his daughter wants him to put her first instead of his step daughter?

Given OP updates it’s not difficult to understand how difficult it must have been for the children. Adding OP lashing out that she’d divorce her husband if he agreed to his daughter’s request makes me wonder what her behaviour was like when the children were younger.

Not so easy to get over childhood trauma. Regardless what age you get to.

This is probably the best way forward! Such a sad situation for all on what should be an amazingly happy occasion. I can see all sides, which makes it even sorrier!

How is he not putting her first? It doesn’t affect her in the slightest, he can still walk her down the aisle, be at her wedding- it’s not stopping him.

i have DD’s. If one said dh couldn’t walk the other down the aisle because they felt sidelined or second class I’d think they’d gone mad. Same as if they said he couldn’t walk their step sister down the aisle, of course he can.

Well now we know that it's just because they're not very nice people then. They sound like nasty, jealous, entitled little shits!

Of course it affects her. She’s made it clear that it matters to her deeply. Thinking it shouldn’t be a big deal doesn’t mean it isn’t one for her.

He can walk his stepdaughter down the aisle if he’s prepared to lose his relationship with his daughter. He isn’t.

I'm not sure there's any way to know whether it matters to her deeply or is a big deal. She might just want to do the bride a malicious turn. (We can be certain, I think, that she dislikes her.)

His daughter is being ridiculous, yes she can be angry that her parents got divorced, She can also be upset that her dad is going to walk her step sister down the aisle.
To chuck a huge ultimatum in to not only her dads life but also her step sisters life weeks before a wedding is just nasty.
Surely she’s had her entire adult life and probably years of an engagement and wedding planning to voice her feelings.. Why wait until now.
People are saying op is in the wrong for threatening to leave her husband over this are missing the point.
She is going to have to explain to her daughter that her step dad will not call his daughters bluff and her wedding day will not be the day she had planned.
Where does it end.. I don’t want my daddy around someone else’s children, my children should be the first grandchildren so if she gets pregnant first I want you to pretend they don’t exist .. Ignore the step side until I say so or I’ll never talk to you again!
I don’t blame you for considering walking away op, they sound like a lot of work and heartache. BTec Betty indeed! I’d be fuming.

Hopefully most of your students spent some of the time actually staying with their dads, not just having a meal out a couple of times a week as children.

It’s a big enough deal that she’s prepared to walk away from her relationship with her father over it, and her mother and brother are concerned enough to speak directly to him about it. All she’s actually done here is spoken to her mother and brother about how she feels. She hasn’t had a tantrum, or issued demands or ultimatums - it doesn’t sound like she even knows her father has been made aware of this.

Oh yes, fair point! It all seems a bit odd. OP doesn't need to know their motives anyway, just help her DD accept it.

ETA I'm sure SD knew her dad wouldn't call her bluff, so it was a low risk move.

Well presumably your DH didn't live full time with one of your DDs and only see the other DD a couple of times a week for dinner?

And couldn't you see how that unequal treatment could cause insecure attachment and lead to the dinner date daughter acting in less than ideal ways due to feelings of rejection and deep hurt.

That would make more sense if she intended for him to be aware beforehand, when it doesn’t sound like she did. It sounds more like she wanted to see what he would do of his own volition, then act accordingly afterwards.

It seems that she’s completely oblivious as to what’s going on, and that her mother and brother have stepped in here. Op also hasn’t said anything about her making demands of her father before either. As far as she may be aware, all she’s done is express her feelings to people she trusts.

You're unreasonable to divorce your poor husband over this.

Your step daughter is being outrageous. Is she actually even coming to the wedding?

Sorry you have to navigate so many c-u-next-tuesdays in your life

Surely no-one behaves like this outside a Thomas Hardy novel? "Mummy, I do hope Daddy doesn't walk Btec Betty down the aisle, because if he does I shall have to cut him off forever. But to test his love, I'm not going to tell him."

Hardy would've loved Mumsnet.

We all are seeing this through our own experiences. Some who have great families of origin, blended or not, tend to see DH’s DD as dramatic and selfish. Some of us who have had bad experiences with blended families can see that there is probably some neglect or trauma involved in DD’s ultimatum.

It seems pretty obvious that these people don’t make up a well blended family. It definitely seems like DH’s children missed out on having DH as a dad who fully participated in their lives. There are a lot of red flags and unanswered questions.

Why did they stop staying at DH’s after he married OP? What did DH and OP do to make them feel at home and like part of the family? Did they not have bedrooms? Were there new rules that they found unreasonable? What, if anything, did DH do to try and resolve it?

At this point, the adults failed the children and now there is disharmony. I like PP’s suggestions that DH not walk his DSD down the aisle, but still attend and participate in the wedding in other ways. DH should also try to get his children to attend family therapy with him and mend their relationship. OP should talk to her DD about being the one to walk her down the aisle. OP and DH need to take a serious look at their marriage. It seems strange that OP would jump straight to divorce, unless there are already some serious marital problems.

As his only daughter, she doesn’t want him to share special father-daughter moments with someone who isn’t his daughter. It doesn’t matter if other people would be okay with it, she isn’t.

If she’s hurt to the point she’s ready to cut him off and she doesn’t say anything she’s a spoilt brat, and if she does say something she’s a spoilt brat. The only way she can ‘win’ in some people’s eyes is to feel something she doesn’t, and that’s just not going to happen here.

I think your post is missing the phrase "even more", as it sounds like he's already had a lot more special father daughter moments with his step daughter than with his daughter, and this is just the final straw.

He would drive over two or three times a week to take them to eat and collect them from various things.

How often did they stay at his/your home?

Taking someone out to eat and collecting them from sports clubs is very different to sharing a home with them, having their own bed and drawers with things in like a toothbrush and spare clothes.

Do you think the step kids felt your/their dads home was just as much their home as your DDs?

The feelings of OP's daughter are hardly mentioned in any of these comments. He's the only Dad she really knows (biology is such a tiny part of parenting really) and she wants him to walk her down the aisle - totally understandable and not at all unreasonable. SD has had an emotional reaction to this - understandable maybe - but really not reasonable (or mature for a 33 year old). But they don't sound particularly nice people so perhaps to be expected. I find the whole issue over the name really petty and childish too. It doesn't take anything from them if SD uses their surname. Just seems mean.

I don’t know about the precise arrangements my students have but i actually think seeing your non resident parent several times a week even if you don’t stay over with them is fine. Not every child wants to have two homes or to sleep somewhere else. The derisory dinner dad comments are unfair. Sleeping somewhere doesn’t cement a relationship. It’s about the quality of time and the regularity. Having dinner together or driving somewhere together can often give you a good chance to have quality conversation that you might not necessarily have at home due to other distractions like TV.

Exactly. Poor woman - she has done nothing wrong and didn’t ask for this and she’s the one who gets hurt the most. Biology is not important- any idiot can father a child but to actually raise and parent a child is something else. Her own father died and this was who she saw as her dad when growing up. If everyone is so understanding about the other woman’s childhood hurt, why should the stepdaughter not be afforded the same courtesy?

This sort of thing also happens where it’s not a step sibling but a half sibling and the older sibling is jealous and feels resentment and directs it at their brother or sister. Some younger half siblings get treated horribly in the process where the parents are trying to keep the older siblings happy. The point is that if you are an adult and you find yourself having childish feelings like this, the proper thing to do is put a lid on them, have therapy if you need but don’t start issuing cruel ultimatums that hurt innocent people. As children, nobody chooses their family set up.

I don't know if they're not nice people, but they do seem quite dysfunctional. The father was ousted from the family nest nearly thirty years ago in favour of a new baby daddy, but now he and his wife are taking all the blame (and a punishment beating for the stepdaughter) for the state of his relationship with his children. Granted, he's wetter than a haddock's bathing costume, and I'd divorce him for that alone, but none of this is OP's issue, and she'll just have to suck it up.