To ban SD from my en suite?!

[EasterEstherEgg]

I’m fuming!!

When I moved in with DH, an en suite was an essential on my list. I have DD12 and he has SS15 and SD17 and I don’t want to share my personal space with teenagers. They’re also not allowed in our bed.

Have come back from a work trip early to find SD getting out of my bath, with my shampoos, body lotions and creams laid out and my bloody dressing gown and slippers on and apparently she often does this when I’m away!

She - and DH and everyone else - are well aware my en suite is off limits. AIBU?

It’s OP’s territory to mark, and her personal belongs. OP wouldn’t need to assert her power if the stepdaughter afforded her the respect OP’s own daughter manages to.

Clearly the stepdaughter choosing to ignore basic boundaries and using her things does bother her. So what if her (soon to be former) isn’t a random person?

It’s accurate. If she doesn’t want to be called a disrespectful pig she should refrain from being one.

The DH and the stepdaughter have doomed the family, and the lifestyle OP was providing for them, themselves.

I’ve not RTFT but I’ve read all your posts. As someone who just (a few months ago) asked DP and his three kids to move out of the house that I bought and they were trashing, I just want to say that you will be happier when it’s just you and your DC. I am. Good luck.

Because in a family situation
you don't get to make out your territory! It's all the same territory! It's a family home not a house share. By marking it out you are marking the kids out and I suspect they feel quite put out, why could one of them
not sit on their bed and have a chat with their dad? They aren't mucky dogs. I'm not surprised ds is taking revenge!

Quite honestly, the best way to deal with this is to just say ' why don't you have a nice bath in the ensuite and help yourself to whatever' I bet then the SD will have no interest in it at all.

@TaraRhu you don't get to make out your territory

this is so wrong. In a shared house your territory as you call it, but it’s really your own private space, is absolutely everything

I’m sure the SD wouldn’t like it if the whole family camped out in her private space for the night

Surely there’s a middle ground- where they use the en-suite when you’re away but not your stuff?

Of course you can mark out your own personal space, and personal belongings, within a family.

You may not, but plenty of people do in fact have their own private spaces in family homes. It’s utterly normal to do so, even. Presumably the stepdaughter has her own room and belongings she wouldn’t want Op freely using, so I highly doubt private space is alien to her.

The ‘best way to deal with it’ isn’t by giving the stepdaughter exactly what she wants and totally ignoring OP’s wishes in the home that she pays for. The best way to deal with disrespectful pigs is by jettisoning them, as it seems OP is doing.

Her silly little power play has backfired on her because she’s now looking at a serious lifestyle downgrade by ultimately doing OP a favor.

Great to read you continue to thrive.
I hope your son is doing well.

Of course OP has every right to her things.
Only on batshit MN do you read otherwise.

I wouldn't tolerate this from my girls, thankfully they know better.

In fairness they do have more expensive taste in cosmetics than me🙄...but still I have the horrendously expensive vintage hand bags, that they do always ask to borrow first.

I wouldn't be one bit impressed to find them in my things without asking.

This is very basic manners.

Tell me you're a teenage girl without telling me you are a teenage girl.

Her silly little power play has backfired on her because she’s now looking at a serious lifestyle downgrade by ultimately doing OP a favor.

A teenage girl pinching some toiletries is a "power play", my God. It's not Game of Thrones. Are you one of the posters who were falling over themselves the other week to call an unwell 16 year old a cunt because she made a rude comment that was overheard?

Some people vastly overestimate the power of teenagers. The kid didn't make the decision to have this living arrangement, the grown ups did. If they decide they no longer like it, that's their fault. OP admitted her husband is a dick. So sick of adults making bad decisions and then blaming it all on the kids who probably never wanted the change to begin with.

@ThatCyanCat

erm, no…. If they want to experience nice premium products then they should work hard and then buy them for themselves! Not steal other people’s! It’s good for the work ethic

I'll leave aside your extremely optimistic view of teenagers' earning capacity for high end products to say only that you've completely missed the point. I'm not saying it's ok to use stuff without permission, just like it wasn't ok for me to use my dad's razor or secretly try on my sister's clothes. I'm just saying it's teenagers being teenagers and not this huge, sinister, malicious, spiteful, Cersei Lannister-style power move. It's just teenagers using stuff they shouldn't because that's what teens do.

And as is so often the case, it seems the problem is actually with the adults in this situation (which they created)... and yet it's all getting deflected on to the kids.⁸

Why do you feel such savage hatred of teenagers you have never met that you are likening them to animals? It's weird. What have they done to you?

And, againz I expect the SD will be thrilled to live apart from a woman who bans her from parts of the house and describes her as a "pig" - it would definitely be worth a drop in lifestyle standard to escape that I would think

What makes you assume that the teens here are so insanely materialistic that they prize their expensive lifestyles over a happy, peaceful home? Are your own kids like that? Mine isn't, thank God.

@ThatCyanCat

im not expecting teens to be able to buy high end products! Wanting to buy them though gives them motivation to work hard, study hard, whatever to have the means to actually buy them.

Buy her new bottles of the products she used and give her a big hug when you give them to her

@Flamingojune

lol you’re funny

This. If her Dad has okayed her using the ensuite, thats one thing. But the using of your products and wearing your items is cheeky fuckery!!

Does she have her own dressing gown and slippers?

Oh whatever, it's entirely beside the point. She's being a pretty normal teenager, infuriating as it is. OP led on her being the problem but subsequent posts show that, as is so often the case, it's the adults who caused and are the issue. And posters blaming the kid in the situation for a "power play" because she snitched some face cream, ffs.

Lol, as if calling her a disrespectful pig even constitutes common or garden hatred, let alone that of the savage variety.

‘Banned from parts of the house’ - as if not being permitted to use a en suite is some grievous affront to her dignity, as if there aren’t two other bathrooms for her use. What makes me think she’s materialistic? Helping herself to OP’s luxury products instead of using her own non-luxury ones would suggest it.

And yet OP isn't a materialist for wanting them...

Better a 17 year old materialist who's still got plenty of time to grow up than a fully grown adult who calls kids horrid names over mild teenage misdemeanours.

If ‘power play’ doesn’t suit, then how about ‘territorial pissings’? And no, I was not.

The DH is also at fault, of course. The stepdaughter is also responsible for her own actions.

I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with materialism and buying the things you want and can afford.

What is wrong is helping yourself to someone else’s things.

yup. If she was in a house share or halls of res, her fellows would not accept this.

They're both absolutely ridiculous and expose far more of an issue with you. Teens pinch products at home, they shouldn't but they do and it's nowhere near as sinister, malicious, calculated or strategic as you think it is. The actual problem, as is usually the case, is the adults, as OP subsequently clarified; she just deflected it all on to the kid who didn't create the living situation, on account of being a kid.

Not every minor teenage misdemeanour like a messy room or snitching face cream is this great calculated insult or political manoeuvre. Get a bloody grip.

Repeatedly going behind Op’s back to use her en suite and waste her products, knowing full well she’s not permitted to, is a silly little power play. Calling it that is not ascribing to her any sort of malignant strategic genius. The only person being hyperbolic regarding that is you.