Maintaining distance from adult stepdaughter after years of false accusations

[pombearmum]

Hi, I’m just looking for some advice.

When my stepdaughter was 11, she came to live with us full-time. At 16, she made a number of serious accusations against me, saying I mistreated her, which wasn’t true. A few months later, it happened again, and this time my in-laws got involved, believed everything, and cut me and my children off.

After that, I decided to step back completely and have no involvement with her. However, I still kept getting dragged into things and blamed whenever something went wrong in her life.

Now she’s an adult has admitted several times that she lied to other people, saying it was due to jealousy of my children. She says it upsets her that I don’t speak to her or include her, but she’s never properly apologised to me or explained this to me.

I’ve kept my distance to protect myself and my children, especially as the whole situation caused me a lot of anxiety during an already difficult time in my life. I worry that if I let her back in, the same pattern will happen again.

At the moment, I keep things polite when I see her, but that’s it. My in-laws no longer speak to us, and my priority is protecting my children.

Has anyone been through something similar and managed to maintain boundaries or no contact?

Where was your dh - her df during all of this?

He was always here. He works so I was mostly at home with the kids. He never suspected anything was wrong and the in-laws no longer speaks to him either because he didn’t side with them . I should have put that in the post.

Has she ever tried to make amends by confessing to your in-laws?

Unless SD volunteeers to confess to the rest of the family you will not be certain of positive change.

No not that I’m aware of she claims that they are now blaming her for it all and have accused them of being manipulating towards her. Only recently has she said that.

As @YerMotherWasAHamster is suggesting, any contact should be conditional on her making amends; which means setting the record straight with the in-laws and anyone else she may have lied to.

Why was she jealous of your children?

And to add, you are not obliged to have this person in your life so it's reasonable to stick to your current boundaries if you prefer

Given the length of time that has elapsed I don’t think so could be bothered trying to build a relationship with her.

I am curious as to how you “stepped back” and stopped speaking to her when you all lived in the same house though? Or did she move out?

I'm not sure I would trust this person. It feels like she hasn't matured quite enough yet to not bring back all the drama. Wide pass for me.

What happened when she made serious allegations? Were these investigated? Police? Social care? What happened between then if allegations were made again a few months later?

If she’s an adult now and your husband supports you but doesn’t speak to the in laws, does he see his daughter? But you don’t?

She moved out to the in laws then to her mums when it didn’t work with them. I am always here but I don’t make any effort anymore and she rarely visits her dad maybe every couple of months. We have days out etc but we don’t really talk it’s not awkward coz it’s just how it is. I always think if I was really that bad why would you want to go on a day out that I am attending. Never understood that either.

I’ve never really got an honest answer about that. Once it was claimed that I buy more stuff for this particular child. Also she was told when my oldest was born that her dad only cared about his new baby.

The thing is that the adult she is today is not responsible for the messed-up acting-out of the distressed child she used to be. She as an adult does not owe you any apology. She was badly let down by all the adults in her life - her dad for basically being uninvolved and leaving it all to you is the worst culprit and yet you would rather blame the child than him.

YANBU to prioritise the wellbeing of your children and protect them from any harm but YABU to hold a grudge against her like this and think she should be apologising. It is completely obvious that a teenager whose parents have split up and whose dad has got himself all nicely set up with a brand new family is not going to thrive and is going to be miserable from whatever fallout meant she couldn't live with her mum and came to live with you age 11, both mum and dad basically absent from her day to day life. No 11 year old has the capacity to just buckle down and cope with that. Yes her teenage years were a nightmare and the false accusations are at the very mild end of what could have happened. You were the grownup and you should be getting over yourself and seeing the wounds that caused the awful behaviour.

Nothing was investigated by anyone it was all just he said she said. My in-laws told everyone though that I was nasty.
the months inbetween she agreed to live with us still and we tried to work through the issues I thought it was good and I was always very cautious. But few months later there was fresh allegations and this is when they had said she can live with them. I always said I don’t understand why the In laws would allow her to come back and visit if I was really that bad. I knew she was lying because all the things she said just weren’t true.
my husband sees her occasionally and I’m always around whenever she’s here. I want her to maintain a relationship with her dad I’ve never got in the way of that. I don’t feel like it’s awkward and really If i was as bad as she made out in the first place she wouldn’t want to come anywhere near me.

I think this is rubbish. As an adult she's perfectly able to look at her behaviour as a child and recognise she was out of order and apologise. I'm with you OP, steer clear. You don't need a relationship with her. She burnt that bridge a long time ago

Who told her that?

Yes, it’s absolutely ridiculous. She told dangerous lies that had huge consequences for a lot of people. She’s already admitted it so she needs to wholeheartedly apologise to everyone affected but that won’t oblige them to forgive her or choose to have a relationship with her again.

Her mum

@pombearmum our tales are eerily similar. My SD is in her 30s now. I will never see or speak to her again. Not through any malice. There's just no point. Way too much water under the bridge.

I don't blame her for a lot of her actions as a child. She was let down by every adult in her life, except me, IMO. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that. But to go into the combination of jealousy, narcissism etc would take pages and I'm on my lunch break!

However, I can and do blame her for her actions when she was old enough to see what was glaringly obvious. Namely, that I was the only one who never lied to her and never used her as a pawn in a game between a bunch of walking personality disorders.

My children have no relationship with her or any of my husband's family. They're not emotionally safe to be around so it's no big loss. But even now, as young adults and very late teens, they know a lot of the background and have no interest in meeting any of them. My MIL's threats of them turning 18 and her having a magical relationship with them has come to naught, as I knew it would.

All that waffle (sorry!) to say that no, I don't think it's in any way necessary or even healthy to change the status quo now. What would be the point? And also, there's too much expectations on the shoulders of stepmothers (and it does really seem to only be stepmothers) to keep taking emotional beatings and be expected not to have hurt feelings. Fuck that. I don't believe in the high road.

Well - was there truth in it?

there isn’t much information forthcoming from the op about the whys of why she lied. We can see a bit of a picture forming - a very young girl whose mother didn’t want her? (I think) moved in with her father who spent no time with her. We know she was jealous of her step sisters but the op hasn’t disclosed if she had reason to be. Was she treated differently. Anyone who’s been on the stepparenting boards will know that there are horribly high numbers of step mums who treat their husbands kids like dirt. Of course we don’t know if the op did or not at all, or whether she was one of those glorious people who welcome step kids like their own.
posts not getting to the root of why don’t help long term.

Meh. Even if OP could give Lady Tremaine a run for her money, which I suspect isn't true because most stepmothers aren't quite the villains people want to believe they are, it's not really relevant to OP's question.

She's asking if it's possible to maintain distance and the answer is, of course, yes. Easy, even. Easier than starting to build a relationship now.

Of course there wasn’t truth in it. Where does it say her mum didn’t want her and her dad spent no time with her? Not every step parent is evil.

Sounds like an ideal opportunity to be Elsewhere when she visits.. She wouldn't be getting any time off me.

Yer definitely step Mums have so many expectations made of them but on the flip side they end up being the worst person ever and made out to be evil at the same time. It’s hard confusing and can end up being a complete mess. I’m sorry you had to go through that.