Although my stepdaughter was based at her Mum's as a child, she moved to our house halfway through her A-level course, as her mother said she wished to move away at that point. So she lived with us for a) her final year at sixth form college and b) during the holidays when doing her degree. However she then told us that during the year when she was getting experience before doing a post-graduate course, she wanted to live with her mother - who never actually moved away, and had bought a flat a mile or so down the road from us. However towards the end of this year, my stepdaughter said it hadn't worked out. Her Mum was really selfish, and now that her brother was in the flat too, there wasn't space and she didn't know how she could study there next year. So we said, if it hasn't worked out as you had hoped, and you need somewhere quieter when studying you can come back to us.
We gave my stepdaughter a lot of TLC while she did her rather demanding post-graduate course. She then got a fairly well paid job on the other side of the country where her long-term boyfriend lives, and they are renting a flat together.
Shortly before Xmas she rang us and said, would it be okay if she didn't give us any presents this year as she couldn't afford it. (In previous years she has always got us gifts.)
We were, however, expecting both my stepdaughter and her boyfriend to visit us at some point over her two week Christmas holiday. She had told us, she'd be doing this. However there has been a succession of changes of plans, and she has now -after we have tried to pin her down to a definite dates - declared that she won't, after all, be coming. (She spent the first week with her mother's family, but without her boyfriend who has been supposed originally to join them, and is now going back to the flat where she and her boyfriend lives. When speaking to my partner this morning, she said she needed to go back to speak to the caretaker at her workplace, though she won't be starting work again till the 6th.)
My stepdaughter is 24. What would you make of this, in my shoes. I feel all sorts of things - including sadness that my own daughter will miss seeing her big sister. My very elderly father-in-law will also not have seen my stepdaughter since the summer.