Step daughter makes me feel so unhappy in my own home

[Futurebride]

I'm not really asking for advice but not sure what else to try to make things better. Sorry this goes on a bit.

My SD age 13 won't acknowledge me and its got worse since I married her fantastic dad. I've known her for 7 years, she was always cold toward me but I thought in time things would improve. Eventually they did a little, but since the wedding things have deteriorated. SDs mum is jealous and intentionally unhelpful and works against us - we have standards and are trying to bring SD up to be a respectful, balanced person but SDs Mum won't work with us on discipline (she thinks it's OK for SD to shout F Off in my face and says she doesn't care what goes on in our house) and won't remove privileges for really bad behaviour like we do, so we are seen as the bad guys.

SD is increasingly difficult (knowing her mum will back her up). She won't acknowledge me or talk to me. She leaves the room purposely saying goodbye Dad, goodbye Dog, but not me. She increasingly harps on about the times before I was in her life. She says the sky is green if I say it is blue. I cook her favourite food then she refuses to eat it. She is refusing to do anything her Dad asks her to and is rude. In addition, we have the usual teenage battles of too much phone time, only coming out her room to eat, refusing to engage in household activities when we give her the choice of what to do together, refusing to clean her room etc. She has vaped at 12, smoked joint and now just had sex at 13.

Her attitude is so awful toward me and her Dad that the atmosphere is now awful in my own home. She genuinely believes she can do what she wants in life. We have suggested she perhaps spends more time with her Mum but she doesn't want to (as she has a friend near our house). I have an older daughter so I know about teenagers but SD is is on a different level. We have never criticised her mum in front of her. I have only once tried to intervene in discipline when she was screaming at her Dad and that went very wrong. In 7 years I have always bit my tongue on her manners and behaviour and try to address them through her Dad. He has been good in trying to address her behaviour and they used to have a close relationship as he has spent so much time doing outdoorsy things with her, but now he is at a loss what to do, esp with the promiscuity this week. SD is already having counseling at our suggestion as she wont talk to us. I have always been kind to her and not get involved with discipline, but it has got a lot worse not helped by the fact her Mum says her Dad doesn't want to know her since he got married! (We are dealing with a jealous witch) We are therefore dealing with 2 children and just don't know how to make things better for all of us. She is with us every other week but I now feel like I don't want to be here when SD is , yet it is my house.

No man on earth is worth this shit. Your own home is a hellscape, and I wonder what this is doing to your daughter.

Re the term "promiscuous" and misogyny: we are having a conversation on FWR right now about the long history of women being incarcerated in insane asylums for life for "being promiscuous" aka getting pregnant out of wedlock. Undoubtedly, some of those women were coerced or outright raped.

The number of men incarcerated for getting these women pregnant is zero.

You cannot pretend that applying that word "promiscuous" to a 13 yo girl is a neutral act, given the history of how women and girls are judged differently from men and boys for having sex.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia ,

You can weight words if you want. I am too old and uninterested to keep up with the trashing of perfectly good words.

Promiscuous=many sexual partners.

Attaching a different moral judgment to men and women who are promiscuous is misogynistic. Just using the word according to its dictionary definition isn’t.

You are trying to condemn the OP based on her choice of vocab rather than supporting her in a difficult situation. I am not sure my late mother (a staunch feminist when it was a risky position to take) would think much of that brand of ‘feminism’.

We don't even know that the girl has had more than one sexual partner. Yet the OP uses a word that means several.

"Just had sex" earlier this week. Unless it was a gangbang, this is one partner. That's not promiscuous.

That OP reaches for that word after one sexual encounter speaks volumes about how OP thinks of this girl. It's like my grandmother describing my cousin having first sex with a long-term boyfriend at 19 as "she sold herself cheap" because she didn't wait until marriage. It is plain misogyny.

I think @VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia has provided some perspective that could be very helpful and healing for the OP and anyone in a similar situation who is willing to consider it.

Sorry not read the whole thread but yeah, no way would I be accepting that. Your husband can go and see his little brat elsewhere.

How lovely.

If OP’s DD starts going off the rails, should OP’s DH also tell her to “see her little brat somewhere else”?

Maybe op would deal with it and actually do something about her DD telling her DH to fuck off?

If she's screaming abuse in his face and telling him to fuck off, ignoring his existence, being actively encouraged by her dad to continue behaving that way and it's HIS house she's in then yes.

Why should OP live with being treated like this? He can go and live elsewhere with his daughter and she can live comfortably in her own home without being screamed at and told to fuck off.

It's his own home too. They're married

The child sounds in need of considerable help. The mother is, it seems, pretty useless and largely absent. The father is pretty ineffective too.

I'm not surprised OP is fed up. But the one who needs help here is the child, and I don't think uprooting her from her father's home is going to help.

It probably won't help her no but is that OPs problem? She's being abused in her home by a child that isn't hers.

Married or not, I'd be telling DH for the sake of our relationship he needs to go. I would not live my life being screamed at/ treated like this by someone else's child.

You said yourself the mother is shit and the father is ineffective. It's not more OPs responsibility to put up with this than theirs. He can go and be an ineffective father elsewhere and let OP live her life in peace.

And if he wouldn't then I'd seriously be considering ending the relationship because OP doesn't deserve to be treated this way because this child has two crap parents.

She's being abused in her home by a child that isn't hers.

ffs adults cannot be abused by children. What kind of twisted thinking is that

Whatever you want to call it. OP is being treated like shit and she doesn't have to put up with it because this kid isn't hers to deal with.

Let's just be clear here.

Abuse can happen to anyone in any dynamic.

Also ops dsd isn't a 5 year old, she's 13 years of age and a teen. Of course a teen can be abusive and would still fall into "child" category.

But as previous poster said, it can be called whatever you like but as op isn't the parent it's not up to her to fix it or her to have to put up with being treated like shit in her own home.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2022/08/Academic-Insights-Child-to-Parent-Abuse-Dr-Amanda-Holt.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj2h4SUxdWEAxWKYEEAHeffAvYQFnoECA0QBg&usg=AOvVaw3HOBVEICMYceLhCq0x52Gb

I'll just leave this here...

(edit: link doesn't appear to work when clicked! An interesting study by HM Probation service by Dr Amanda Holt. Details adults who are abused by children, parents or care givers, and multi agency working)

You need to educate yourself

www.riseuk.org.uk/get-help/about-domestic-abuse/child-to-parent-abuse

She's clearly suffering with some mental health issues.

How enlightened of you to just call her a brat.

I don't think the OP needs to suck it up but just calling the child a brat is Victorian

That page specifies that the type of abuse in question comes from adolescents, at which the daughter sits at the extreme low end. A moment’s thought will tell you that it typically involves older adolescents who actually have some measure of control via physical size or willingness to engage in physical assault, neither of which are apparent here. In fact the only thing that is apparent here is that the OP’s step daughter lacks almost any real power over her circumstances, as amply demonstrated by all the people on this thread suggesting the OP simply ban her from the house her father lives in… a tactic that I doubt any decent parent would consider deploying against their biological child.

The step daughter is also not trying to exert dominance. She is trying to be left alone (shouting “fuck off” signals overwhelm and a desire to escape) probably because the OP is trying to dominate and control her instead of genuinely understand and empathize with her.

The fact that the OP sees her step-daughter’s behaviour as a matter of promiscuity and not as a cry for help tells me everything I need to know about this situation.

Im amazed at the number of people who do not understand that abuse is a power-over dynamic and while a person who is in the disempowered position can be rude or unpleasant or difficult to deal with, they cannot be abusive. They do not have any real power to abuse.

So when women are told on here to be financially independent and to protect there assets are stepmothers not included in that advice then.

Exactly It needs reporting as a safeguarding issue NOW

@CheekyHobson ,

But power dynamics are more complex than age and physical strength. In this instance, the OP has zero power as she can neither discipline nor expel her SD, so her SD has carte blanche to ostracise and shout abusively at her. The OP is restrained by her kindness and morality to not respond.

@JenniferBooth ,

If the sex is with a classmate of the same age, reporting to whom? Besides, surely her father should be parenting her and liaising with the school?

The OP (who I think has long gone) is stuck between a rock and a hard place. She can either live with being abused or split up with her partner and father of her child. It is an unenviable position to be in.

That is categorically not true.

I don't think she is in a 'disempowered position' is she? She's doing what she likes. Of course you can be abusive.