Help! I dont like my step-kids.

[CustardInMyPockets]

So, I know I'm not going to come off brilliantly here, I'm not here to try to set myself up as a martyr or a victim, I'm just hoping for some advice from those who have walked this path before me and managed it better than I am currently.

My partner and I have been together for 4 years, we live together, we love each other very much. His late wife passed 8 years before we met, he had a couple of other relationships in between. I have one adult child (26) who gets on well with my partner.

My partner has two adult children (19 and 22) and I just don't like them. I experience them to be entitled, totally self-centred, lazy and often arrogant and spiteful to others. I wont labour the point by listing examples, I'd just be venting.
Obviously they have positive qualities too, they are intelligent and witty and talented, but I cant seem to focus on those good qualities enough to enable me to like my step children.
I don't know what to do. They frustrate me so much I find myself silently screaming at them in my head. I'm counting the days until they leave home, but as neither of them seem to have any plans to do so, I don't know when that will be.
I've tried talking to my partner, and sometimes we've managed to talk reasonably about it - and sometimes we've argued. I hate arguing with him and causing him upset so I've stopped talking about it.

So basically, can someone please tell me how to like them? Or failing that, tell me how to stop my dislike of them eating away at me?

I was living on my own independently in a foreign country at 19, and worked 80 hours a week to pay for my expenses. Zero help from parents since they were dead.

“cost of living” is what you make of your life. I didn’t have a cell phone or car payment, or a tv, as a few example

I think it’s best that adults move out on their own, and having to endure “cost of living” is part of becoming and adult. We all struggle, it’s how we grow. Otherwise they will stay entitled in this prolonged adolescence. And it’s clearly not good for her and her marriage.

without knowledge of their particular behaviour, I think it’s pretty unfair to call 2 young people who lost their mum aged 7 and 10 ‘entitled’. I would think that they, more than most, need to security of comfort of their home. 19 and 22 is quite young to be expected to leave home.

Regardless, this thread is from 2024. I don’t know why it’s been resurrected simply to slate the kids.

I’m not sure why you would move in with people you don’t like? I would have held off until they had both let him if it were me, I am far too long in the tooth to be living with people I actively dislike. But you are where you are, the most you can do is minimise your interactions with them if they are as awful as you say.

You're an adult and shouldn't live with people you don't like. Get your own place until they've both left home.