It took many years… A month before I was due to deliver DD, they suddenly packed up their things and went to live with their mum full time. DH was heartbroken, but he let them go. He told me that he didn’t feel like their parent anymore, with how little he was seeing them. I’m honestly glad they didn’t have to live in a house with a newborn who slept really poorly, or be made uncomfortable by breastfeeding, but I wished they could have come back after DD weaned.
For a long time, DH went and spent time with them outside of our house, and major holidays were celebrated early with DH, DD and I, and then we’d go to visit my family 6 hours away so DH could have DSDs over and celebrate with them. Holiday trips were taken first with DSDs, and then they would go home and DD and I would go meet DH at the destination.
Over time, this became a rather untenable arrangement, and it didn’t seem like my older DSD was coming around at all, even with occasional short outings all together. We tried celebrating holidays together, and it seemed like for a couple hours at a time, she would “forget” her grudge towards me and everything that happened with her parents’ divorce, and then she’d suddenly remember and become cold and withdrawn, or angry. We tried holiday trips together— mostly the DSC went off together and did their own thing, while DH, DD, MIL and I did ours.
Things improved with time. DD is just so full of love, and took to her eldest sister so readily, that I think she was disarmed. DSD figured out that the special birthday cakes she’d gotten every year and loved, which she was told were made by her father, were actually decorated by me. I think she had it in her head that step parents and step children are natural enemies, and that I hated her, so she hated me to, but she realized that wasn’t the case. She started accepting Christmas gifts that I had gotten her, and was less moody during the holidays (though still sad when it was time for her to depart.) We recently played this one card game as a family, and I was so shit at it that she laughed and laughed, and we actually had a good time together.
She graduated school and went off to uni in another country, and I think being away on her own was good for her. She made lots of friends and had her own space. She calls DH nearly every day now… I think the biggest change was a result of a recent incident where she asked DH to come and visit her at uni, and he was insistent to her that I should come as well.
She didn’t speak to him for a whole week. I actually talked it over with others here on MN, and they helped me to see that she just wanted some one-on-one time with her dad, for me not to invade this safe space she had for herself overseas, and to not feel like he was always choosing me over her. I told DH this and that I think he should go alone. He spoke to DSD about what I said, and now they have a whole trip planner together, to which DH is presently en route. I think that helped her to get her needs met, and to see that I’m on her side.
I’m looking forward to seeing our relationship continue to improve in the future.