18 year old daughter hates my partner

[mrsorourke1]

Hi, this is my first post on here and I apologise for its length but I'm in crisis with my daughter and would welcome any advice.
I have been with my partner for the last 7 years and lived with him and my daughter for 6. They have always had a slightly uneasy relationship as he likes a clean house and she is extremely lazy and resents him asking her to do things around the house. But he has done more for her than her own father, going to all parents evenings, university tours, financially supporting her through university, sending her other bits of money just so she can treat herself, listening to her and giving her a cuddle when she's upset about things etc..The only time me and my partner really argue is regarding my daughter and he gets frustrated that I always defend her which I know I shouldn't do if she's in the wrong.
She started university away from home last September and things settled down but due to the lockdown she had to come home. Since being home she has laid in bed all day and hardly done a thing around the house. My partner does have some mental health issues and he has also been struggling with lockdown and had missed some of his tablets. I'm a nurse and had come home from work with suspected corona virus and he had asked her to do a few things around the house as it would help me whilst I was unwell. He had specifically asked her to do the hoovering but after a few hours it still wasn't done. He lost his temper and barged into her bedroom with the hoover and a full scale row erupted, she pushed him as he was invading her space and he called her some vile names, I broke it up. My daughter has left the house and gone back to stay with her dad and is refusing to come back to the house whilst my partner is there. He knows he shouldn't have crossed her boundaries and called her names and is willing to apologise but she won't even come home to discuss things. She thinks that I should kick him out and can't understand why I want to continue a relationship with a man that treats their daughter this way and says that I should chose her over him. I want to stay with my partner but I don't want to lose my daughter either. My own mental and physical health are suffering and I'm at my wits end please help x

Oliversmumsarmy why are you letting your teenagers stay in bed till 7pm? You're not taking food up to them are you? You always talk about how your children always come first no matter what, is that at the expense of any relationships? I also feel for Oliver and his future partners you sound like a very involved parent

Yes it does sound like she’s being lazy and not pulling her weight. However it’s hard for these uni students being forced to return home early, missing friends, missing their new independence. Having to fit back into the family home.

I have a 19 year old DD who has had to cut her first uni year short and come home, she’s finding it difficult being here 24/7 with her parents. She’s used to a flat full of young mates having a laugh, I get it completely. DH less so and I had to have a word with him last night as he was getting the arse with her.

Cut her some slack and pick your battles.

It’s not as if they can even pop out and meet up with old local friends. It’s a crazy intense situation.

Jesus asking an 18 year old to Hoover is not a big ask. Yes he should not of barged in, but we aren't all Perfect.
I think it sounds like your daughter is throwing a tantrum, especially if your partner has agreed to apologise.
She is being selfish if you ask me, asking you to choose her or him.

There are a disturbing number of people on this website who think that shouting, swearing, and name calling are a normal part of relationships. I'm not one of them. If my partner called me "vile names", for any reason, I'd leave him. I can hardly blame the OPs daughter for doing the same
But do you loll around all day doing nothing, expect to be catered for, ignore polite requests from others, refuse to help despite another family member being ill and thereby putting more on their shoulders by your selfish laziness etc etc

It is not a normal part of the DP and DSDs relationship, this seems to be a one off. Your blanket solution seemed unrealistic to me.

I think the responses would be very different if it were an 18 year old son expecting to be waited on hand and foot

OP, does your daughter have any other relatives like aunts or uncles on your side that could help?

I think you need to really hear her..don't defend his behaviour or yours and try to see why she is unhappy. She seems like a normal teen who is staying in her room, quite common after Uni dorms experience so you and your partner need realistic expectations. After the first year at Uni my daughters washing up skills went backwards (due to low Uni standards!!) and I had to re wash everything...she is excellent now so it was a phase.

Keep up contact with her, tell her you love her and she is important to you. Ask her what she needs to feel safe. Offer her counselling as someone to talk to.

A daughter is worth much more than a man..even a teen daughter who is going through a lazy stage.

I cannot believe people feel it's okay to let 18 year olds sleep all day and leave dirty cups and plates in their room, and not help out a bit when their mum has suspected covid.
Is this a parallel universe or something.
If be annoyed, if I asked nicely and it still wasn't done. It is not abusive to expect someone to pick up after themselves.
Obviously he shouldn't call her names. Tensions are high and he was missing his MH tablets.

He escalated, and on some level believes that he was reasonable to challenge her 'laziness'. He was asserting his authority that this is his house, not hers, by going into her room. He has shown she is unwelcome unless she does the cleaning (as dictated by him- him being in control). His calling her ungrateful also communicates that he feels she is indebted to him. All of that makes it unsafe for her really, doesn't it. I think you are being a bit willfully blind to the nature of the dynamic here.

This

However much she is in the wrong and lazy and all those things he angrily barged into her bedroom and invaded her space and called her names

and now

He knows he shouldn't have crossed her boundaries and called her names and is willing to apologise but she won't even come home to discuss things.

Apologies for this are meaningless. No matter if he was right in the first place entering her room and calling her names crossed a line that makes her feel uncomfortable

RIghtly or wrongly I think you will in the short term at least have to make the choice

he needs to apologise to her first -
i would suggest you leave her be, and if thats what she gets at her dads then i can undersatnd why shes not rushing back..... her life is a pile of crap at teh moment and there is real feear about their futures for young people as nothing is looking great going forward...

you do sound quite thoughtless about where she's at...and both of your and dp expectations pretty unrealsitci... so what if shes in bed all today what harm is it actually doing you/him....

he has really crossed a boundary and its good she has those... he may.may not be controlling but even if he was her dad that is not the way to be with her... he needs to apologise first and you shoudl set out how things will be going forward - if you want to keep a relationship with her..... my stepdad was much more tidy/fussy than me so i stayed at home for teh minimal amount of time after they had a house together (left at 19 - never ever went back) ...
we get on ok but my db relationship with my DM has never recovered (he was younger so at home longer ) due to crap boundaries

try and think long term..

Wait, your DD “pushed him into a wall”?

I’d say she owes your DP an apology too. Yes, he lost his temper and went into her room to get her to hoover and called her “ungrateful bitch” but she should not have reacted with physical violence towards him. They both crossed lines there.

I know how infuriating teenagers can get. Im on my third 18yo at this point and they are lazy and often disrespectful. One of my DCs even stopped flushing the toilet for over a year which drove me up a wall. I’ve lost my temper and said similar things when they’re doing the laze around all day, make mess and not help out. Then expect dinner, but when you cooked it they turn their nose up at it and then loot the kitchen for something else to eat and leave even more mess.

My mum had a relationship with a man I couldn't stand. He went to events, occasions etc sure. Because she brought him along, not because I wanted him there.

He spoke to me badly, treated me badly, came into my life and expected us to change ours to pander to him. The second I was old enough I left to live with my dad and then left for uni.

She's since divorced him and our relationship has been rebuilt but I will never forget how she prioritised the feelings of a man over my feelings of discomfort.

Speak to your daughter. Hear what she's saying. Look carefully at his behaviour. Has he really "done more for her" than her father or are you spinning events. Does she see it that way?

No I don't do any of those things Edwina and I don't condone the daughter doing them either, but even if I did I would expect not to be verbally abused for it. I honestly don't think there is ever an excuse for certain things including verbal and physical abuse. So nothing the Ops partner did in my opinion justifies the daughter pushing him. And nothing the daughter did justifies him calling her a bitch. The relationship has clearly degraded beyond repair, the daughter has made her choice that she doesn't want to live in an environment she finds toxic. She's 18, she's happy at her dad's, the OP has clearly implied that her home life is calmer when she's away at uni, she obviously doesn't want to leave her partner, so I don't really know what the issue is. The daughter can be happy at her dad's, the OP can be happy with her partners, no more fighting or shoving or name calling for anybody. Win win. But if the op wants her daughter to move back in she has to ditch her partner. That's the choice her daughter has given her, and I think it's the right choice because I too would not live with someone that I had such a damaged relationship with, nor would I live in a house where there was the potential for verbal or physical abuse in either direction.

I'm a little confused because it seems they're both to blame and frankly, in the heightened tension of our world these days, over reactions are reasonable.

But why is HE always the one asking her to do things around the house? This is the bit I'm struggling with. Does she only ignore his requests or yours too? Or do you just not bother to ask because you know she won't do it? Is he asking her because you don't want to fight with her? Because it seems to me that either both of you should be frustrated that she won't help out but you seem to just see it as "one of those things". And that's got to be annoying for him too.

I don't have teenagers yet so I appreciate I don't fully know what I'm talking about but I do remember being one. My parents were pretty relaxed in that they were happy to let us do our thing etc, but consideration for the rest of the family was baked in. If we ate dinner with the family, we bloody well helped clean up. Ditto, if we made snacks for ourselves, we cleaned up. If our cleaner was on holiday or sick, we each had tasks that had to be done. I hope I can instils the same basic consideration in my DC in due course.

“think the responses would be very different if it were an 18 year old son expecting to be waited on hand and foot”

I agree settlersofcatan. The thread would probably say he’s 18 and an adult and why isn’t he paying rent, tell him if he wants to be treated like an adult he needs to act like one and pull his own weight and pay rent or get out. Along with the usual turn off the WiFi is he isn’t playing xbox in his room all day.

What advice would you give your daughter if her boyfriend barged into her room and scared her and shouted that she was an "ungrateful bitch". Would you advise her to accept his apology and continue living with him? A boundary has been crossed. If you feel she is lazy, entitled, rude then you should have dealt with this as she grew up. I agree with the ones saying over the past 6 years your partner has got this into your head. I really feel sorry for your daughter and I don't think an apology is the answer. It's just teaching her to not hold men accountable for their actions. He is abusive. No matter how many times you stick your fingers in your ears and go lalalala there is an abusive dynamic at play

If my partner called my daughter 'vile names' I would ask him to move out until he had his mental health issues under control and had spent as long as needed rebuilding the relationship and making it up to her. If he was prepared to do this and genuinely deeply sorry then I wouldn't break up with him even if my daughter wanted me too - teenagers are selfish. But barging into a young girls room shouting about hoovering and calling her names is awful. He should have been the one to leave not her

‘Ungrateful birch’ is indeed a truly vile thing to say to a teenager. Because she doesn’t hoover.

Everything you say builds up a picture of an exacting man who has been put first - and the expectation that she’s appalling for not cooking you - two working adults - dinner is ridiculous.

sickofnamechangingx

Dc are asleep till then.

Gradually they will get back to a better cycle

I don’t mind they are really getting on at the moment as it is the first time in a long time they have spent time together.
Both are usually working and both do jobs that have very odd hours.

I never ask them to do anything around the house. It obviously works as they will load the dishwasher or sweep the floor (we don’t have a vacuum cleaner or carpet as I cannot the noise a vacuum makes).

If they see something that needs doing then they do it off their own initiative.

Also they spent 3 weeks when we were first on lockdown remodelling a place in the garden that I had started and had not had time to finish.

Also they do their own and my dinner as I don’t cook.

He needs to ease up on the obsessive cleaning and forcing it on others.

Your daughter needs to get off her arse and help. She’s an adult.

Don’t dump your partner over this. Your dd will leave home for good soon and move in with someone you don’t approve of but she won’t leave him because you say so.

She is bloody lazy and wants you to kick your long term partner out the house then presumably will head of back to uni when this all blows over and leaving you to pick up the pieces of your relationship.

There could be more going on here - I really think you need to talk to your daughter about her relationship your partner. Tbh ‘always had an uneasy relationship’ and ‘he has some mental health issues’ and the fact that you say things ‘settled down’ when she physically left the house for months at a time, suggest a lot more under the surface tension than straightforward arguments about cleaning. At the end of the day it’s your relationship with your daughter that’s at stake and you should address that. This is from experience!

I don’t agree that OPs DP is an any way abusive.
Losing your temper over an 18yo that is doing very typical lazy, selfish and entitled behaviour is not unusual. And it doesn’t matter how you raise them, they all go through this phase. Telling the OP that it’s a fault of her parenting is as wrong as telling the parent of a 2yr old that it’s their fault their toddler throws tantrums.

Some of the responses on here are batshit and are projecting all their crazy issues around step parents.

The husband doesn’t sound like an obsessive cleaner. He just wants the house kept tidy and for the daughter to pull her weight especially since HER OWN MOTHER HAS COVID. That alone would make me angry, the fact that she couldn’t even get up to take care of her own mother make things easier for her in this time of need. Yes, that does make her an ungrateful bitch.

Like a previous poster said, what parallel universe are some of you people living in where this is okay?? Some of you need to have better respect for yourselves and draw better boundaries with your kids. WTF.

The problem here is step-fathers. Who wants an angry man you are not related to, who you have had an uneasy relationship with, shouting at you? I would not accept that either.

The laziness is another issue which you as the mother need to address, or just relax about if you don't care that much. Not outsource to your shouty husband. Your dd shouldn't be demanding meals, not contributing- but the way to get cooperation isn't what the step-dad did.

Why would the Op's dd go home? If she likes living somewhere else? I wouldn't have this man shouting at me either, and perhaps the OP's dd has been feeling uneasy again and would just prefer to be elsewhere.

Op, to repair this you need to stop mediating between them, which is pointless, and start creating quality good time with your dd. She sounds depressed, not lazy, I have teens and starting to sleep excessively and being in bed all day is what would happen here if I didn't drag them out, do things with them etc, depression is very near for lots of teens.

Why should she apologize to a man who called her vile names and beg to come home? More to the point, she probably won't, so start thinking how you can repair you and her and make it clear to your husband that that is your priority, above cleanliness and above him and his shoutiness.