Thank you so much everybody for your imput. Yes, I guess I could have diffused the situation by walking away (which I wound up doing after the fight began to go into a yelling match) and of course I got, "yeah, just walk away like you always do." I am quick tempered (something I am not proud of) but I'm also very loving, caring and very involved in all of my sk & bk's lives. I'm still at a hault with how to talk with my husband about what he said in re of my sd and my relationship, I've just let it go (obviously haven't let it go in my heart). I hear what people are saying about her being an adult and discipline is not going to happen now if it hasn't happened before, yet I can't help feel that can't be possible. Apparently I still need discipline in my life at age 34, why doesn't she at age 18? I have given up discussing this any further with my husband.(Still getting the abbreviated lingo down...what is an OP, DH, exactly?) So now I am at a stand off. I will not budge on making contact with my SD as much as I truly want to, and if I did, she has already laid the ground rules down for having a discussion. Last family "talk" I was informed by her that I was no longer allowed to write her a note or letter to address feelings, that it had to be face to face. She knows that I better diffuse and explain myself in writing than oral. When I explained that to her she told me too bad and my husband just sat there nodding his head so to say. So, my alpha SD shall get the silent treatment from me until she approaches me on the subject. How immature I feel. I'm pondering the thought of calling her BM. Any thoughts on this? Thank you everybody again for your imput, critically or sympathically. -O

Hey! ... So your situation sounds like my life 100%. Im not sure how you can find my posts but one of them is POWER STRUGGLE WITH STEP-DAUGHTER. I have the same situation minus the parents. I am lucky enough that the parents respect me and realise the BM is a sad excuse for a parent. Before I say anything I just wanted to say that it may be a really bad sign that his parents are acting the way they are... because bascially they are telling you by not allowing you over that they do not respect you, your opinions, your relationship with your bf... and I am assuming you have said or did something or voiced opinions and they disagree... What I did after I joined this forum, with the help of the posters on here is I literally removed myself from the situation... The child is 7 just like you, and she runs the show just likes yours. Now basically what I did with my fiance is sit down and say listen, I had divorced parents and my dad was strict and my mom was a push over... I explained to him that for his daughter's sake he needed to teach her discipline and give her rules and guidelines. In the beginning he thought I was a complete jerk so I stayed quiet.. Then things started unfolding on their own. She acted out at a fam BBQ and made him look like a fool, she almost drowned at a cottage we rented because he cant get control of her, she physcially hurt my god daugher (who is 3 btw), she ruined a weekend trip away because she started crying again in the middle of a show because the attn wasnt all on her, and his own MOTHER will not take her anywhere anymore because she is out of control and drove her absolutely insane on a weekend trip... these are just some of the things and this was what i can remember all in a 1-2 month span...And we have her every OTHER weekend. Bascially then, he came to me and said listen I really dono what to do. I am so lost. And my response was well I'm not an expert but I can see what you can't because I am not the parent and she is SCREAMING for some guidelines and rules. I told him straight up if you do not get her under control and respecting you then when she is a teen I feel extremely sorry for you and her. As you said she adores me too. But I have had some things happen to my in the last little while as well.. One of my posts was about a day that she was being bullied at daycare so I kept her at home that day before she went back to BM and she did not listen to a single word that came out of my mouth the entire day. She has ZERO respect for elders, and MINUS respect for her father and in turn me. So now the rule is I do not take her anywhere without him. And he is giving the discipline... I like you, am trying to help him and her... but as the posters on here will never fail to remind you,.... your not the mom, you have no say. When this child's BM doesnt care for her in appropriate ways, I can't do anything about it. So now I just let him handle everything. When his BM freaks out and calls and acts like a 2 yr old. I just leave the room and let it go on. Because as much as you want to lose your mind on him, her whatever just remember NONE of this is your problem. Enjoy him, and YOUR relationship. And enjoy the little one when shes around, help her with her homework, cook together do fun stuff. But if he doesn't discipline her and she drives you nuts... guess what, shes NOT yours so you have the choice that you can leave. It really doesn't sound like the situation will change if he doesn't think there is a problem. And him constantly tellin you she is # 1 is telling you that whatever YOU have to say means F*%& all and you may as well give up saying anything. He is not listening. He is listening however to what his parents say (who seem to be quacks) by the way. I would suggest taking some time and thinking about the situation. Forget about the daughter for a moment and his family and really think about what exactly it is that you two have together... Is there even anything there? do you even do anything together or have fun or is it all based on HIS parents HIS kid and HIS problems with HIS BM. Just remember at the end of the day if he doesnt respect your opinions that what exactly do you have together? The best of luck, Dont forget to update us here lol I always wonder whats happening in the poster's lives after they post and get responses haha!

As a friend of mine says, I'm on their speed dial. I've gotten called a LOT of times. Several of those times it was when I was a student or SAHM so I never went even though I always wanted to. Then finally I got called when I could go and I went. And I got picked. And it was horrible. It was a case of child abuse involving the sexual abuse of three children by mom's bf with the knowledge, acceptance and partial participation by the mom. We had to hear the most excruciating testimony, some of which still haunts me, and this was something like 18 or 19 years ago. The next time I got called, about two years later, it was a case of a boyfriend holding a gun on his girlfriend. I guess it was just too soon after the last time but I did not want to hear any gory details about their relationship. So I spoke up and said that I could not convict someone based on "his word against hers" and they let me go. After that I served on a jury for a drug case where I learned all about street terminology and how to tell if a drug deal is about to go down. The case was fine but there was one woman on the jury who was an attention seeker and she made us spend an inordinate amount of time getting her to agree to the verdict and sentence. Ugh. The third case I served on was in municipal court. We handed down a verdict of guilty with maximum fine on a speeding ticket. We all wanted to throw the guy in jail or at least give him a bigger fine for wasting all of our time. The lawyer asked a lot of stupid questions. Repeatedly. And the place where the guy got caught is a notorious speed trap. What a pain! Oh well. If (when) they call me again, I'll go. And serve if picked. I just don't need to be privy to the horrors that go on in people's homes so please, no more cases like that!

Let me be the contrarian here. If you need to cut back somewhere, the fridge is an obvious place to start. It's easily replaceable at a later date, and, as others on GW have observed, the fridge is the appliance that gives you the least bang for your buck. I see no conflict in buying an expensive range and keeping an old fridge. Our kitchen renovation ran well into six figures (not including appliances) and we spent another $14K on a Wolf rangetop, M Series oven and CSO, but decided to keep our 3 y.o. KitchenAid dishwasher, and 25 y.o. Hotpoint fridge. Both my wife and I think the kitchen looks quite nice this way. I'd be happy to post a picture if someone could tell me how to do it (I click photo and click on the picture, but nothing seems to happen). In any event, our new kitchen layout precluded re-using our old Thermador range (even though it was in perfect shape), so cooking appliances were the obvious area to devote to our rapidly-dwindling resources. My wife didn't think it was worth the extra $1,000 to get a CSO instead of a double oven, but I ultimately convinced her it was worth a shot. She still prefers the M Series, so the CSO is "my" oven and the M Series is "hers". The dishwasher decision came next. I would love to get a Miele Pro Series DW at some point, as it can do a load in 25 minutes, but at $5K it's pretty pricey. Our KitchenAid runs fine, so we decided to re-use it, but have a 220V receptacle installed under the sink. So, a future upgrade to a Miele will be pretty simple. Finally decisions had to be made about a refrigerator. Our fridge space goes into a cubby in the mud room, so we're lucky in that we can accommodate either a counter depth or a full-depth fridge. Neither my wife nor I could see the point in spending $8K on a SZ or other high-end fridge, when $2K will provide you with a fridge that works almost as well and has more storage space, so we ruled out a counter-depth pretty quickly. There were 2 main reasons why we decided to keep our old fridge, at least for the time being. The first is my concern about noise and reliability. Our 25 y.o. Hotpoint is very quiet and has had exactly one service call in 25 years (by contrast our 3 new Wolf appliances have had a total of 7 service calls in just 4 months). My perception is that newer appliances just aren't built as well as they used to be. We have to keep our GE washer & dryer under maintenance contracts, as they seem to crap out at least once a year, whereas our old Whirlpool ran over 20 years without a problem. Also after reading reviews of even highly-rated refrigerators, I get the impression that new fridges are much noisier than the old ones. Someone told me that this is because the new energy-efficient compressors make a lot of noise. On second thought, maybe I shouldn't be too concerned about this, as the fan on our Wolf M Series sounds like a jet engine once the oven gets hot. Most of our meals are spent with that thing howling in the background. Maybe the biggest reason for keeping the old fridge though, was due to a simple matter of aesthetics. My wife doesn't like having too much stainless steel in the kitchen, and all of the better full depth fridges only seem top come in that. Our old fridge is a nice cream color with black accents on the handles that perfectly matches our Kohler Biscuit sinks. The closest you can get to this color nowadays seems to be a "bisque" color, that is monotone and way too yellow for my taste. So we decided to keep our old fridge in the hope that something more to our liking comes out before this one decides to kick the bucket. We took a 3 week vacation during construction and left the fridge powered off and closed, which was a big mistake. We almost decided to chuck the fridge when we came back and discovered it was full of mold. It took almost a full day of scrubbing with Clorox, but it ended up looking almost new again. The same thing happened again, when the carpenters took the fridge out for the floor refinishing. They took the doors off this time and covered the fridge in plastic. We returned to find the worst of both worlds - the fridge was full of both sawdust and mold. In the end, both my wife and I are happy with our decision to keep the old fridge. We know its days are numbered, but will be sad to see it go.