I agree, it is so helpful to bounce things off & vent here. You get many different opinions and perspectives but in some way almost everyone on this board is affected by a stepfamily situation.

I really wish there was some local support group or therapist where I live but then again DH knows everyone in our community & I probably wouldnt feel confident/safe spilling my feelings like I do here.

Still it's nice to hear we appreciate each others input.

If your guiding principle is "Father's Rule" or Head of House, I would have to disagree. You and your wife are partners and equals. Not treating her as such, not recognizing her relationship with her daughter are, IMHO, a big mistake. Have you thought there might be a time wthen you are not around, your SD might be someone your son would look to as family.

OP didn't say that was his guiding principle just that was the type of advice being offered from his church etc. I understood this post to be a Thank you offered to other members of this board and nothing more.

Thank you Thurman for your post. I too agree that this forum/list is very useful for us step parents. Before i found this forum, i looked everywhere for books on step parenting or anything i could put my hand on to better understand my situation. Thanks to all who post here, your comments are always helpful and have helped me alot.

It is true that sometimes it is difficult for others to understand the situation of being a step parent if he or she is not one themselves.

I remember discussing my situation with my very best friend of 25 yrs. and her responses to my delemma were the same as many others : Why bother with that child? She is not even your biological child? etc. etc. etc.

People can be mean. The only way i got to resolve my situation with my SD is really by coming to this forum and reading everything on the Internet that i could on the subject. I also truly, truly worked on detaching myself from her, by not letting her get to me as much, by simply ignoring her!

So Thurman, i understand you when you say even your own family or friends don't really understand you in regards to your SD. So this just proves how we the step parents have to work on the situation ourselves and not with the objective of making the step child happy or to make them love us more but rather with the goal to make us the step parent a better person and a happier person.

Go Thurman go.

I also wanted to say Thurman....if you do practice some of the suggestions offered on this forum, like doing things by yourself and not always having to be in or at the events/activities where your SD, wife and son are at....you will notice that the entire family whole will not fall apart, your wife will still care for you and no your son will not love his mommy more than he love his daddy.

Take care. Keep posting.

Fleurs, I beleive you have previously posted that your stepchildren spent EOW with you and DH and then two weeks over summer (which you forced DH to cutting into one). And then you were upset when you did not have as big a role at SDs wedding as the childs mother. You and Thurman may have a lot in commen with Thurman, both expecting that the world revolves around you. As to people being mean, it seems to me that some Stepparents can be mean to.

In any event, I do suspect that advice that Thurman has taken from the chuch encourages this.

KKNY,

I don't know but you keep coming back on that post that i wrote in regards to the holidays and my step children and i think you really read it wrong.

I suggest you go back and read it once and for all.
In short, what i said is that for 10 yrs. DH and I had the children every summer for two weeks during the time we had our summer vacations. After 10 yrs. i asked my DH if out of these two weeks, we could have one alone because we were constructing the cottage and we had never had one single week together in the summer for the previous 10 yrs.

Funny. The children's mother agreed to it. The children are still alive and well and have not died over it. Why does it bother you as much?

For 10 yrs i had said yes to everything the step children and the ex wife wanted every summer.

To this day, i really don't think it was that wrong that I ask DH if we could have one week together. And come to think of it,...it was one of the most beautiful week we ever spent together.

Nothing wrong with placing the husband and wife's relationship first once in awhile.

Keep posting.

Fleurs,

Then dont complain about how you are seated at wedding. Your are not a mom. You have much less involvement.

I have never heard thurman say anything positive about his stepdaughter, nor his wife. I think any problems he has with the SD are in his own head, caused by his own attitude.

Some people are just difficult to live with, and get a payoff out of whining.

And Fleur, I can understand you wanting a week alone with your husband. Adults should get a chance to go on vacation now and then without children. I do have to wonder though, standard summer visitation is six weeks. You and your husband only had two. Why is that?
Did the children not wish to come more than two weeks when they were small?

We havent had a week alone without ANY kids since we were on our honeymoon, but we steal long weekends together every chance we get. My husband gets 6 weeks a year off,plus two personal days a month and we still have to do a lot of planning to get a time when we dont have any kids around. Mind, we have 9 kids between us, although only three of them are underage now.