As long as your husband continues to throw you under the bus and lie to cover up his lack of interest, nothing will change in your relationship with your stepkids.

What jewel said. Frankly, your husband sounds like no prize. I’m not sure why you would want to stay with someone who clearly doesn’t have your back and who would rather play computer games than interact with his family.

Thank you, yes im beginning to think the same, indecided to email my step daughter to find out if id done something to upset her and i got no were good signed off with kind regards so im honestly not even going to bother anymore, im done with being treated like im the bad one when in all honesty ive done more for these 3 kids then both their bio parents have done. They are adults now so they can work it out im not ever going to contact or have anything to do with them, for my own health as the stress of all these years of abuse are starting to take their toll on me thanks again for your advice both of you x

Accept your stepchildren’s feelings. Reason and truth will not change their minds. They have been fed lies and the lies work well in a narrative where their father is caring. Protect yourself financially. Make sure your wills and whatnot reflect what you and your husband want and cannot be contested.

i am sorry your caring and loving nurturing of thee children has gone awry. It makes no sense to a decent person like you, but sometimes people just act out on the scripts that protect their wishes instead of their reality.

Oh!, if everyone only knew how much this was the catalyst for the lack of dad and kid visits or bonding, rather than SMs themselves: “He [dad] tells me he has no affection to them, he doesn’t know them, and they are strangers.” That, and a bio-mom, “Who did stop him [dad] from seeing them often, she would also like to try and blame me with telling them daddy’s not here because of me [SM]!!!”

What I see is a society that has come to accept divorce, but still does not accept step-parents. What this means, literally, is that step-parents are indeed expected to make any and all sacrifices for the initial family, whether anyone wants to admit to it or not. This is why when anyone asks, “What is a SM supposed to do with a bad-a$$ BM or SK?” and so on. . . There is pretty much silence, crickets. No one, even professionals, wants to touch the “sanctity” of the initial family.

It is actually quite hypocritical for anyone to pretend that divorce is just fine, OK, tough but everyone will work it out. But, that if mom or dad remarries, there is something wrong with that blankety-blank SM or step-dad for messing the family up. In reality, if a society is going to be that hunky-dory with divorce (you can get an online divorce for about $129), but at the same time think that step-parents are nada or interfering blankety-blanks, then it should either not be allowing divorce to begin with or not allowing divorced parents to ever remarry.

To put all of that angst and blame and finger-pointing toward what is usually an innocent party, who just came along after the fact, is plain wrong!! This should be obvious to anyone, even children.

What can a SM do about it? Disengage. You do not HAVE TO cook and clean and wipe nose snot and wind up with only a kick in the caboose for your efforts. Only your DH does. After all, as everyone keeps reminding you, I'm sure, you are not mom, or a "real" parent. As dad, a real parent, your DH gets to take care of them now, which he should have been doing from the very beginning. Both him and BM should have been taking care of their children vs. putting them into the middle of their personal hateful, take-no-prisoners battle. Time for them to reap what they sowed. You, on the other hand, stay out of it as much as you can. Cooking, cleaning, etc., any kind of care for these children, is now on dad's or mom's backs, which, again, is where it should have been to begin with.

We all just need to learn how to say No! and mean No. No! to parents who choose divorce, put their kids thru H-, and then either on purpose, accidentally, or accidentally on purpose place SM into the role of sacrificial scapegoat.