I've been with my SO for 4 years. He has two daughters and I have two boys. The girls are 17 and 11. My boys are 15 and 7. Let me tell you, the sunny, perfect, wonderful life that I had planned with my SO when I first met and fell in love with him is FAR from reality. I guess I should have known. Unfortunately, no one warned me that being a SM was the absolute worst job in the entire world. I thought that since I loved him with everything in me, that I would naturally come to love them the same way. I was certain that I would eventually love them the way that I love my boys. Wow! How incredibly wrong I was!! The girls' mother died 9 years ago. Which is heartbreaking for them, I know, and I do feel an incredible amount of sympathy for them to go through something like that at such a young age. However, I feel that the entire family uses that as an excuse to coddle and spoil them. I feel like there are absolutely no real consequences for their behavior. SO will yell and tell them that they are grounded, but they both know that the second that they ask he will give in and give them whatever they want.

SD17 was been brought home by the cops when she was 15 because she was found naked in her boyfriend's car in the middle of the night. SO has caught a half naked guy hiding in her closet in the middle of the night. She was arrested for stealing. And STILL there was little to no consequences for any of it. She has this air about her that she thinks she is so much better than everyone else. SD11 is a flat out liar. She lies about everything. And if she can get my sons in trouble or talk bad about them in any way, she will. She is so incredibly lazy. Her room is disgusting because she won't clean it and I absolutely refuse to go into it. I used to give up and just clean her room for her because I couldn't take it, but I refuse to do it anymore. I had enough of finding clean, folded clothes that I had given to her to put away thrown on her floor, glasses, plates, paper, all matter of trash, etc all over her floor and shoved under her bed and in her closet. And, again, no consequences for doing this. And any type of punishment that I try to enforce is undermined by SO.

My oldest son is fed up. He tells me every day that he is angry. That he doesn't understand why they get everything that they want and yet they don't have to do anything for it. He was raised that you have to do your chores, keep your room clean, etc or you don't get to go do anything with your friends, or have people over or get an allowance. I come home everyday and he has cleaned the kitchen, fed the girls' dogs (he volunteered for this because they were ignoring them and they were not getting fed or watered), picked up the living room, done his laundry. And SD11 is lying on the couch in the same clothes that she wore the day before and in exactly the same position as when I left the house at 6 that morning. I swear that she lied there for 2 days last week and never moved except to eat and go to the bathroom.

I'm so incredibly frustrated and there are just days when I want to lose it and scream at the top of my lungs. I don't know what to do. I love my SO, but I just can't love the SD's. I've been there this long and I still don't feel it. I feel like an awful person, but I don't know what else to do. I feel like my children get treated unfairly...but, really, they are just getting what the SD's don't get... discipline! And what is the most frustrating of all is watching my SO be completely manipulated and taken in by them every day. All they have to do is cry and he's caving. I resent it, frankly. And I resent them. And I hate being angry and frustrated and I'm tired of wishing that they would just go away because I don't want my SO to feel that way about my children. I feel like an awful, horrible person.