I can understand him and BM making medical or educational decisions together about their daughter, but about what goes on in your house - no way! That would be up to you and him, and BM should have absolutely no say in the matter. As my husband says, there are too many men out there trying to please the ex-wife and not the current wife. It's you he has to live with (or will), not her. It's you he should be making happy, not her.
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Love me or hate me, I'm still gonna shine!!!

Thing is, it's a grey area. If your BF agrees that the two of you make decisions about what goes on in your house together, that's great. Sometimes, "what goes on in your house" involves SD.

No, you shouldn't be making decisions about SD's schooling, medical decisions, etc. But sometimes those decisions involve a financial part. As the GF, your role is fuzzier. But if you were married to him, you should expect equal say in financial situations. For example, I don't get to decide whether my SD should go to a private school (educational decision) -- BUT as my DH's wife, and the one who pays the bills, I do get equal say as to whether we can afford it (financial decision). If I say we can't afford half of the financial contribution, then that decision should be respected. But if DH and BM figure out a way to get her to the school anyway -- say, a scholarship -- then I have no role in that decision.

SD's discipline is not your job. But, if she is acting out at you, or trashing your house, then you have a say in whether she gets disciplined. If DH doesn't want you to do the disciplining, that's fine -- but he should do it "for" you because she is not following the rules of your house.

Those decisions -- the rules of your house, your finances, etc. -- are areas that BM has no say in. Hence the grey area. So, if she decides that SD should participate in a particular activity, and your BF goes along with it to keep the peace, but it involves an extra expense that is not covered under CS -- and YOU guys decide you can't afford it -- that is not BM's business. If she wants SD to participate, she'll have to find her own way to do it.

Can the two of you work on those grey areas? If you talk to your BF again but phrase your concerns as wanting to have a say in the decisions of the house, not decisions about how to raise SD, then I would think you could work things out.

BB

You are not second best, you are not second class. Do not ever let anyone make you feel that way. - 2BLoved

WE make the rules - at our house we actually have REAL rules - BM's house is basically a free-for-all. NOBODY is going to behave in MY home in a way that I don't deem fit.
"Keeping the peace" - AHHHHHHHHHH makes me want to puke. My FH said this to me ONCE, just once.....and I just about blew a gasket, which proved to him that keeping the peace wasn't quite working for him. I explained to him that while BM was perfectly happy and "at peace", that I was extremely unhappy and NOT at peace! WHO CARES IF BM IS HAPPY? Our BM was only happy as long as we gave into her every whim, as soon as we didn't - she's taking us to court - and that never happened.
Your BF is being controlled by BM, in my opinion. Alot of BMs will use their children to control their exes and the exes don't even know they're being controlled.
My FH used to have his head so far up BM's ass that when he asked me to marry him, I said, "Marry you? You all ready have a wife - there's no room for me". He got the drift and things changed drastically.

**my stepdaughters did not grow in my tummy, they grew in my heart**

I'm not adding feedback at this point, but support. Know that you are not alone and others feel the same thing.

There is a "reasonable" and you probably know it in your gut, it's just hard to believe in it when those around you keep trying to tell you that something else is "reasonable".

Believe in yourself and believe in love and kindness. YOU are most important, over relationship, kids, everything, because if YOU aren't there for yourself, none of the rest of it matters.

HUGS!!!

Co-parenting in no way means one person completely compromises to "keep the peace". That is absurd. Here is what I told my dh to get him past that "If you and Wingnut were still married, that is how you'd be forced to parent and Creature would be a nasty, self-centered bully. You now have the chance to teach her to be a productive member of society, why would you blow that to keep Wingnut happy?". If dh's main concern was keeping the peace with his ex moreso than keeping the peace with me, it would be a dealbreaker. I told him before I agreed to marry him, that our marriage comes first, that I am marrying him not him and Wingnut, and that Creature will have rules in our home". It is working out very nicely. There is no peace with Wingnut. The only time these women are happy is when people are bending over backwards to please them and even then it is momentary. My therapist once told me that priorities go like this 1) God 2) spouse 3) kids (see that spouse first) 4) career and 5) everything else (this is where BM and inlaws fall!

It isn't that your dh CAN'T do it for you it is that he is choosing to NOT do it for you, which means your whole life will be spent married to both he and his xwife. Not fair to you and really not fair to his daughter.

"God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy" and you can't change crazy!!

I just wanted to say that I understand how you feel. BM and DH coparent and have joint custody but we only have SSs 30% of the time. I often feel like I am third, after BM and skids. DH says he doesn't want to piss BM off so she won't let him see the kids so he never tells her no. That them gives her all the control. DO you know how much it sucks to have EW control our lives???

Can you give an example of a situation where you felt left out because you weren't involved in decision making for SD?

The adult relationship in the home is the core of the family ...... PERIOD! Whether the kids are his, yours, or joint. The decisions made in the home are joint adult decisions made by the adults in the household regardless of who owns the kids. When the kids are in the home you provide with your SO, you have equity parent status.

I insist on equity parenting status to my Wife and to SpermDad. I am the primary income of all three parents in the SKids life, I provide the health insurance that covers him and I damned sure get an equity say in anything skid related PERIOD!

Now, my wife and I have this agreement and SpermDad the SpermClan just have to suck it up and deal with it.

If a situation arises where my Wife and I can't agree on a path forward then she is the custodial parent and I will have her back but she knows very clearly my stance on the situation because we communicate on everything. Again, SpermDad has no say beyond what he thinks he can back up in court and since the entire SpermClan does not have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of they pretty much just suck it up. They can whine and they can cry but they do what my wife tells them to do.

BioDad has bred himself and his parents in to a state of financial destitution (4 out-of-wedlock spawn by 3 different mothers. My Skid is his oldest.) so they pretty much get little to no say in my Skids life. We honor the court ordered visitation schedule and I have commited to my Skid that I would never prevent him from having a relationship with his BioDad and the SpermClan. I never have and I never will.

Just my thoughts of course.

Best regards,

Success is rarely final. Failure is rarely fatal. It is character, courage and consistency of effort that count. Vince Lombardi (with some minor Rags modifications) To each according to their performance, screw Karl Marx. (Rags)

Our house, our rules. BM's house, BM's rules. That's how it goes here. When they walk into our home they know the drill: shoes off before you walk into the living room and jackets in the closet. They do it the minute they walk in b/c they know this is the standard. Whenever we watch them walk into BM's house we laugh; 1 shoe goes flying into one direction and the other shoe into another direction. Their jackets get thrown into a corner.... That is BM's standard.

Since this is a home that my girls live in full time I'd have to say that I'm the "rule maker". Nothing unfair, but I like to keep things in line. I think this is where BM has some issues.

I'll put the 2 younger skids in timeout, but with SS13 I allow DH to deal with that. I try to stay out of the medical decisions, more specifically which DR they see but since DH pays the insurance and 50% of copays we're not going to allow BM to take the skids to an out of network provider just b/c she likes the Halloween parties they throw. In that instance, I told DH that I will NOT allow him to pay 50% of their dental copay when she's refusing to see somebody in network. He agreed and BM ultimately threw a fit before changing to a new dentist.

Bottom line, we don't seek her approval for anything. If DH has a concern, he addresses it. If I have a concern, I talk to DH about it and then HE speaks to BM. We've come a LONG way in this department. He avoided confronting her at all costs until I told him that he could only be married to one of us.

As far as you wanting to be put first... this is a tough one. I spent countless hours crying, arguing and fighting for a spot that I felt I was entitled to. I had to give it time; DH had used the kids as a barrier from BM and whenever he was pissed at her he'd detach from her and pour himself into the kids. He didn't know any different and he did it with me for a long time. I basically gave up and backed off and slowly it's changing. He sees his kids EW and I'll admit; as much as I love them, I don't feel that I have to see them every weekend. I wanted somne 1 on 1 couples time and I had to beg and beg. Now, he gives it freely without me really even asking.

I hope some of this helps. I know how you feel and it's a tough spot to be in.

Good luck!

Same here...Our house our rules. Whatever Goofy does at Disneylands house I could care less but it does not happen here..ie..Belching at the dinner table, throwing clothes and garbage on the floor...the list is too long to type out.
DH has been avoiding stepping on Disneylands toes for a long long time, he is not putting up with it anymore. She has no hold on him and she is finding that out quickly

Well if you guys parent differently than that is a major problem.
But even if its different parenting styles, coparenting doesn't mean having to check in with BM on every little decision there is.
The hard part is is that he has blatantly stated that he will not change it. Are you okay with living with that for the rest of your life?

JMO, but I belive that the adult relationship should be the core relationship of the family. That's how my partents are/were and they are a happy couple of 33 years. So that is how I expect things to be. I haven't asked DF specifically about this, but I have the feeling that he thinks his kid should come first. Although, I think that if he was still with BM the marriage would come first just becauase the BM was the one to bring this little bundle of joy into his world.