My husband and have been married for 3 months and have been together for nearly 8 years. We are very happy together and love each other desperately.
Now for the bad bit!
I don't have any children myself but my husband has 2 daughters aged 24 and 22.
I met them for the first time as I say nearly 8 years ago (they were 16 and 14 then)and unfortunately they hated me on sight.
I thought at the time that it was just teenage stuff/puberty/maybe a bit spoiled from recently divorced parents/jealousy ect. Incidentally I was not the cause of their parents break up. Their mother had an affair and the marriage ended.
To cut a long story short, these 2 young women (I cannot contemplate referring to them as my stepdaughters)have done everything to split us up over the years. They have nearly succeeded a couple of times I'm ashamed to admit.
The final straw was when their father told them we were getting married this year. They came to our house and spent 4 hours crying and screaming at us and telling me I wasn't his type and that he still had feelings for an old girlfriend! The list of dreadful things they said to us both that day is endless, they tried every trick in the book to stop us getting married. They didn't come to our wedding because we didn't want them there. This may sound very dramatic but I was very ill over this and am only now just starting to feel like my old self again. I am not a weak or timid person, in fact I am just the opposite but the 8 years of hell they have given us just caught up with me I think.
I look back over these years and wonder what I did wrong and I think I could have maybe tried harder with them or been less bothered by their behaviour but I just couldn't bear the way they treated their father, the man I love, and so I distanced myself from them rather than cause a major row. Unfortunately their father doesn't feel the way he should about them now because of their behaviour and the fact that he has no understanding of the type of people they seem to have become.He says he can't relate to them and I can see why. I sometimes wonder if its all just about jealousy. I'm a good bit younger than my husband and I wonder if that has played a part. They probably would have liked someone a bit more "mumsy" no offence to any mum's reading this I am only using it for descriptive purposes!
I haven't had a relationship with them over the years and I won't have one in the future, its best for everyone. Their father see's them once a fortnight for a couple of hours, mainly out of duty and a deep sense of guilt for how they have turned out. I don't know what the future holds for the 3 of them, maybe one day they will realise what they have done and what they have lost.
Apologies for sounding off for so long!
Kx