First of all, thank you for reading this in advance. ☺ You guys rock!

So, I have extremely mixed feelings right now about my relationship because of my boyfriend’s six-year old daughter. When I started seeing him three years ago, I knew that this would be tough; however, I didn’t think that I would dislike my boyfriend’s daughter quite so much.

I should qualify that. I don’t dislike her all the time—she has the potential to be a very sweet little girl. But she has SUCH an attitude, and I don’t know if I can stand it anymore. Her mother is just awful—which I hate to say about anyone. However, she constantly puts the little girl between the two of them so that she can teach her daughter to hate her father. I have sympathy for the little girl, but she has really started to act just like her mother.

I should clarify: my boyfriend only gets to see his daughter once a month (or so) because his ex-wife decided that she needed to move to NYC (7 hours away from us) so she could pursue her career. She absolutely tries to manipulate all conversations between my boyfriend and his daughter. My boyfriend’s daughter, just the other week, told my boyfriend that she wanted her last name changed—and she’s only six, so you know where that idea is coming from.

It gets so much worse. My boyfriend’s daughter is extremely rude to him on the phone. She won’t let him speak at all during their conversation, and when he tries, she comes up with things like “YOU’RE NOT LISTENING!!!!” (I put it in caps to emphasis how she says it.) Then he says something like, “I am listening, but could you use a different tone?” “YOU’RE BEING RUDE!!! MOM, HE’S BEING MEAN.” So then over comes the mother, and she speaks in a very condescending voice that he “needs to listen to her, and he should apologize.” Then my boyfriend tries to explain how rude his daughter is acting, and then he’ll try to explain that he only gets to speak with her for a few minutes a day, and he really wants her not to speak that way to him. So, the ex-wife will say “Well you’re wasting your time with her by talking to me.” It’s so awful. But it gets worse. Now, whenever my boyfriend attempts to correct his daughter, she’ll parrot her mother—“You’re wasting your time talking to me.” I’ve heard her go so far as say “Even your own daughter is against you” when the mother was standing RIGHT THERE. How can a mother let her child talk that way to anyone, let alone her father?

I feel for the girl, but if she continues to talk this way to people she’s going to have a really difficult time in life. My boyfriend is really depressed because he can never have a normal chat with his little girl, and she is learning to hate him, even though overall he is a lovely man. ☹

Does anyone have any advice for dealing with this kind of situation?