I feel the same....I love the man and am sick of raising his kids but...

I have to always think of this question...

Would you leave your son for a man?

I think a lot of times we forget that a man and his kids are a family, his family and of course he wants to be with his family...kid. So maybe you just have to make the choice him or all of them b/c he isn't going to leave his son for you.z That is a decision that only you can make for yourself.

My patience and love are dwindling for my DSO. I don't know if the love is enough to counteract the fact I'm sick of raising kids. SD isn't bad but SS is exhausting work.

Disengage. You will not agree with his parenting methods or lack thereof, you will still not be able to stand it, but by backing away and choosing to no longer critique him, advise him, or talk to him about it will help. If he doesn't respect your opinions then he also does not deserve your help when he needs it either. You want to be with him and not SD, then make that so. Don't help him, don't be anything to her. Let him continue on as he is and then let him clean up the mess it creates later on down the road as well. You don't have to accept it or be ok with it as he says, it is impossible to go against what you know to be right, just recognize that you are fighting a losing battle and may as well be talking to a fence post with DH's like these. If you want to stay married, like I do, you have to find a way to just say to hell with it, ruin your kid, and not let it ruin the marriage too.

But your parenting style is probably way different than his......is this correct? Your kid probably isn't an @sshole.

Why didn't he have this talk with you before the wedding?

Not only is he giving you an ultimatum, he's also taking away your "right" to complain later.

Accepting the way he "is" with her is Fine, when he does everything she needs. When he's expecting you to be the solution to her being hungry or tired or failing school or Whatever, that you should not accept. Tell him that if he needs you to accept his way of raising his daughter, you will indeed stop interfering and leave ALL of it to him.

Kid has a question - go ask Dad. Kid is hungry - go ask Dad. Kid needs a bath - not your problem.

Disengage.

However, respect is a two way street. You will give her the respect she deserves - the respect that an adult gives a child just as long as he requires her to give you the respect due to you as an adult in your house.

You can still be a "family", just a stepfamily. If he wants an intact family then he's SOL and that's just "common sense" too. It's "common sense" that it's absurd to expect someone, particularly your wife to , excuse me, eat shit with a smile.

If his idea of "family" means SD does whatever, treats you however while you do all the work to take care of her, then this man does not respect you and obviously doesn't care about you nearly as much as you do him.

I go through the same thing, the difference is I always want to walk out and he convinces me to stay some how, his words make me feel guilty and I start to believe he is always right.

Home***

I'm sorry you're going through this. I completely agree with the poster who said this would not be happening in a nuclear family. Growing up, my parents argued just like every other couple but I never once heard anyone say they were leaving or threaten divorce or any of the things that are so common in step families. They argued, then they came to some type of agreement, then they got over it.

I am going through something similar. I've been with DH 3 years, married almost a year, and I just cannot come to terms with SD. I can't figure out how a man would give a 5 year old priority over his marriage. I guess this is because I did not see this growing up. My parents always put their marriage first and they made it clear to my brother and I that we were not coming between them (by doing normal things kids do, like try to turn one parent against the other- unfortunatly, in step families, these tactics normally work). I can't stand the guilty parenting and the way it seems like THEY are the couple and I am the child. It's very disturbing.

Unfortunatly, I think the chances of your DH changing his ways are slim to none. I think your options are either to disengage or leave.

if he doesn't put you first, leave.Kids, no 1 responsibility, but marriage no 1 priority.He doesn't care how you feel , he puts his brat first from what it sounds.

One day this little bundle of joy will be 16, and 26 and so on. As she grows, so to do the issues. Little kids, little problems, big kids BIG problems.

Your husband uses the excuse she's only six. You might point out that you agree with him, she's only six and that is the problem. He is allowing a six year old to run the house , control his life, and dictate how you will behave. It is his job as a parent to teach his child manners and respect. It is his job to teach this child how to fit in, how to be independent and to teach her that she is part of this family, not the centre of it.

He will not change, I promise you that. If you want change in this relationship, then YOU are going to have be the one to change. He is happy dictating how you should behave. Madam six is happy dictating how daddy will behave. You are the only one that is unhappy. So change it.

You are more than likely not raising your son to be a brat so your husband has no cause for complaint. I'm sure if your son were behaving the way his daughter does and you were telling your husband to shape up, follow your sobs demands or ship out, he'd soon have a problem then..

Time for you to be laying down the ground rules and for both of you to be setting boundaries for the children in the home, a six year old doesn't get to do that and DH doesn't get to make important decisions that affect you and your son unilaterally.

oh my.....what a nightmare. You despise this skid, as most of us here do. You let your hubby know how you feel about his kid and how he parents her. Now, sit back, and let the chips fall where they may. Then when she's a complete POS teenage bitch, you can look him dead in the face and say 'I told you so'

NO!

You are absolutely not crazy to feel like this. Sure, your husband would like you to think you are crazy. He wants you to believe YOU are the problem. Stay in this relationship and watch your self esteem go down the toilet. Watch yourself second guess yourself, blame yourself, wAtch your mind go over and over every fight to see what YOU dud wrong. Watch yourself become emotionally and physically Iill. Watch what little self confidence you had become completely eroded.

Your husband has told you SHE comes first. It's her way or the highway. At 8 her manipulative skills are good, but she is still honing them. At 18 or 28 you will have pretty much,if you stay and do nothing to change the situation, have allowed them to make you a very ill woman, physically, mentally and emotionally.

You are not the problem. That child is not the problem. She is only a product of her upbringing. Your husband is the problem.

This is not going away of its own accord. Your husband is NEVER going to wake up to the fact he is not acting like a father. Right now he is acting like her friend. As she gets older, he will start acting like her BOYFRIEND. You will feel like "the other woman" in their relationship.

I spent 8 years of my life trapped in a situation like yours. Only she was 20 when she first came into my life. She was 29 before I found thank God the strength to end it. Short version, my husband had allowed her to cause problems in our marriage all if those 8 years. Everyone knew she had a goal to break us up. Eventually she pulled out the big guns and "accidently" she claimed got pregnant. That baby was no accident. It was she thought her nuclear weapon to rid me from her father's life. She was so sure he would leave me once her child was born that we saw her twice her entire pregnancy. She gave up working on her evil plan as she felt the baby growing inside her would fix everything.

When the baby was born, she and her boyfriend ket it be known if DH wanted to see that baby, then he would have to leave me.

It ended when after 3 months of hell and DH not going to her house to see the baby. She finally gave in and landed unexpectedly on my doorstep. I told DH to tell her she was not welcome here, or I would do it for him. He of course told me to do it. Heaven forbid he should be a man, or a father and stand up to that woman. So I told her to go and never come back. I told DH to go with her. He stayed. That was a year ago last August. She of course kept causing problems behind the scenes, phoning him at work. Involving his 89 year old father etc., and life has not been easy. However, recently my husband finally realised he needed help. He is in counselling now and on antidepressants. Things are looking up. Because he finally admitted to me that (as I had always known) he was fully aware of everything his daughter had said and done. He said he was afraid to pull her into line as he knew if he did, she would stop talking to him. See, he threw me under the bus so he could keep this complete and utter bitch in his life.

He as I said is in therapy. His counsellor gets me to come in every second session so I can keep on top of things. By that I mean so we know DH is telling the truth. You see DH became a pathological liar throughout this ordeal.

This is still difficult and uncertain, but at least we are taking steps towards change. Steps that would never have been taken if I had not found the inner strength to throw her out, ban her from ever coming back and told DH to go with her.

You see if we act like idiots, then they will treat us like idiots. If we have no self respect, they will not respect us. Our husbands are/were, bullies. When we live this life with them, we are victims living in an abusive relationship. We are being emotionally abused by our SO.

I guess when the anxiety got so bad for me that I begun to suffer from severe and repeated lung infections as well as having chronic back pain, I knew it was over, if I stayed the stress would kill me. I have 3 adult children of my own and 4 grandsons under 5. I made a choice to live for my family. To not allow DH or his daughter to kill me with emotional abuse or stress. I made a decision FINALLY that was all about me and what was in my best interests. I after 8 years of abuse finally turned things around the day I banned her from my home, and started building a new life FOR MYSELF. In finally getting some self respect, things finally turned around. Never in a million years did I think DH would admit he us wrong. Never did I think he would accept he needed help. But he has. He took it right to the edge though. Until he knew his marriage really was over, he kept trying to convince me I was the problem. I guess while I only put up with that butch for 8 years. He had been doing it for 28 years. It was hard for him to change. He is Italian, so it is even harder to admit he was wrong.

I wish you all the luck in the world. This will not be easy, whether you put up with it, or whether you stand up for yourself and your son. Both options are going to be hard. But to stay and do nothing will only lead to things getting worse and worse over the years. If you accept your husbands terms for this marriage, you are accepting his abuse and his relegating you to second place in your marriage. You are allowing him to put another woman before you in the marriage, his little girlfriend, his mini wife, if you do this, it will only get worse the older she gets.

If you choose to have a position of equality in the marriage and stand up and fight for it. Well, it may turn out to be the best thing you ever did. Or he and his mini wife may leave. Either way, you win. No good comes from living life in which a child is calling the shots.

You are not wrong here. Your husband is. But you already know that don't you.

Good luck. I hope you decide to sort this out sooner rather than later. I was stupid enough to put up with that crap until I was 60, is that what you want for yourself.

My stepkids get away with so much shit when they come here. They argue and whine and bitch and he caters to them. I keep envisoining myself taking off to do something nice for myself when they come, but we have 5 kids in all and sometimes that is not possible.

I feel terrible for hating them. I have no idea why or when it started. I know it was not always there. I think it was when I saw them manipulating him and our own lack of cohesion where I started to get worried.

I also think the kids in this house are not treated fairly. He acts like a lazy ass when my kids are around and does not plan activities but all of the sudden starts conversations about what are we going to do when his kids come. It drives me nuts.

I do not get enough time with my own kids and they are here fulltime and I hear him bitch about not getting any time with his which come every second weekend. Welcome to my world, there is kids here that you could be puttinog some energy into. Whatever, they are mine, I guess. Although I am expected to participate when his little shits show up.

Pins and needles when I know it is the weekend they are coming, praying for the ropads to be bad so their mother cancels. I actually like when they don't come, one less thing to worry about.

Jellybean if it helps, the day I realised that my DH was the problem not his daughter was the best day of my life. See, it gives you some control over what is happening. You have no control over those kids. They have a mother and a father. They will take no notice of you while they have a father like this.

Your only problem is your DH and his behaviour. He has caused this ill feeling between you and his kids, by the way he treats them, by the way he treats yours and by the way he treats you.

Next time he blames you for anything to do with his kids, or accuses you of not being understanding, or welcoming or happy enough when they come over. Tell him why. He has taught you to hate them, and them to hate you. He is the reason your family is blending like oil and water. He is putting his kids above everyone else and that can never work. It is unfair to your kids and to you. It is also just plain not right. You cannot sort the skids or the situation out until you sort him out.