This is my first time posting here, I hope I'm in the correct area. I was so thankful to find this site, up until tonight I thought I was alone.

My story is pretty long but I'm going to do my best to summarize it as best I can.

I've been with my current boyfriend for just about four years now and I think things started out bad from beginning. When we first started dating his daughter, three at the time, was living with him. He and his ex were never married and actually on the verge of a break up when they found out the ex was pregnant. For the sake of the baby he stayed with her. Well, she decided that he and the daughter were holding her back. She wanted to go to school and pursue a career in "fashion". She left the two behind and moved to another city, seeing her daughter maybe two or three days out of the month. My boyfriend and his ex had been apart for some time before I came into the picture. He never had me around his daughter, only inviting me over after she was in bed or just before he was putting her down for the night and so she and I never established any kind of real relationship in the first year he and I had been dating. At first I didn't think too much of it but later when I asked why he never wanted me around until she was in bed he'd replied that he didn't want to "expose" his daughter to somebody she might get attached to until he was sure that person was going to stick around.

Whenever I was with my boyfriend I would hear all about how he and his ex got into another fight over the phone that day. It almost seemed to me like they were obsessed with fighting one another because they could sit on the phone for hours everyday going back and forth about one petty thing or another. He always claimed how much he hated her but it seemed to me like he really went out of his way to talk to her, even if they were arguing. Again, at first I wasn't too concerned, I knew it was normal for split parents to fight over child related issues. Then before I knew it I was involved without my even trying. My boyfriend's ex got a hold of my cell phone number and started calling me whenever she couldn't him, demanding to know where her child was or why my boyfriend wasn't picking up his phone. I would calmly explain to her that I wasn't with him and that I would appreciate it if she'd leave me out of their problems. Of course, being the psycho she is, she treated me like I was lying and hiding her child from her.

Things took a serious after my boyfriend and I had been together maybe a year and a half or so. We bought these cheap couple rings. Mine had his name engraved, his had mine. He chose to wear it on his left ring finger to signify he was spoken for. One night when the BM showed up to drop off the kid after staying with her for the weekend she spotted the ring on his finger, mistaking it for an engagement ring and flipped. She started demanding to know how much it cost, made fun of my current job, claimed she was going to take their daughter away, even punched him multiple times in the face. She then grabbed the daughter and locked herself and daughter in the bathroom and threatened to kill herself with a razor blade she'd found. My boyfriend told her he was calling the cops and went outside to wait for them. When they showed up she told the police he had guns in the house and threatened to shoot her, also claiming he'd hit her. He got arrested and the daughter was taken from his custody. Thing is they'd never legalized him having custody of the daughter and BM having visitation rights. It was more just an agreement between the two that had been going on for however long they'd been separated.

I was confused and very suspicious about my boyfriend and his ex and what kind of things had been going on with them over the years. It would seem she'd still had feelings for him at that point, despite the fact she was in a relationship of her own... and I couldn't help but wonder if he still had feelings for her. Why else did they insist on calling one another all the time? There were times he blew me off to spend the day with BM and daughter. Once he even let her stay the night so she could "spend more time with daughter". He knew how strongly against this I was but told me if I couldn't get past it that we would be finished. I decided to trust him, perhaps naive but I wanted to have faith in him. Even after being arrested and so many court dates I stuck with him. Love is blind, as they say.

Now we fast forward. Daughter had been living with BM for the last few years and boyfriend gets daughter every other weekend and on school breaks longer. I've been living with my boyfriend and have obviously seen a lot of her compared to what I used to. The problem is that she refuses to have anything to do with me. I have tried everything I could think of to get her to warm up to me. At first I took it as being shy, but considering years have past I think we can scratch that idea. I've bought her movies, stuffed animals, gifts for the holidays, taken her to get her nails painted... This didn't work and I refused to continue to try to bribe her into being my friend. My boyfriend and I have sat down and talked with her, he's tried to talk to her solo on several occasions (after I have to force him). The kid acts like she's terrified of me, even after all this time. The only time she speaks to me is when her dad forces her to say hi and bye, or if he makes her come to me and ask to borrow something of mine like a game or movie. Of course I always tell her yes, hoping she'll see I'm not a bad person, but nothing works.

My boyfriend has tried to force her to come hug me and she stands back like if she gets too close I might eat her. I feel bad and tell her that it's okay and she doesn't have to hug me if she doesn't want to, to which she replied she doesn't want to and runs away. If she sees me coming she hangs back or steps backward like I'm going to hurt her. She's afraid to approach her dad if I'm near him. There have even been times where she's run away when she sees me coming. This hurts my feelings because I've never done anything bad to her. I've never raised my voice at her, never disciplined her, never acted mean toward her. Of course I blamed her mother right away, swearing she was saying bad things about me to her daughter. My boyfriend asked her if mommy ever talked about me, which she said she didn't and he was absolutely content with it. The kid barely knows my sister and she'll come up and ask my sis to play with her but wont acknowledge me in any way. This leaves me with hurt feelings. Everybody says she'll grow out of it, she'll get better with age but fail to realize this problem has been going on from the start and could very well get worse.

My biggest issue is that my boyfriend shows absolutely no concern about this. He sees how his daughter behaves and will give a little laugh and apologize on her behalf but I hardly find the situation amusing. He gets angry if I say that his daughter hates me and can only say, "She doesn't hate you." and "I don't know what the problem is." The fact that he just ignores the problem and treats it like its not a big deal is all the more upsetting. It makes me seriously question our relationship and how much more I can take. Whenever his daughter is here I feel like I have to hide out in the bedroom for days just so the kid wont shut herself in her room to stay away from me. This makes me resent the fact that she's going to be around, like I'm not even free to wander my own house or spend time with my own boyfriend. I'm losing to this kid when it should be a competition to begin with.

What am I supposed to do when my boyfriend can't take control of the situation? How can I be more inviting to the daughter?

I know I'm not bad with kids. My sister has three and I love them to death. We play games and they tell me stories and sit with me, and I see these kids less than I see my boyfriend's kid.

I'm at a complete loss.