You may want and be entitled to a holiday with YOUR CHILD and YOUR husband. The reality is that YOUR husband has another child and they are entitled and should be treat with the same love and consideration as any other child. This other child isn’t new information and you went head first into the relationship knowing. Surely you’d love him more for being such an amazing dad? If you met someone else and had a child with them would you leave your child from another partner at home? And if your new partner suggested that you did so would you think that was ok?? Both parents have the same responsibility to their child and should both endeavour to provide the best most loving environment for the child.

To the person who replied to this poor lady’s post you clearly don’t have any step children do you 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Hello, 

You have been very honest with your feelings and reaching out on here takes courage. 
A good starting point that may be helpful for you would be to consider if the young girl was your daughter or indeed yourself.  Try to imagine how you would feel if it was your dad who got a new family and then didn't take you on holiday?  Or, if it was your daughter who wasn't taken on holiday with your ex husband and his new wife and baby.  
If it is hard for you to put yourself in these others shoes  - I would suggest seeking out some help with the feelings that you are experiencing as they need to be addressed for the sake of all the family. You need to consider also that your resentment to your partners daughter will be picked up on on some level  - it doesn't have to be verbalised. 
Wishing you well with your situation - you have realised your feelings, this is the first step to working it out. Many people do not have this insight and cause irreversible damage to the family. 


 

It breaks my heart to read people encouraging and endorsing such awful behaviour. Yes as a step parent it isn’t the step parents responsibility to provide care to their child from another relationship. It is however your partners responsibility and if you as a human think that it is ok to expect your partner to choose between you and his child from another relationship. Well you should be ashamed of yourself!!!! My dad should have chosen me and my sister but he didn’t and we were hurt. My partner puts his daughter first. I can’t have a child biologically due to health reasons but can assure you if he tried to put me first I’d have walked away!!! Nothing and no one should come between a parent and their child. Anyone asking or expecting that should be ashamed! When you choose to be with someone who has a child to a previous relationship, you know what you are getting yourself into. These comments of YOUR child and YOUR life are honestly disgusting!!! If you can’t accept your partner’s child you don’t deserve your own child. Because clearly you wouldn’t do everything to make sure they were ok xz

Difficult because your feelings are valid but you should squash them and put the 7 year olds feeling first (as we do for our own kids all of the time) x 

It wouldn't bother me at all if my child wasn't included in holidays with my ex new family because I take my own child on holiday. We have our family and ex has his family we have different rules in each household which means we do different things.

You are allowed to want a holiday with YOUR child and YOUR husband alone. Your husbands other kid I'm sure goes on trips with her mother, the step child doesn't have to be involved in everything. Your child has 2 parents, step parent or not if your husband dies or you divorce you have no rights to step child AT ALL.
You cannot make medical, educational or any other important choices for your husbands child.
I would plan a trip for you and your child, why should your child miss out on things because of step child ? Step child has another life and family and your child will not be involved in it at all. I would post on the step parent reddit page because people on here really aren't thinking logically.

Phoenixpayne - I would hazard a guess that you haven’t been brought up in a broken family nor are you living in one? I apologise for the assumption if I am incorrect. I came to this opinion from your thoughts on how the step child should not be included in the step moms family activities. The most important people in any of these situations are the children caught in the cross fire! My dad remarried and I didn’t have the best stop mum and I felt that, when they did family things with her family and me and my sister didn’t get invited it hurt and we felt unloved by our dad. When we didn’t have a bedroom that we could go and stay in at dads when we wanted that hurt. When my dad and step mum had a holiday every year but never took us, that hurt. I myself am now a step mom and I think it is a blessing that I get to shower a child who has experienced heartache, extra love and attention.
If my family held an event and failed to invite my step daughter, I can assure you I also wouldn’t be going. Likewise, I could never even contemplate going on a holiday without taking her. We wouldn’t ever book a holiday just for the 2 of us unless we had a holiday booked to take my step daughter first! Yes she might have a mum who can also take her away but her dad equally has as much responsibility. If you met me and my step daughter in the street you wouldn’t know she wasn’t biologically mine because we love and adore one another so much. Step mums who compete for the fathers attention should be ashamed of themselves all they are doing is isolating and making an innocent child who just wants their fathers love feel so unimportant and at a young age set of feelings as to why they aren’t good enough! Why their daddy loves these other people more!!! As others have said how would you feel if your child was made to feel that way if your marriage broke down and your new baby became the stepchild?? Also the fact you booked a “family” holiday and she wasn’t included in the first place is heartbreaking.
I really hope that you were having a bad day and that reading these you are really going to self reflect on how horrid what you are considering asking of you husband is. You married him knowing he came with a beautiful little girl. Don’t deprive either of them of the relationship they both deserve.

My husband’s daughter tried to complete with me and From the very beginning, I made it clear to my husband that boundaries were essential for our relationship. I expressed to him that while I would always be polite, I couldn't assume the role of a traditional stepmother because she is not my own daughter. It's important to acknowledge that she already has a mother, even though she made the unfortunate decision to cheat on and leave him. In order to support my husband's commitment to spending time with his daughter (which happens twice a week, sigh), I made the decision to move from Georgia.

As my husband covers his mother's rent, I told him she could assist him in picking up, dropping off, and taking care of his daughter. However, I firmly established that she shouldn't stay overnight at our house, she’s just not raised properly and has bad habits ( like having her legs spread open on the couch, walking around without a bra and caressing his arms). Surprisingly, everyone involved accepted these boundaries without hesitation, understanding that it was best to address them sooner rather than later. She’s 15 years old. I see her ones or twice a month.

Funny thing is, her mother tried to speak up and I also had him shut it down fast. I can’t wait until he doesn’t have to deal with them anymore.

Hi there, 

I am sorry you are in this position. I was a step parent for 17 years and we had our daughter a few years in too. It was tricky and my relationship between myself and my step son essentially ended that relationship. There were other issues too between my ex and I but this dynamic in the house quickly became toxic for all, especially as he grew into a early 20s, and we broke up a few years ago. My daughter has never really gotten over it, six years on.

My advice for you will be this:

1) You haven't got a new family, you have added to your existing one. It will be in everyone's interests that this vulnerable 7 year old girl, who has gone through a parental divorce, probably internalised a lot of that pain, needs stability and love from all. She will need to stay a part of your family, and not feel she has been replaced/usurped.

2) You will have opportunity to bond as a three, just be patient. However, if you carry through this current instinct and marginalise your step daughter, you are creating a problem, maybe not today, but somewhere down the line, probably when she is around 10-13 years old. If something starts to go wrong with her, it will be create stress for your husband, which will impact your marriage.

3) It's tough. Step parenting is horribly tough. Thankless. I would not want to do it again. I lived with my step son full time for over 15 years. It sounds as though your step-daughter is only with you part time. Surely this is manageable? One week during the July holiday? That's not so bad. You put your foot down, cancel her staying with her Dad? Create tensions with his ex? Create tensions with the husband? Not worth it.

4) You started a relationship with a father, it changes a man, it probably gave him characteristics that you fell in love with. This may well be tougher than you anticipated, especially the early days, but your step-daughter needs her Dad. Let him be a father to both his children and support him. She also needs you, even during the tough times between yourself and her. You have an opportunity to create a loving home for both children. Take it easy on yourself, you're not going to love her like she is your own, but you can love her. Make the best of it, as best you can. 

Good luck with it all,

PJ

Really pleased to see some kinder posts later on.

I can’t believe how many nasty posts there are on this thread. Would you speak to this woman like that in person? What if she’s struggling with PND or something. I agree with the points in principle but the way it’s been said is horrible! Why can’t people just reply to a question with their point without trolling the poster.

When you have a child of your own you have such love for them. You find a love you never knew you had. As a mother you also have natural hormones that make you very protective of your young. My view is that it is the most natural thing in the world to want to 'nest' with just your own baby, your husband and you. This is a survival instinct. This happens so much with new mothers. My message to you is not to feel bad about having these natural feelings. They are normal. I am so happy that you have had this wonderful bonding experience with your baby. Enjoy it. It's a very special time. 

The question is, what to do about theses feeling when you also have another child who belongs to your partner, who visits. It is natural to have these resentful feelings. But there are things you can do about the situation to make it much better. I think it's really important to do the right things so the family doesn't go wrong. I am a step-mother, and I have been a step-child. I run a website called BeStepWise. I offer free email response service. If you would like to contact me through that, I can respond to you directly. Many people have this issue. There are things that can be done to make the whole thing ok. 

I’m really sad to see the shaming, angry and unfiltered language a number of posters have put on you here, when you are at a vulnerable time of life and have been very brave to think this through ask for advice. Quite ironic to preach about compassion with such a blinding lack of compassion to this new mum. What poor, unthoughtful repayment for your humility and courage. You are clearly being really thoughtful, self aware and honest. It’s actually amazing; the opposite of what some people have said. Well done.

You clearly care enormously about this little girl and have spotted something that could affect her, something you want to protect her from, and are looking at how to do that. The fact that it comes from within you is irrelevant. We are all made up of feelings, instincts, unconscious motivations, good and bad, over which we do not have moral control - it is what we do with them that makes morality. Not acknowledging them is the best way to make them come out and do harm. You are doing wonderfully giving this real thought and airing it, especially at such a vulnerable emotional time.

Moreover I think these feelings are extremely natural. In evolutionary terms, your instinct as mother is that the father of your child must protect your child, especially straight after birth when the mother is physically weakened, and we are programmed to guard against competition in that. You’re experiencing something you’re not culpable for, - it’s the very living legacy of our evolutionary past. You’re not at fault. You’re to be lauded for seeing it.

A counsellor will definitely help but as evidenced by the above posts, be careful who you see. You don’t need more judgement. I’m going to recommend someone if NVN lets me at a company called Pathways - Julie Johnson.

Talking it through with your husband is also key but again, maybe see someone who gets it in psychotherapy terms first so you truly help him understand and not feel alienated from either you or his daughter. You are just working through what you need to. Equip yourself with the right language to do that.

You’re on the journey of motherhood and family building which requires us to become bigger people than we were before. You’re taking the steps courageously and rising to it. It’s a journey that brings up things we didn’t know about ourselves and the world before, - sometimes ugly things - and we have a choice to either look them in the face and start to work with them, or squash and bury them under shame, judgement and fear. You’re choosing the harder, braver, better way. Bravo.

I think you were very brave to write your true current feelings and ask for feedback on them. My thoughts are that you need to do a complete overhaul on what you allow yourself to think about this. Imagine you are one big family with two beautiful daughters, and when one is with her mother, you’re missing a limb!! There should be no such thing as a holiday without both your girls. That is their bonding time to grow memories together and unite as siblings. Your biological daughter will thank you one day for allowing her sibling to be her sibling, she will have peace of mind knowing from her heart that you love her sister as much as she does and that you don’t differentiate between the two. She will feel strength in the bond when she sees she is not favoured by you over her sister. Take it from someone whose mum did not offer that. My poor half-sister is still scarred by my mother’s poorly masked lack of love for her (actions speak louder than words) and I still feel like the ham in a sandwich I never wanted to be in.... my sister telling me she’s aware of how my mum rejects her, my mum acting as if the lack of invitations to things are innocent oversights. If a counsellor would help, address it now before it impacts these gorgeous girls’ relationship, your relationship with your husband, and your relationship with your biological daughter.