[Hugo-B]

Hi everyone , this site seems very supportive and i needed to get something off my chest, any advice or understanding would be great....I remarried 3 yrs ago to really great man who i love very much.. My daughter was 12 when we got married, and has always had a hard time getting along with my new husband...her biological dad is also in her life and we have always had shared custody of her,,although she lives with him primarily...

After i married my second husband i wanted my daughter to move in with us...she refused to do so sinse her friends lived near her dad...My new husband also did not like the idea of her moving in for different reasons...This was hard for me to accept, but evantually i did and my daughter would come over every weekend (only wanting to spend time with me and not my husband.)

There were a few arguments before this and on some level i didnt blame my daughter because i grew up in a big family and my parents were married for fifty years before my mom passed away...I couldnt imagine what it would have been like to have a step dad...
I love my husband but at times he could be critical of her and somewhat intimadating..He is a very sweet person and has done alot for me and my daughter in the beginning of our relationship we all got along great and did alot together. but after we got married things started to change...not only was my daughter having a hard time being around him, but my husband was dealing with health issues..he was diagnosed with hepatitus c and went on interferon ( chemotherapy drug that made him more irritable..then he started getting all kinds of health problems and we were in and out of the ER almost every month...

I also struggled with being a new wife ,and i had such a hard time being in the hospital espessially when he had to get some major surgery done and at one point we even thought he had cancer..he went in for test after test...and thank god he was okay...by the way I am 42 years old and my husband is 52.his biggest complaint about my daughter is that she is rude.. he says that she never says hello to him, or thank you or please...he says that neither my daughter or I appreciate anything he does and it breaks my heart because I do appreciate it i just dont always let him know that...and my daughter,,is a very sweet person..shes 15 now and has alot more on her mind then any of this... she is a good girl..never gets in trouble at school, has never used drugs or drank or any of the things i was doing at her age..She has alot of good freinds who she can talk to..She is shy though and i think she is afraid to say hello to my husband everytime she see's him..my husbands family is extremely polite all the time and this makes me feel like my daughter is some kind of misfit...my husband and I seperated seven months ago and are now back together....sinse we've been back my daughter and I both have tried to change..(be more grateful for the things he does for us and my daughter has tried to reach out to him...but he doesnt seem to care ..he says that he has accepted the fact that my daughter is my main priority..although i dont think that is entirely true...he is also a priority....My husband has always loved me and has treated me better then any man ever has..he has alot of great qualitys..and hes my best friend...my daughter and i do alot together but we do the things that he has no interest in doing...on the other hand my husband and i do things together also...I love my daughter and i love my husband...and its killing me that they seem to hate eachother...my daughter refuses to come over anymore because the other nite my husband and her got into another argument...my doctor tells me i am under too much stress...and he recomended a marriage and family phycoligist...we go tommorrow nite....I am so sorry that this is such a long thread...but i needed to get all of this out...and hope that someone out there has maybe gone through something similar..any advise for me and for my husband and daughter would be great...because i know that they are suffering over this as much as i am....thanks...

I think your husbands family should be helping with him and offering some support. Your energy levels and resources are finite and seem to be stretched to the maximum right now. The more attention you pay your husband the more you divert yourself, and subsequently your attention from your daughter. She will resent you both for this. He should accept that your daughter is your main priority, if my ex had put me before her children I would have dumped her immediately. What sort of grown man wants to compete for his wife's love and attention with her daughter?

I agree with CW that he has just realized the value of life, but attempting to impose values on children like that simply breeds resentment. That 'don't do as I do, do as I say' attitude will not be taken seriously by any child, leading by example is the best way to instill values in my opinion. I don't see why a grown man would feel the need to try and impose manners on a teenage girl, he needs to realize that she is vulnerable and has enough to think about without dancing to his tune day and night.

Without sounding negative, I think the best you can hope for now, given your daughters age (and trying to apportion blame is pointless by now, there are a myriad of contributing factors as to why they don't get on) is for them to tolerate and accept each other. You could also try compartmentalizing your time and set a certain amount of time aside for you and your daughter and do the same for your husband. The only way their relationship can improve is if they both agree to make a sincere effort for it to improve - and one of them, and I think it need to be your husband - need to be the bigger person and learn to let her have the last word, at least some of the time. Teenagers desperately want to be considered adults (which they virtually are) and don't - as your husband is seeing - respond favorably to being treated like children.


Do you think your husband loves your daughter? That is the one most critical thing I think a child needs: unconditional love, if they don't get that then nothing else can substitute for it.

[KMonte85]

Old thread, OP hasn't been back in years.

Thread closed.