Annie must be a skid, for only a skid would hold such reverence for the first family and praise another skid for making the parents always put first family first over all others.  Eye roll!

Just had a vision of having to sit in front of the Christmas tree watching miss piggy cram a whole turkey in her fat mouth sideways whilst still managing to talk about herself as loudly as possible. Happy coparenting holidays! 

I don't blame kids/teens for making these requests. It makes total sense from their perspective. Their entire lives have been spent together, and every piece of media says that "healthy" divorced families still do things together.

No, I don't blame the kids. But, I sure as sh*t blame the parents for entertaining this crap. Yes, I DO think it is ideal for parents to be able to get along for things that can't be easily celebrated separately, like a graduation ot wedding. But a birthday party? Christmas? EASTER?! Those fall under the household, not the first family.

Though maybe I'm a hypocrite. I've invited Eternal Teenager to holidays back when I tried to get along with her. Even now, I host one Thanksgiving meal for everyone. I already host 3 separate Christmases most years, and I'm not doing the same with Thanksgiving. If someone is uncomfortable, they can host and I'll attend. But I'm still only doing ONE.

Yep, this is what we're up against, guys. 

Wow one big happy family! Puke! I can't imagine being in that situation, from any/all of their POVs. I just imagine stepdad and dad with mom in between, imagining how they both know how this woman looks naked. Yuck! Be cordial, sure, but no need to continue being a family. 

Gross!!!

No way on earth. I put up with a ton of crap in step life and there is just no way. If DH told me that skids demanded they are spend a holiday together....his bags would be packed upon return. 
 

I have a close friend who was having an affair with a married man...she was also married....it went on for 2 years and they were about to take the leap and leave thier spouses.......they had looked at homes to buy and had it all planned but my fiend told the guy that she would spend every single Holiday with her kids and husband....soon to be ex husband at that time.......needless to say she never actually left her husband....the guy had just left his wife when she told him this...and he just went back home to his wife.

Ending contact with hubby. We were married with 2 kids aged 1 & 2.5.

but apparently hubby was meant to dump his responsibilities towards us and go to exwife's home with her new husband (the one she was whoring to whilst still married to hubby before they separated, the one she cheated on) all for the sake of putting differences aside or as how eldest sd then 22.5 put it to hubby "get over it!! Whats in the past is in the past" no apology from bio mum or them for their ahit behaviour

why would any man treated this way want to spend time at exwife's home to play happy family. Apparently differences were aside but sd22.5 explicitly said to hubby only him and their brother were to come to bio mums home with stepdad. Me (his wife and our 2 young kids) were to be ignored and not welcome. That scenario never sat well with hubby.

He had spent 9 years since the divorce never seeing or communicating with his exwife one bit. You couldn't co-parent with her or discuss anything cordially so parralel parenting was what happened.

hubby has not seen exwife since 11.5 yrs and refuses to respond to any bullshit texts eldest sd sends to hubby about bio mum rants

december last year hubby finally found his balls and told eldest sd who was now 24 that i was his wife and he never wanted to hear bullshit rants on bio mum and stepdad about their daily life and trying to make them relevant to us when they are not, trying to put me in my place and ordering me around, making executive decisions regarding my kids. Hubby reminded her i was his wife and she was his daughter and not to get the 2 confused...

there will never be a day they can be together for the sake of the kids. I wonder at times what skids weddings will be like?? Hubby knows exwife will cause a scene, take cheap shots at him and not behave and make everything about her. I see Hubby just giving some money to help cover wedding costs and leave it at that. It'll be a total shitstorm

i also had back in late 2018 during our 3rd wedding anniversary weekend where ss20 demanded a holiday from hubby at an all expenses resort for he and his sisters with hubby. Me, our then 2.5 and 1 yr old assumedly were to stay home. Ss demanded this occur right during our wedding anniversary when hubby told me months before he was so busy with work

next thing suddenly available because ss demanded a trip. Hubby tells me to book the tickets and hotels and sd23, ss20 and sd 14 were coming. "NOOOOOOOOOOO" was all he got a few times till hubby asked me confused what do you mean by that??

i told him very clearly he had lost his fu*king mind to think i would want to spend our 3rd wedding anniversary with his 3 disrespectful ferals, the ones who treat us so disrespectfully, who would rant on about bio mum and stepdad during what is meant to be our anniversary weekend celebration and about us, where i and our kids would be ignored and treated like shit. I told hubby i would have left the resort with my kids and he'd come home to find divorce papers. 
 

i recall telling hubby that i'd divorce his arse if he ever thought he could pull this shit again and that he would never be getting sex again if he thought i would want to go spend my anniversary with his kids. Where will the intimacy be? 

I feel that things would be different if there was a stepmom. Would her mother be fine being called "aunt" by her husband's children or gracious enough to be cordial with the new family. From her telling, her dad was definitely in a "secondary" role. 

Also, if this site is anything to go by, BMs set the stepfamily tone 99% of the time and often they have the hardest time with another woman infringing on what they see as their motherly rights.

As a counterpoint to this, I have a friend whose parents divorced when she was in HS. Her parents got together for joint holidays after the divorce until she and her sisters asked them to stop because they found it so strange that their divorced parents were pretending to be a happy family on holidays. 

I think Thier probably was no SM because of this and DD couldn't keep a relationship because he had poor boundaries and allowed his kids to call the shots in his relationships.

When I met SO he had the SKs almost 24/7. He would go to events with BM " for the kids" even though he said he hated it. He was also being used by BM, to fix her car, give her money for things like buying new tires for her car, letting her borrow his car, helping her move and so on.  He would always say " it was for the kids". I put a stop to that, because she was using him. She would never watch the kids if he asked or do anything in return. I also pointed out to him she had a boyfriend  who she was with, they also had a kid together and he should be doing all those things for her.  

It's funny how as soon as SO stopped doing things for her, she no longer wanted to play nice with him. Now she won't even bother to answer him when he wants to discuss something regarding the kids.