So this blog is almost 10 years overdue with how much drama we deal with, I recently discovered this site and eager to vent out some frustrations hopefully with some like-minded step parents!

So my DH and I have been together almost 10 years, married 2 years. I love my 13yo SD with all my heart. Her dad and I started dating when she was 3.5 and I met her a little before her 4th birthday so we have a long relationship. We have one biological daughter together, 6yo. This will be my first entry and I will likely start from most recent incidents and work back to our older frustrations. I want to start by saying my SD does have a therapist she sees although we haven't had an appointment for almost a year because she decided it is no longer a good fit and she would rather see someone else (younger and more relatable!) so, we highly value mental health resources but we are just in-between counselors right now. COVID-19 makes that difficult. She saw a different therapist when she was younger as well but we moved out of a decent travel distance. 

So! Some background, our situation is kind of unique. My husband and his babymama only dated a few weeks when they were young, she didn't want anything serious so he ended it and they both dated other people and lost contact. He knew she was pregnant but she swore it was her current boyfriends baby. Almost two years later, he was served and forced to take a paternity test that confirmed he was the father. He had missed out on over a year of time with their baby, and the only reason she got him involved was for child support. They went to court, he was given every other weekend but very quickly they had a different arrangement where he had her most weekends or multiple days a week. It was very obvious from the beginning that mom was a very negligent parent. SD's health and wellness was constantly a challenge. By the time I met her, her mom had another baby on the way, then one more, then she married and divorced their dad, now currently she has another baby with her newest boyfriend. So that is three half siblings on her moms side, and one half sibling on our side. For years we were 50/50 parenting time, then her mom started letting us take her as much as we asked for with no complaints as long as we didn't question paying her full child support for a child she only had on weekends. We let her siblings come over for play dates and sleepovers because we value sibling relationships. 
 

We went from 50/50 to primary household as we put her into the best school available in our district, we pursued a custody change in court and we were granted 50/50 legal and physical custody and we were named primary household, we have her M-F and one weekend a month, summers are one week on one week off (although we usually get more time if we arrange it) court ended up being a very long and emotional drawn out process, her biomom fought against everything after it became clear that she would no longer receive extra financial support. There were many lies and fake incidents but luckily we had a good support system behind us and we got the best judgement out of it that we could expect. 

In the beginning, bio mom and I actually had a pretty good relationship. We talked often and most of the communication between biomom and DH was through me. I saw how negligent of a parent she was but thought if we could be good influences on her and model good parenting, we could help her improve. Unfortunately she is too narcissistic to do anything differently, and she is an unfortunate product of her environment. Her family has a lot of drug use and domestic violence in their past. She has always been emotionally, and at times physically, abusive to my SD. Now that we are primary household, the drama hasn't ended for us. Almost every week there is some new way she has hurt or upset my stepdaughter. I'm not going to pretend we are the best parents either, my husband and I are both young parents, we rented small apartments for years because we were financially drained from supporting her biomom and not having much money leftover for ourselves especially after the expense of legal fees after 2 years in court.  We recently bought our first house together and feel really settled and well-off. My stepdaughter loves our house and she loves living with us. 
the most recent issue is the new boyfriend who has lived here less than a year, and her moms continued emotional abuse. I will continue on more specific incidents on my next entry.