I will try to keep this concise:

A little background: I first met my step-daughter when she was eight. She has always been a very gentle, sensitive child. I did not have any children of my own when we met. I tried to be open and inviting, but not pushy. I think it worked fairly well. We had a good relationship; we weren't super close or anything, but we could joke around, have fun, or sit down and talk about serious things occasionally (bullying, her father, etc).

Issue A: When she was transitioning to teenager-hood, I got a new job and my fiancee had a baby. It was demanding and stressful and unfulfilling, but we needed to pay the bills while my fiancee took classes to get her degree. For about three years, I was generally tense and unhappy and frustrated. We were barely making ends meet.

Issue B: my parents were often "bulldozer parents". They tried to do everything for me. Even into my 20's, my father would insist on changing the oil on my car instead of showing me how. My mother would try to tell me when to cut my hair or trim my nails--I had to really fight for autonomy. I craved the ability to do things for myself. My parents were absolutely and entirely dedicated to their children, and for the most part they still are, but it definitely left me feeling like I wasn't very well-equipped to handle adult life.

Issue AB: between feeling like I was constantly behind the eight ball with my terrible job and my life as a new father/primary provider for the household and my perspective that children should be given tools to prepare them for life, I don't think I handled my step-daughter's first few years as a teenager very well. A few quick examples:

- when we got a dog and were struggling with housetraining, I noticed there was one plastic bag left in the little cannister we used to pick up puppy poop. When the dog pooped in the house again, I asked her when she had taken the dog out last, knowing that she hadn't and planning to catch her in the lie. Looking back, it wasn't a great approach.

- she was making breakfast for herself and her sister. I told her to use the back burner on the stove instead of the front for safety reasons. Then I told her not to use a metal spatula on the non-stick pan. And then I told her not to leave the toddler sitting on the counter in the bathroom while she went to grab a hairbrush from the next room -- three fairly blunt corrections, all within about 30 minutes, without any praise or thanks for the good things in-between. She started to cry and I went and sat in the bedroom and just thought about how I could do better.

- I was on the phone after an especially grueling day at work and she asked me if I could open a can for her, because she didn't know how to use a manual can opener. I just gave her this disgusted look and opened it. Like, "just...figure it out! It's not hard! Just look at it for like two minutes and put some effort into your life!" --I still feel the frustration, but the way I expressed it was nothing but damaging.

Issue C: her father has a lot of anger issues that seem to be rooted in fear. He works four jobs but is always broke. He never forgets a slight and carries a grudge seemingly forever. Sometimes he'll come park out on the street and my step-daughter will go sit in his car with him for a few hours to hang out. When she comes back in, she tells us that "all he did was complain about you guys the whole time." --that sort of thing. When she tells him to stop or stands up for what she feels is right, he explodes and sort of drives her into the ground. It seems like she's learned from him that, when someone is hurting you, all you can do is curl up in a little ball and take it, and just...not do anything to make them want to hurt you more. She cannot handle conflict of any kind. Granted, this is getting slowly better in small ways, but it still seems to be who she is, at her core.

And he has really put this pressure on her that "she's all he has". There's a lot of guilt and obligation there. He's told her that, when she turns 18, she can come move in with him to get away from us. She's expressed that she doesn't want to live with him all the time, but that she probably will, because she feels bad that he has no one else.

On top of that, she seems to have a similar thing to her father in that no one's attempts to be kind or show care are ever enough. There's just this emotional black hole inside both of them that's always craving more validation, more proof of affection.

Her therapist mentioned at one point that, when things aren't good with her father, she might feel like she has to make sure things aren't too good with me. Like, if our relationship is more pleasant than hers with her father, she's betraying him in some way. Which makes a lot of sense to me.

This guy is...a concern. Like, he checks a lot of the boxes for those guys who snap and track down and murder their ex one day, or who go on a shooting spree at the mall. A lot of anger, seemingly no positive coping mechanicsm and extremely socially isolated. So I hold a pretty firm line regarding this guy; no, we will not be friends some day. No, he can't come over and do laundry. No, I don't have $20 for him. But I also make sure to be empathetic and non-judgmental and never, ever criticize him or say anything negative about him in front of my step-daughter.

Current situation: I have backed all the way off of her. I try really hard to show interest in her and her life. "How was your weekend?", "did you guys have fun?", etc. But I don't force my presence on her, ever.

Except now she's 17 and it's like...I say hi when she walks in the door, and she won't even look at me four out of five times. If I try to participate in a conversation in our home, her knee-jerk response seems to be to scoff at me and make some comment about how I'm obviously wrong, don't know what I'm talking about or the like. If it's especially disrespectful, I'll say something--but it'll be really mild like, "whoa, hey. I didn't know that," or "I'm just trying to help, okay?" Like, palms out and placating, never aggressive and barely assertive--but that's maybe 1 out of 20 times.

There's also...some things that might be some kind of microagression? She never parks her car behind her mom's, only mine. And I work more days and get up earlier than either of them, so I have to move her car out of the way every time. Or like...I'll walk past her in the hall way, and I'll turn sideways, because it's pretty narrow, and she won't move to make room for me? But I don't know if that's anything or not.

She's not an angry person. She's more sullen and mopey than she is defiant. Every time I make dinner (I'm the only one that cooks in the house, and I really try to make something that'll be acceptable for a very picky 17-year-old's pallate), she sits down at the table with a look like she's about to cry and then just sort of picks at her plate for a bit and leaves.

My wife sees some of these issues, but not all of them--I learned a long time ago that coming to her with this information is not a productive line of discussion. She feels too defensive, too much like I'm complaining about *her* kid. I've tried to establish that I'm not singling her daughter out or anything; people who live together come into conflict sometimes, and teenagers are especially difficult. That's all. But my wife still sees these moments as unique problems between her daughter and her partner, whereas she can come down on her daughter for being disrespectful or unappreciative or whatever, and it's just parenting. I don't like that there's this distinction. It feels like anything I say or do gets put through this filter. I'm not sure if that makes sense.

But. My wife does see some of it. And she says she just doesn't really know what to do about it. I don't think there's anything to be "done". Like...my step-daughter isn't acting out or being terrible. I just wish there was something I could do to sort of mend the gap.

Sorry, that was a lot. Struggling to convey what feels like necessary info without going overboard. Anyway, any thoughts, new perspectives or potential resources would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.