I dissengaged with the two younger SKids, I did not alienate them though. It turned things around for me personally, I was much more at peace with my own self. DH really HAD to step up to the plate since I was not doing jack for them and I referred them to him every time they came at me for something. They did the 'you are not my mom so we do not have to do as you say' deal...damned right I am not, furthermore I do not have to do jack for you iether...they regretted it! DH saw for himself what was going on too and, like I say, he had to step up.

Yours does sound a good story. The secret of your success is that your DH himself disengaged. This leaves the ball entirely in your court as to what you want to do with your relationships with extended family, since he is not adding to the grief and suffering and has no apparent stake in the outcome. In my situation, I'm getting near your point. My YSD22 is not like a daughter to me because she is respectful of her mother's wishes that she not be, and therefore keeps a very very slight distance, but has a fantastic rapport with me. My SS20 is OK as we ended up parenting him quite a bit during a rocky period in his late adolescence. He again is still somewhat ambiguous having learned from the BM to play divide and rule games, and very much resents any show of authority from me, but our relationship is generally growing in a good direction. My OSD is like yours: I think the burden of divorce falls heavily on the shoulders of the oldest. She's the one I've been disengaged from for over 5 years now, although other posters on the site will be aware she staged a slight comeback recently which may still be having a ripple effect. My main problem with the situation is that DH is still head in sand, wanting a big happy family, but I think we are going to weather the latest blip due to a generally committed marriage.
I remember years ago talking to a girl whom I hardly knew at college, whose parents were in the process of divorce. She was about 19-20. She was utterly traumatised. Her father had started a new relationship. I personally could not understand her grief and devastation because my own parents were at that time divorcing and, because of our own family circumstances, it came to us children as a relief, certainly nothing to do with our fates and fortunes. But anyway I listened to her and the thrust of what she said was that she felt her feelings mirrored that of her mother, SHE felt abandoned and betrayed, this even though intellectually she recognised this was not the case. She explained it very well without being narcissistic or histrionic about it, and the memory of it today assists me in understanding where these oldest narcissistic SD types are coming from. They have over-identified with BM, often because BM has manipulated it that way, but also because it is just a natural alliance with their mother whose suffering (justified or not) they really are badly exposed to.
I would say that I am not being glib asserting that your outcome is good. Whilst ideally it would be nice to have 100% success rate with your skids, you were pretty much working against the odds given the family dynamic with the eldest SD, and the fact that you have managed to retain a mother-daughter type relationship with the younger one is a real tribute. So, in your shoes I would just not bother with the elder one, only unless the younger one wants to readjust all the relationships and you feel committed enough to her to work through something with the others, but at your pace.
Another observation for what it's worth: I don't know if this is so for you, but my relationship with my skids was kind of written into our characters from the very off. One of the earliest comments my YSD was said to have made of me was "She is one of the funnest adults I ever met", and one of mine regarding her was a spontaneous "I love you". With the SS, the ambivalent one, one of the earliest things he said to me (at BM's behest was), "I don't want a stepmother". With the OSD who is the pain, I have a vivid memory of her jumping onto her dad at the age of 10, clinging her arms round his neck and shooting a virulently spiteful possessive look right into my eyes as I stood behind him. It was laughable and pitiful at the same time. Seems to me that nature will have its way -- these likes and dislikes are purely instinctive, and perhaps we can do little to affect the basic compatibility or incompatibility between our various natures.

Why don't you post a message about how wonderful your SD27 is and leave the other two idiots out?

My DH was estranged from his children, I encouraged him to have them in his life......a decision I lived to regret.

Your husband has disengaged, so you really have no issues here as far as endangering your marriage by disengaging. I think in this case it might be the best thing. Your oldest SD may just then see what she has lost. While you keep trying and putting yourself out there to be kicked in the guts she will kick you. Remove yourself from kicking range and see what happens.

The old if you love something let it go theory may well apply here. You are very lucky you at least have a wonderful relatinship with the 27 year old, and you haven't mentioned any issues with the 30 year old,it is only the oldest one and your DH has disengaged from her. If a parent disengages there has to be a good reason. Let it go. Without her causing you angst you will be happy, and she can only cause you angst if you allow her to. Good Luck.

OMG! Talk about cinderella. If they treat her this badly, why don't they dump her on the BM?

Just re-reading this post and thinking about disengaging, why we do it, how it comes about etc.,

I disengaged after 8 years of DH allowing his daughter (in particular) but his sons and grandchild too, to treat me like dog poo on the soles of their feet, I was non existent in my home and in theirs as far as they were concerned. This home was their fathers, and would be theirs upon his death, as would his superannuation fund and everything else "WE" owned. As I said in their minds I was nothing, less than human and my children were non existent either, so it would all be theirs and the sooner daddy and I died the better. After many instances, the straw that broke the camel's back finally arrived in the form of SD's new baby. Now, in her mind she had bred and delivered her trump card and she played it. So, after warning DH for weeks what was going to happen if he continued to do nothing, he continued to do nothing. SD called in more troops in the form of sick 87 year old FIL and he of course, sided with his grandaughter. She was to come to my home and ignore me if that is what made her happy, and I should just ignore her was his solution. No apology was required, nothing was to ever be brought up about all that had gone on, it was just all to be swept under the carpet as per SD's request.

Now, no way in hell was that going to happen, SD just wanted access to her father so she could guilt him with the new baby and my life which was a living hell was about to become worse if she got away with this plan.

Ultimately I decided that the marriage was in fact over as DH agreed with SD and FIL and I was the problem here, why couldn't I just let her say and do whatever she wanted to and shut up (DH's plan A for this problem). So, when she after discussions between herself and father in law just rocked up at my doorstep with baby and boyfriend in tow to resume taking over my home I told DH they were here (saw them pulling up the driveway) and either he could tell her she was not welcome here (after all he had refused to stipulate to her that coming here was conditional on her apologising for past behaviour), or I would do it. My big brave DH told me to do it and I did.

So, coming back to the point. Are there any happy endings after disengaging. Well, in my mind there are. After all, if things between DH and DW were a bed of roses the problem of disengaging would never come up, DH would never be putting his daughter on a pedestal and telling DW to worship her. I think at the point of disengaging, certainly for those of us who put up with it for years, the marriage is pretty much heading down the toilet anyway. By the time we reach this decision, we no longer respect, admire and adore the man who is letting his kids treat us this way, and are more than ready to accept that this marriage that was clearly in trouble may very well end as a result of us deciding we no longer wanted to be treated like this.

Once the disengaging takes place it forces DH to look at what is going on. He no longer can dictate or bully DW into accepting his children into her home and allowing them to treat her like dog poo. He loses control over DW. Having a man control us in this way is a very bad thing, and just the fact that we take back that control is in itself a happy ending. Once the SK's stop abusing us, and when we no longer sit back and watch our DH's allowing them to do this, we start to get some self esteem back, self esteem which DH and SK eroded over the years, another happy ending. With the self esteem, comes self confidence, and the sudden recognition that we deserve better, we should never have allowed this to happen to us, and we then start to take control of our own lives, another happy ending.

The marriage, well it will either survive the disengagement, or it will finally end.

If it ends lets look at what we have lost, on the surface we may think the man of our dreams, our soul mate is gone and it could if we stay in that mode of thinking hurt like hell, or we could face facts. No soulmate would sit back and allow you to be abused by anyone - especially his own flesh and blood. No soulmate would by his silence and complacency encourage his offspring to hurt and demean his wife. So in fact what we have lost is a very selfish, weak man who put his children (well to be honest, in most cases if not all) his daughter ahead of his wife, we have lost a man who loved another woman more than he loved us. So, no big loss there. What we lost was a man who was emotionally cheating on us, and abusing us, and a man who would sooner see the marriage end than treat his daughter like a daughter and not like the 1st and number 1 wife. By losing this, we gained pride, self respect, self esteem and the freedom to make a better happier life for ourselves, a fresh start with a wealth of knowledge destined to never make the same mistake of giving our all and expecting nothing in return ever again....another happy ending there.

If the marriage survives, well the dynamic will have changed, you will now be partners in the relationship, you will never again accept the 2nd , 3rd or 4th position in his list of priorities, you will be his wife, his number 1, his equal and his partner. You will respect yourself, and in turn you will expect him to respect you. If the love you belived you shared was/is real you will go into a new phase of the marriage, one based on mutual respect and you will both come to a better place together. Another happy ending.

However, looking back at what I have come through I will say this. I played a role in this too. I think up until a couple of years ago I was still in the first throws of romance, I was still besotted with DH, I couldn't wait for him to come home and all that goes with the "falling in love romantic side of relationships" The spark was alive and well and burning brightly, so brightly in fact, I could not see what was going on in my own home, I could not see he was in fact abusing me, and cheating on me emotionally with his daughter. I guess as a result of this, well I know as a result of this I lost the special spark. But in losing the spark, I was able to see my husband for who he really is clearly for the very first time. I finally had a choice to stay married to the man I knew he was, unlike the first time when I married the man I believed he was. This too is a good thing, we finally get to make an informed choice, we finally have knowledge and with knowledge comes power. The power to make a better life for ourselves.

This is all very, very early days for me yet. All of this only happened about the middle of last August, so I am far from being an expert in this, and I hope to God I have learned enough so I would never put myself in this position again in order to become that expert who had lived this kind of life 4 or 5 times with different partners. But I will say this, I am far prouder of myself as a woman who has self respect, than I was as a meek and mild little "blinded by love" mouse. So yes I would say that not only are there any happy endings after disengaging, but that every disengagement brings a happy ending, they bring change, maybe not the change we had hoped for, but ultimately the change they bring is always for the better, sometimes it just takes a while and a whole heap of courage and strength for us to see that.

This is very thoughtful EBU. For me, I had my first BS with DH very early in the marriage and if I had not I don't think I'd have stayed in it. So for me, disengagement developed as I saw the needs not of me but of my own children put second, and the criticisms I had of DH developed alongside evidence of how the poor parenting impacted on my BSs too. It is all very intertwined for me. But I do think that even in this, less romantic, type of marriage there is a point to working on the marriage and salvaging or rather, building a fresh connection in order to ensure emotional health for both adult parties. The point about disengagement as between the spouses is that it creates the distance, the room, the space for debate where before everything was assumption and unspoken deadlock between the couple. I do still see it as a transitional phase, not a permanent state, as between the spouses, though it may have to be a permanent status between sparent and skid.

I agree Poodle, I think it is a transitional phase, however unfortunately for my DH I think for the marriage to survive this will have to be a permanent disengagement not only between me and Sd but between him and his daughter too. She has made it clear that she will not tolerate our marriage, she has made it clear she wants us both dead, she has openly said she will seperate us (so he can suffer being left like her poor mother had too), and then she will make sure we both die miserable lonely and unhappy - now this girl has a personality disorder, she is not just speaking in anger here, she truly means it. I had to take steps to protect myself from her at her boyfriend's insistence, he felt I was in danger - daddy of course felt she was just mad, she'd get over it. Well she was so mad she got pregnant behind boyfriends back a few months after the moved in together and bred what she believed would be her trump card. It was awful and it was the straw that broke the camels back for me. Very long story.

Anyway, I believe that DH and I could very easily make this marriage work and it could be better in many ways than it was before, yes I miss the 'spark' but would prefer things this way certainly for the sake of both our physical, mental and emotional well being. However, it is still very fragile and one phone call from SD could bring down the new foundations we are building as it is very early days (8 months is not a long time for this type of situation) well I dont' think so anyway, it is all far to serious, however as I said, this girl is suffering from NPD and she wil do and say anything at all to get her own way. She is his daughter and I can understand his feelings there I have three children of my own, but as a parent he has failed woefully, and I can never suffer as a result of that again. His daughter laid down the gauntlet the day her baby was born - it was her or me, so she too now has to live with the consequences of her selfishness, and this will be hard for her because it is the first time in her life that she has not been able to bully someone into getting her own way. Poodle, I could never have her in my life again, and I could not live with my husband if he has her in his life because she changes him completely, she makes him a very miserable, angry depressed man who takes all of it out on me because his daughter says - but for HER so he then thinks well if I could make HER do what my daughter wants we would all be happy. Yeah, right.

This is a very sad situation for all involved, but I have no remorse and certainly no guilt. I did my best, I respected his children, I respected their relationship with him, I did my very best to allow them to be a family and I was not in their faces, they however have made it abundantly clear they will never accept me, they want nothing to do with me, they will certainly never tolerate let alone accept the marriage, and have said they hated me before they even met me. Relationships have to be a two way street, they hate me, that's okay, their loss really. I will work on the marriage while my husband is a partner in it and works on it also and we will see what fate has in store for us.

I agree EBU your SD sounds to be very mentally disturbed, in those cases it has to be a permanent solution for one's own protection.