Have had enough
Im new to this forum and not sure what Im doing here, I guess Im after some answers to why I feel the way I do. I have been married to a wonderful man for 25 years and have two great kids D22 and S16. I love my H and kids but the issue I have is that my H has a daughter age 27 from a prior relationship. I knew all about her when I met my H and accepted that she would be a part of his life. She was about 8 month old and live with her mother in another state so we never seen her much whilst she was growing up. The communication was nil between the parents and and we were lucky to see her once a year. In the beginning I tried to be apart of her life and bought birthday and christmas presents and sent them to her. My H never seems to mention her or contact her in anyway but then expected me to slip into the step-parent role when ever we did see her.
I keep this up for a period of about 10years playing the good step mother when H never seem to atempt to be a father to her. Only when it suited him. What I call out of sight out of mind.
I decided that I had had enough of this and since we had a daughter of our own now I was giving all my attention and emotions to her.
To cut a real long story short my H does not contact his Daughter on a regular basis only when he is traveling down to visit other family members and then only if he has time to catch up with her. Not that she ever contacts him either. She has since married and now has a child of her own the issues I have is Im not sure how im meant to feel as my H never tells me anything inrelation to her and never informs me that he has contact with her, she never contacts him. He only found out she was pregnant after he contacted her on one of his family visits and she was 71/2 months, she never let him know she had had the baby he found out from his brother 3 days after his grandson was born. I am meant to take this all in my stride and have no feelings at all, when my H appears not to consider my feelings by keeping things from me and not even mentioning her name for months then drop bomb shells on me like when he found out she was having a baby and did not consider telling me for about 2-3 weeks.
He has made me not like her very much, not that I know her that well but I guessing Im making excuses for my actions/feelings but with H not involving myself and our D & S in SD life he has made it very difficult in acceptance of SD. I get so angry when I find things out about SD from other members of the family and mention this to H and he already knew buth did not bother mentioning this to me. I amd wearing down quite rapidly and not sure what else to do to try a get H to let me into that part of his life. The funny thing is he cant see what the problem is.
I have since decided that I really need to seek professional help to work through my feelings as I really think it is starting to affect our relationship, more so from my point. I just feel like a bit of a loser seeing a counselor as there are thousnads of Step-Mothers out there that are proberly thinking WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!! but it really hursts inside and Im not sure why I have these feeling of Hatred, jealousy and bitterness.
That is enough for one night I think, it actually feels good to write it all down, it help.
Angry.....Are you sure we're
Angry.....Are you sure we're not married to the same man? Did that ever ring a bell with me! Is this the only way your husband doesn't include you or keep you informed, or is this part of his personality make-up in general? In my case, this is my husband and years of griping and asking to be included on various issues it has made no difference.
My first husband (ex) left me and our daughters when our youngest was not even 2. He basically started his own life, did not keep in touch, no presents sent, no calls, told me he would not be one of those insistant dads, said his girlfriend didn't want the responsibility of his children. They broke up, he marreid someone else that was interested and did like you but he wasn't involved. How the girls yearned for their father and could not understand why he had nothing to do with them, that was just how he was. Both moved withing 20 miles of them once they were adults to try and establish a relationship with him and it remained the same.
My daughters were raised by their stepdad who I have been together with now for 22 years. He too is like my ex and your husband as far as keeping in touch. He doesn't have a relationship with his family, his sons are adults now and he doesn't visit them and they don't visit us, no calls, no gifts. He had custody of his sons, we raised them. It seems to me that the relationships with others are generally not important to him.
Younger SS married which we were informed last minute by husband's dad. She become pg which husband relayed to me. I was in touch with SS's wife. I had not met her, we had not been invited to the wedding. I ws tryhing to not be invasive but let her know I was interested and excited for her, general chitchat. The baby was born, SS called emailed the annoucemnent to his dad. Something like 2 weeks goes by and husband forwards the annoucement to me. I have no idea why he could not have said anything and when I asked, he said he was hoping SS would include me on the annoucements. So I emailed to congratulate SS's wife, told her I had just been fwd the annoucement. She turned around and called me a liar. What? Told me not to contact her again. So I didn't. Several months pass by and I heard thru my duaghters that they had talked to their stepbrotehr and said his wife had been hurt because she felt we should ahve been there when the baby was born and felt we didn't want to be included by not being. I didn't have a due date, not sure if husband did, nothing was said. Who knows thugh what the truth is as SS is not a truthful person. All communication was with me, I was the one trying to reach out. Yet, this got dumped on me when it was my husband who never said a word. It didn't set well.
I feel for you. I had to detach. We had another incident when the little girl turned 1 and that was the straw that finally broke the camel's back.