Hello All

This is my first post on this site, well actually the first time I have posted on any site or even blogged..lol. But I found this website and thought it would be a good place to post where people could possibly understand what I have experienced being the Step Mother and I feel like I need to get my story off my chest (finally). This may be long

It all started about 9 years ago when I started dating my Boyfriend (very weird to still call him my boyfriend considering we have been together for over 9 years )He had a 3 Year old daughter from a previous relationship and my kiddos were 4 & 1 at the time from my previous marriage. We were very careful at the beginning not to involve any of the children as we wanted to make sure our relationship was where we wanted it to be. We dated for over a year before introducing our children into our relationship and at that time we decided to introduce them separately. We would take my kiddos to do something then at a separate time go and do something with his daughter so that both sets of children could get used to us being together before having to feel like they had to "share" us. Gradually we would all go do things together, Swimming, Camping, Water Parks ect... Everyone got along wonderfully and even to the point where they would ask for one another when we were not together. All of this time we lived in separate houses. I have full custody of both of my children and their bio father is not involved at all. He has not seen them, or even tried to make contact, with them since we divorced 10 years ago. My Boyfriend at the time had a very open relationship with his ex and they had a mutual understanding on visitation, He had his daughter from Wednesday to Saturday every week. They had this arrangement from the time his daughter was 1 until he and I had been together for over 3 years, then one day his ex started in my mind going crazy. She would call him out of the blue and say "You have 15 minutes to come pick up your daughter or you will never see her again", So of course he would jump and go get his daughter. Well this was happening every other week and sometimes he would go pick her up and her mother would not come back to get her for a week or 2. It came to a point where myself and my boyfriends mother told him he needed to get a custody order on paper so that the inconsistent visitation and sporadic craziness would stop. On a different note I should mention is that my boyfriends Mother has been SUPER involved with this child, To the point where she views herself as her mother as she would watch the child for my BF while he went to work everyday. It got to the point where she had taught the child how to manipulate her father and would prevent my BF from punishing her. I will get back to this later in the story.
So my BF obtained an attorney and started the proceedings to obtain an actual custody order. Let me tell you it was ugly. My BF was being extremely gracious considering and pretty much just put down on paper the custody arrangement they had already had for 4 years, From Wednesday to Saturday. Well her mother decided she only wanted to let her see him every other weekend so it was a long drawn out back and forth fight that got to the point where the judge decided they would just proceed with Judicial Arbitration. This is where both parents go in front of the Judge, they both get 15 minutes to speak, then the Judge decides the outcome and its final weather the parties agree or not. After hearing both sides the Judge determined the his daughter needed equal time with both parents and split the custody as follows:
1st semester of the school year with Mother (every other weekend with Father)
2nd semester of the school year with Father (every other weekend with Mother)
Odd year all holidays went to Mother
Even year all holidays went to Father
Summer split down the middle
Another thing her mother was fighting about was the child having her own bathroom. She had her own bedroom but my BF's place only had 1 bathroom. I thought seriously, WOW if I had only had my own bathroom as a child..lol I didn't realize that was a necessity for a child but the Judge agreed and ordered him to move to the same school district and to provide the child with her own bathroom. Well my BF did not make enough money to pay for a bigger place or move so we decided to move in together so I could cover the offset of expenses and the place I had been living at for 8 years had kind of turned into the "bad" part of town so I did it so that he could maintain his custody of his child. The Judge ordered that until he moved into a place with a bathroom for her that she live with her mother and he got her every other weekend, so within 2 months we had moved into our new place and had a member of the court come to our home to confirm she had a separate bedroom with private bath (let me mention that my 2 kids now had to share the only other bathroom with me and my BF). So about 2 weeks after we moved in the Judge ordered the above mentioned custody order take affect and it was almost a week away from the second semester so our time with her was about to begin. I worked a full time job and went to work everyday from 8-5. The first day we were to have her the mother would not give her over and we had to have a police officer come out and enforce the order. The second day I went to work only to come home to my BF's mother in my new house going through everything and labeling it, and when I say labeling I mean she labelled everything. Everything in my pantry that his mother had bought was labelled "SD's" (don't want to use her name but it was labelled with her name), the towels were labelled "SD's", the Toilet paper and soap was labelled "SD's" down to the chair (which was mine) she sat in at the dinner table was labelled "SD's". I was in complete shock to say the least. Looking back I should have said something then to my BF but we had just moved in together after 4 years of dating and just gotten over a very lengthy court battle and didn't want to make it look like I was nit picking so I never mentioned it to him until as of recently. The first couple of months were rough, all the kids in the house and all of us together working around everyone's personality's and parenting styles but we got through it and I was trying to make the extra effort to include the SD in everything and my BF was making sure he went and spent plenty of time out just to 2 of them (which at the time he did not do with my kiddos) to make sure there was still a sense of normalcy to her. I didn't want her to think I was taking her father away from her and wanted her to know that she would still have the relationship with him that they had before. The BF also made it clear to her that the reason this had to take place was because of her mothers enforcement that she have her own private bathroom. But as time went on during this first semester it became very clear that I was the devil in her eyes and not because of her Dad but because of his Mother (I will refer to her from this point forward as Grandma). Before we moved in together they lived right next door to Grandma and she spent the good majority of her time there, If her Dad was not out doing something with her she wanted to be with Grandma not him, we just were not aware of her intentions at the time. At this time he was working with his parents and he would go and pick her up from school and take her back there so she got to spend everyday with Grandma still and Grandma would intentionally make dinner while he was working so that when he got off she was already halfway through making the dinner of SD's choice and he would feel bad and stay so his mother fed her everyday and most of the time they did not come over until after 7 every night which was extremely frustrating for me as at the beginning I would cook dinner and have it waiting for them only for her to say when she came home "Grandma already made me the dinner I wanted so why would I eat your food". Needless to say this caused a lot of resentment towards his mother on my part and arguing between us which we had NEVER done before. He felt he had to let his daughter and mother do "there thing" as he was trying to make sure the SD felt like things had not changed. So as normal with 3 children my oldest and his daughter were now 9 and discipline needed to be enforced, It was no problem for him to discipline my children and we were on the same page when it came to discipline but when it came to his daughter the same rules did not apply. For example one of the first times this became on issue was when the older 2 kids (mine and his) were being mean to the littlest (mine) for my son it was grounding and privileges taken away but for his daughter is was "cute" and "just things girls do to each other". After awhile it became obvious to everyone, including SD, that this was the way it was and she started to take advantage of it. When I would catch her doing something she should not be doing or saying something mean, I would go and tell him thinking he would punish her so that I was not always playing the "Bad Cop" and he would either tell me I was making something out of nothing or he would tell me "What can I do? She will just go tell her mom and who knows what will happen then". So I started getting after her, not in the same way as I did my own children as I knew this would start a fight but tried in a nice way by saying things like "It's not nice to say those things" or "In this house we don't allow that" and she started telling me "You are not my Mom, My Mom says I don't have to listen to you". And this is just the tip of all of the things that happened, Needless to say towards the end of the first semester I was counting down the days tell she went back to her Mothers house.
Immediately upon her going back to her mothers house a calmness came over our house that had not been there in 5 months, No fighting, No arguing, my kids were getting along spectacularly and all was well. When she came back for our half of the summer it all started again but she spent the majority of the summer at Grandma's so it was not as frequent. When it came to the first even year for us to have her on Holidays I was actually excited, I thought that if she spent holiday's with us it would be a bonding experience. Well I was WRONG, On Thanksgiving we were going over to my Grandparents house, My Grandparents went to GREAT lengths to make sure had a special spot at the table and lots of others things, but when Thanksgiving came the SD said she was sick and not feeling well so the BF stayed home with her and I went to Thanksgiving by myself with the my kids. When I got home the SD was upstairs dancing around and I asked the BF "I thought she was sick" he said" The minute you left she miraculously felt better", I was irritated to say the least but did not say anything. The next holiday was Christmas, the BF did not have extra money so I paid for and made sure the SD had just as many presents and the same dollar amount as my kids. Christmas eve we had plans to go to my Family's house then to his family's house, Well an hour before we are to leave to go to my family's she is "not feeling well again", so BF stays home again, I come home after a few hours thinking we were not going to his family's since she was sick, but once again she was miraculously feeling better and the BF was okay with it and we went to his family's. Well I stayed up all night wrapping presents, stuffing stocking and all that good stuff. The kids get up in the morning, Mine as usual lit up with excitement while the SD sat on the couch acting like someone just murdered her dog. I thought oh once she opens her presents (I spent over $300 just on her) she will be happy, but one after one she opened up her presents and threw them over the couch, not even acknowledging what she had gotten. I had made sure that everyone got even presents from Santa and us. Later that day she went over to Grandma's and told Grandma that my kids had received gifts from Santa and she had not (I had pictures to prove otherwise) and that my children had received all of these things and she got nothing, I was soooooo mad but the BF just said, "well that's how she perceived it" even after me showing him the pictures to prove to him that she was wrong. Over the years this continued, with her getting "sick" every time we were to go do something with my family and them letting her get away with it. The continuous lying about things that were going on at our house made it so his mother started to get more and more intrusive. She would make plans for the BF and SD to go and do things with them and intentionally leave us out. She would call up out of the blue and make up a reason "emergency" that they needed to come over there right away without us just to get them over there. This happened EVERY weekend for years. It got to the point where I hated being at my house or around them when it was "our" time with the SD. As she got older the SD got meaner and more vindictive, She would harm my children, one time stuffing my daughter into the dryer and I caught her as she was trying to turn it on. All along the BF would never do anything about it. I begin to HATE when it came to our time with her because everything was so peaceful and calm when she was not around, My relationship with my BF was great and he was a great father to my kids when the SD was not around, but would intentionally ignore and punish my kids when she was around just to make her feel like she was getting special treatment. I cannot even begin to explain how many times I almost left. It got to the point where the SD and I did not even talk, she lived in my house and would come and sit with the BF and just sit there and stare at him for hours, mopping and crying until he took her to Grandma's. In the last year I decided to be more open with how I was feeling and the things that needed to change. He stopped working for his parents and began to see things the way the actually were since he did not have his mother in his ear everyday convincing him things were a certain way. He started getting after his daughter when he saw her doing things she should not be doing but she ignored him as well. It got to the point where she was stealing from us and Grandma and just generally making everyone's life miserable and thinking it was funny and she was only 12.
At the beginning of this year we got offered the chance of a lifetime to own our own successful business but it is a 3000 mile move. Both of us did not have jobs. We sat down to talk to the SD about it and ask her where she wanted to live, she quickly said she wanted to live with her mother but have visitation with Grandma, Nothing about us. So we talked with her mother and took her back over there, her mother filed paperwork so that she had all custody back and that his parents got some weekend visitation but we were pretty much written out of everything, the only part that even mentioned visitation with her father said "If the SD and mother agree on a time, then something can be arranged". Before we took SD back he took her out to dinner and told her that we were still going to be in town for a few months and that anytime she wanted to come over all she had to do was call. Well that was 4 months ago and she had not made an effort to come here, but she goes to Grandmas house every other weekend. I was even nice enough to box up all of her things and took it to Grandmas so she could go through it and keep what she wanted, I was smart and took pictures of everything when I dropped it off because the minute SD got over to Grandmas she started saying some of her things were not there and that we were intentionally keeping them, not the case. Before all of this my relationship with his mother was awesome, now we do not even speak. Through this experience it has made our family stronger, My BF and my relationship is great as we really have been through hell and back. His relationship with my kids is awesome as the way he sees it is my kids really appreciate him being there to be a father and love, listen and respect him. He now says he views my children more like his own that his own daughter which to think about is sad. Everything is well at our house and our relationship but I still cringe when I hear her name and have this huge resentment built up inside against this girl who pretty much made the last 6 years of my life a living hell and all I can think is how great it will be to live 3000 miles away from the SD and Grandma as they will have NO control over my life anymore, no more ruined holidays, no more unplanned "emergency's", just us living our lives the way we want without having to worry about crazy people trying to control them.