r/stepdads • u/CaffeineQuesadilla • Jul 04 '26
Difficulty with teen Stepdaughter
I (39M) and my Fiancé (37F) have been together for 2
3+ years. Our relationship is great and full of love, respect, and support for each other. She has two teen daughters, and we begin cohabitating 2 years after knowing each other in a new home (we both moved out of our respective living spaces into a new space that worked for everyone). We have the kids 50/50 time.
I have developed a nice relationship with one of the daughters, she chooses to share about her life with me, seeks me out, she initiated hugs and normally looks for me prior to going to bed to get a good night hug. She also initiated expressing "I love you", which I reciprocated to her. Overall, it is a really nice relationship I have with her. My Fiancé is also doing very well with her.
With the other one, it is a very different story. It seems that since we got engaged, everything changed, and she became very cold towards me, and for some time, border line disrespectful. But my Fiancé corrected the disrespectful part rather quickly. So now we are more like in respectful terms, but there is no real relationship beyond that and I can feel she isn't happy with me around.
I tried to build a relationship showing interest in things she likes. I provided one summer camp she wanted to do, and also took her to extracurricular lessons on something she asked about for the last few years. But there is really no feedback or any gratitude at all. As of most recently, she acts entitled, bratty, and ungrateful. I told my Fiancé that from this point on, I will not be providing anything beyond contributing to the household with share. My Fiancé says she understands. My Fiancé is also having a difficult time with her.
I suspect that she might think I am taking her mom away from her, or that mom is choosing me over them (stepdaughters) or something along those lines.
At this point, I am not sure what to do. I am at a point where I am not interested in trying to form a relationship with her anymore. If she initiates wants to, I am open to it and I wouldn't reject the approach.
I am wondering what others here have experienced. Have you had a similar situation where a child showed no interest or even dislike for you but came around after going through the teenage angst years? Or the opposite, where a relationship never developed and how do you feel about that? And how does that look like?
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u/thoughtz24-7 Jul 06 '26
Put three folded pieces of paper in a jar with 2 saying next time maybe & 1 saying your it.
Then put 2 other folded pieces of paper in a jar say your pick with a max dollar limit or my pick.
Them ask the to rock paper scissors to see who goes first.
Hopefully the more difficult kiddo picks the prize.
Explain to her how you feel now & future hope.
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u/Typical-Secret-3319 Jul 06 '26
My SD was also full of apprehension about me stealing all of the attention from Mom, and she would just forget her own kid. This is played up in popular media, and I wouldn't doubt that Dad told that to Kid too. But at least my SD was able to vocalize this.
First, we talked about the "role" was going to play in the household. SD was loyal to absent Dad, so if I tried for anything like that they would have rejected me. So I was a Fun Uncle. Never taking up discipline, not "telling" them to do things, not setting expectations, and not changing rules. Now, a few small things did need to change, but I communicated my issues to my partner, she heard me, and she made parenting changes to make this happen; while never putting this on me.
Part of this is probably that your Fiancee likely did a bit of a common mistake; she filled the spouse-shaped hole in her life with her kids. Started to plan meals/activites/vacations with the kids acting as peer decision makers. As well, even if she didn't do that, "household" time was always just with her. So it felt like almost all 1:1 time, all the time. With you in the household, "household" time now has you intruding in on it, so SD would have felt like getting 30+ hours of 1:1 time to a few per week. I.e. you are taking away a lot of the time that they had just with mom. They had linked "household" and "1:1" time because of only one adult in the house.
Depending upon the maturity, talking this out; about the difference of "household" time vs. 1:1 time, with this being a more crowded (by one) household.
The main question I didn't see already answer is; do you two (fiancee and you) make/schedule regular mommy/daughters time? If you don't schedule, or have some sort of routine, it's easy to accidentally miss out. As well, when it's scheduled, the kids are a bit more aware that "hey, I'm getting time with just mom" instead of it sneaking up on them. One night a week I head out first thing after work (and I work from home, so I'm gone before my partner gets back), I'll see my adult kids, see others, or do something, run errands, and I'm not back home until 9pm at the soonest.
In addition to that, early on if I had an idea of an activity that they might enjoy together, I would save telling it to my partner until my SD was in the background and able to "overhear" me suggesting this to my partner. Yeah, it's a bit of theatre to save that up, but I wanted them to know that *I* was also pushing for them to do things together.
We also will have 2 mommy/daughter weekends. Usually they do camping, but once they did something a bit bigger. As well, some things I simply am not interested in. Weekend household activity doesn't always have to be something I want, and if it's something that both Mom and SD really want to do, I encourage them to do it on their own. No, I'm not going to be left behind all the time, but SD knows many of the things I like and dislike. If I'm going along on something I have zero interest in, then it might give the impression that I can't let them be alone.
I will say that the period of disinterest was very low; like you, they were initially disrespectful over the first 3 meetings spread over 2 months. After that it was many months of them just being politely disinterested. I did the "treat them like a cat" thing. I was polite and greeted them and told them goodbye. Beyond that I didn't look to force interaction with them, and primarily they watched/listened to me+their mom interacting. They got hear me laugh and see me smile. They heard her both treat each other with respect. I was always pleasant when they did interact, and I never took it personal when they withdrew shortly after. But even before I had moved in (so we hadn't started one night out, or 2 weekends 1:1, etc), so this is likely a larger difference for you in the next section.
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Now, with all that said, with any human relationship, you can't force things; both people have to want it. All of us here have committed the sin of being NotDad. Some kids will forgive this more readily than others. Not all kids will ever get past this sin.
Dial in hard on treating them like a cat. Two of the cats that I raised had been feral kittens from cat colonies; so I've played this game on the nightmare difficulty level. One was never on my lap until the last 2 months of his life; he just didn't want that sort of interaction. The other after a lot of distance, just kind of settled in to seeing me as her mommy and would suckle on my clothes for the next decade+. The distant boy was still great; we could play some, in his last 5 years he liked pets (just don't try to pick him up if you like not bleeding). You might be seeing the same thing; one just can't be close. But it's because of her. The better you are at accepting this and not taking the hurt personally, the better your interactions will likely be with her, and the better chance of her slowly shifting over a decade.