Well the daughter is in her tweening years and about to head into puberty. That is an explaination for some of her actions. The other explanation is that they feel intimidated by your presence and can observe that you are becoming more of a consistent and permanant fixture in their lives. Through lots of hard work, drama and dedication these things turn around when the children are older and on with their married lives...but sometimes not. If you are looking to marry him, know that you are marrying him and his kids and the psychotic rollercoaster ride you will find yourself on. Give it a lot of thought, its hard..but if I were to do it over again, I would make different choices.

Stop trying so hard.

Treat her as you would any other child, and spend more time with the 7 yr old boy. She will get the picture that what she is doing isn't working....though since you have catered to the attitude for 2 yrs it will probably get worse before it gets better. Stick it out, thats the best advice I can give.

Your BF needs to realize that no matter who he is with his DD is going to act like this, she wants to be center of attention....and doesn't want another woman around. Putting his foot down is the only option or he is going to be a very lonely man for the rest of his life.

The "he doesn't want to hurt his daughter" really bothers me. I think this screams! run. He can be with you but cant marry you because it will hurt his daughter? The difference to me is he will date you because he can break up with you if need be but wont marry you because that takes more work to get rid of you. I would think long and hard before you continue your relationship with him.

The comment "he doesn't want to hurt his daughter" also bothered me. Is she calling the shots? Who is the adult here and why is he giving her so much power? Instead of you making the effort, HE needs to have a long talk with his daugther and tell her how he feels about you. He should explain to her that you're going to be a part of their lives, and that she needs to make more of an effort to accept you. It's time for him to step up the plate.

I have to agree with the 2 posters above this one. That comment shows a lot of who he puts first and I can imagine, that he will not do what is good for the relationship, but he will do what won't hurt his daughter, meaning, you come second. I don't like the word "hurt" at all , for this phrase. I think it has a deeper meaning than you think. I would certainly have less of a problem with the phrase " I don't want her to get mad at me" (which is still WRONG) but by saying hurt (I think) he is putting her at a relationship level. It might be a form of emotional incest, For example, a man loves a woman, the woman loves the man, the woman and man's best friend ALSO loves the man, he says " I don't want to marry you becuase I don't want to hurt her".... You see, all three of them are equal, in a relationship kind of way, because all three of them are looking for a partner.

Anyway, I truly think that little details of things can tell us a whole lot. And sometimes we find the answers to our questions in those.

Becareful with this one....I am in this situation now and I can tell you that is one of our biggest problems in our marriage. When we go anywhere and SD is with us I am like a third wheel on a date with two people. What he should really be concerned with is how all of this makes YOU feel after all you are the adult in his life and she is his child. She should be treated as a child and not an equal in something that is an adult situation.
I tell mine to becareful with the damage he inflicts on our relationship because one day his daughter will be grown and concerned with her own life. There will be boyfriends and one day a husband who takes her heart as a significant other. As it should be. At that point he will not be the center of her world and then the damage that he has done to us maybe something that has stolen the closiness and intamacy that we share.