I think Carolyn's advice is spot on. I could understand the writer's frustration if the SM was taking what the dad told her and telling everyone else about it, if Dad was saying "well, SM told me maybe you should do this" or "SM thinks you should do this...", if Dad was telling the SM about a medical condition the writer has, and/or if SM was using it as a weapon against her SD.

I know I don't need or want to know about every single thing going on in SDs lives and I don't need or want to know about every word they exchange with DH. And I think that's the case for most of us. But unless the SM is truly violating SDs privacy and/or hurting her some other way, SD needs to accept that this is the way things are or change what she tells her dad.

There's some stuff I just don't tell my dad as I feel my SM doesn't need to know about it. He knows all the major stuff he needs to know and about most of the boring, usual stuff going on in my life. I know I can go to him when I need advice and/or support. But after that, what he tells my stepmother, if anything, is on him and I have to accept that he may do so.

One would think, because the LW values her fathers opinions and advice enough to ask, that she should value his choice in partners and what he chooses to disclose to his partner. Wait that makes too much sense.

Thank you for posting the link! Great story! I always find the comments even more interesting than the advice given and here there are some really amazingly astute ones. I will cut and paste a selection below. Most are by the same person, jalesq.

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A very close friend of mine had parents who had a hateful divorce when she was a young adult. All the kids were put in the middle. Her mother was bitter until the day she died ~ it was very sad.

Her father remarried a lady I'll call Sara. Sara had nothing to do with the divorce, but she made Dad happy so Mom had something else to be bitter about. Sara was kind to all the adult children, especially my friend.

And my friend said to me: "Jalesq, even though I respected my father and his right to remarry, I believed that if I so much as looked Sara in the eye, I was betraying my mother." She knew it was wrong then, and she knows it was wrong now. But her father was happy and her mother was in pain, and she felt obligated ~ by her mother ~ to take her mother's side. My friend admits that Sara was *always* gracious, *always* welcoming and *always* kind to all the kids, despite the cold shoulder they gave her for years.

Her father was not: he was very unhappy his ex-wife was poisoning the well for his wife. It caused him to lose respect for his grown daughters ~ and he was very clear with them about that. Her father died before it could be reconciled. My friend regrets her behavior to this day.

What I didn't have the nerve to tell my friend was that I thought she was emotionally abused ~ by her MOTHER. It certainly made her father's decision to get a divorce a lot more sympathetic to me. The damage that this does is incalcuable.

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jalesq
9:26 PM EDT
Lots of very good comments here ~

Its clear that the LW and her father have vastly different expectations as to what level ~ if any ~ of exclusivity she can expect with him now that he has remarried.

For some widowed/divorced fathers, grown daughters can/do step in and fill a role while he is single. It would not surprise me if *before* her dad remarried, he and she had all sorts of "confidential" conversations. When and how it is appropriate for a parent to make an adult child a true confidant I will leave to wiser minds than mine. But I do agree with those posters who get the vibe that she's processing a loss in her relationship with her father upon his remarriage.

It seems to me that her father is having an appropriate, adult relationship with his Wife: and he is clearly telling the LW that his wife enjoys a certain primacy where his attention and focus is concerned. He is being honest about how is prioritizing the relationships with his wife and child(ren) up front. If (and of course I am guessing) he and the LW enjoyed a closer personal relationship before he remarried, she may be wanting to blame his wife for the rift. Who knows? There may be some truth to that.

But if she was at all a "princess" (as I believe that term was used below to indicate that she had a privileged expectation of exclusivity to her father), then the very fact that her father is treating his wife as his WIFE and not as someone more removed (as the LW clearly views her) is telling to me.

My late sister and I were close before she got married. And then she got married and she got closer to her husband: that is the natural order of things and the sign of a marriage-centric relationship.

The fact that the LW's stepmother is a subsequent spouse (ostensibly to the LW's birth mother) is irrelevant: a marriage-centric relationship will fare better than a child-centric one ~ especially when the "child" is a grown up.

Life goes on. People change. Relationships need to change, too.

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This isn't an issue of "musts". Its simply an issue of what he has chosen. The undertow of the letter is that the LW wants her father to consider what *she* wants ahead of what his "wife of ten years" may want ~ or what he may want (that is, to share a certain level of intimacy with his spouse).

The LW has not one iota of standing to expect that in these circumstances. Her father has made his choice regarding the level of emotional intimacy he wants to have with his wife, and its a perfectly reasonable one. I would have more sympathy with the LW if she was just sad that a cherished part of her relationship with her father had changed.

But she asked Carolyn ~ in so many words ~ if she had a "right" to be annoyed with her father. That asks for an objective judgment that what he wants to do is wrong overall, and not just a development in his relationship with his own children.

The old marriage vows had the "leave and cleave" language: leave the parents, cleave to the spouse. In remarriage ~ when there are adult children involved ~ the "leave and cleave" should apply to them as well. Minor or dependent children are in a different class.

Marriage is marriage. The very nature of it is that you pluck someone who is a stranger to your relatives and put that person at the head of your line. Grown children do not have any more right to expect a parent to hold to some prior definition of "family" when marriage changes that family. That is all but giving grown kids the right to nullify a marriage.

Pj ~ I believe he *did* make it clear and that she's looking for the "right" to be annoyed. So, he's satisfied your burden.

I've met more than one mother who strongly disapproved of her son/daughter's choice of a spouse. Does that mother have the right to ask her grown married child to keep something from a spouse if that's not what the grown child wants to do? Of course not. Grown children are in the same class when a parent remarries.

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jalesq
9:54 PM EDT
pjs: I envy you your largesse ~ I truly do.

I, sadly, come from meddling folk and know meddling folk. If not for the "leave and cleave" language, my parents' marriage would have been doomed. All the MILs disapproved and my father's mother was openly hostile to my mother from the day of the marriage until the day she died. She would have loved nothing better than to drive my mother off. Seven children later and Grandma L had to throw in the towel on that one!

So I was raised to have a healthy respect for the need for a married couple to face the world, and their families of origin, as a unit. That's all. Maybe your way is healthier: but I know a lot of folks who came from my family's model.

My take on this, as with the way I used a common term, was not meant to insult.

I presume the LW has all good intentions here: and that she's not confiding anything about her father's wife ~ or anything that directly involves her father's wife ~ and then asking him "not to share". In that case, if he just doesn't want to compartmentalize his conversations, that may be a loss for her and I'd feel sad too.

But that is *his* prerogative.

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jalesq
10:01 PM EDT
One more thought: I've read Wednesday Martin's book "Stepmonster" and it is very, very good. I will rely on it heavily when I become "my father's wife" to Mr. Spiffy's grown children.

Loyalty binds are very hard. It is always the best policy of *all* loving family members (and not just the new spouse) to not create or aggravate them. I respect the relationships Mr. Spiffy will bring to our marriage, as I hope he will respect mine.

But, if one of my *original* relationships put me on a collision course with my new husband, I'd do what this father is doing ~ in a heartbeat. And Mr. Spiffy would not even have to ask. I hope the people who love me will accept him ~ truly accept him ~ into our greater family, and not try to cull him from the larger herd ("he may be Mom's husband, but he's not *my* family.") I don't care if my kids consider him a stepfather or not ~ that's up to them.

But when I marry him he becomes part of the family ~ and must be given the same respect as any other adult member of the family. ( end of quote)

***I think we need to invite this woman to ST! She will make a great addition!****