I have been reading this website off and on for quite awhile now, usually when I need to see if I should feel justified in feeling a certain way about something, or for the comfort of knowing that there are others out there going through something similar. I have never felt the need to post my own story, until recently. Things are slowly reaching a boiling point, and though I am not there yet, I am afraid of an impending melt-down, during which I may say things to my DH or his ex-wife that I can never take back.

My story is this. Six years ago I had my first bio-daughter (we'll call her BD6) with my now ex husband. We split, but it was pretty uncomplicated. He is a bit of a dead-beat as far as parental involvement is concerned. (He sees our daughter for less than 24 hours every two weeks, but often skips his visits as well) This doesn't bother me or our daughter too much since we split before she was old enough to form any major attachment to him.

When BD6 was 3 years old I met my current husband. DH already had a daughter from his previous marriage too, and she was exactly the same age (2 months apart exactly)as BD6. So now I have DH, BD6 and SD6. BD6 and SD6 are best friends and aside from the occasional sisterly fight, they get along fantastically.

Times were hard, off and on, and I sought these forums, as I said, and reading all of your stories was helpful in times when I was feeling resentful of SD6's bio-mom, or even of SD6. I am ashamed to say that there have been major feelings of jelousy but we worked through everything with a lot of communication, and a lot of tears. There were also struggles getting DH to treat BD6 the same way he treats SD6. BD6 desperately needed a father figure and thankfully he is now providing that... for the most part. There are still occasions where I catch a glimpse of favoritism, but that could be me being jaded or paranoid. That is a topic for another post. Myself and DH also have a 1 year old daughter together now so BD1 is related by blood to both SD6 and BD6.

As I said previously, I have BD6 fulltime and SD6 has been with us about 40% of the year until recently. Here is where my stress comes in. SD6's bio-mom met a man over the internet (playing a game called guildwars or something) and she cheated on DH with him (which is why their marriage ended). She continued to see internet man (long distance - we live in Canada and internet man lives in the USA) after the split and about four months ago, proposed to DH that she would take SD6 to the USA and we would only be able to see her during summer vacation. Of course, DH refused on the ground that A)he would never get to see SD6, B)Internet man is a stranger and potentially dangerous and SD6 doesn't know him. C)Bio-mom has no family/friends/job etc in USA and would be completely dependant on internet man. D)We can not afford to fly to southern USA even a couple of times a year to visit. We make a good living but not good enough to take two vacations a year via-airplane with two other young children.

A few months ago, while we had SD6 with us, bio-mom snuck (and I say snuck because she did this very secratively, and without her daughter present) off to USA and got married. By this time she had filed for full custody in order to take SD6 with her, regardless of DH's wishes.

Up to this point DH was paying 2x child support because bio-mom is jobless (unless you consider video-games a job), and driving 18 hours to pick up and return home with SD6 and then 18 hours to bring her back to bio-mom. The whole situation was very frustrating for me because it was like I was standing there watching this EVIL HORRIBLE FAT woman kicking and punching DH and I could do nothing to stop it, and what was worse was it felt like he was just accepting her abuse. Of course she wasn't actually physically abusing him, but she was doing everything in her power to take his daughter away and hurt him, and he just took it and never stood up to her AND paid her more money than he legally had to, which still pisses me off (even though I finally convinced him to stop now that she is married) because this situation would likely be quite different if he didn't let her treat him like a doormat. However his intentions were good. He wanted to make sure SD6 was cared for well, and he wanted to keep things amicable with the ex for SD6's sake.

The problem is, he continues to be a doormat in other ways. For example, we had to go to court to fight for custody of SD6 about a month ago. So while we were in town(SD6 and her mom live 8 hours away from us) for the trial DH convinced the ex to allow us to take SD6 out for dinner. This month is ours to have SD6 and she insisted we allow her to now take an hour with SD6. The catch being that since she doesn't drive, we would have to drive SD6 there and back. This woman is dillusional, but DH actually almost accomodated her! Thankfully I have trained (trained is a strong word I know, but we had many fights about communication and lack-there-of, so we are both sort of trained) DH to consult me on major decisions like this, and I told him he could tell her she is welcome to come here to visit SD6, the same way we had to drive to her to take SD6 for dinner when we did. "There are buses! That fat lazy hideous woman can plant herself on one for a change." (I may have been having a bad day.) Instead of my confrontational approach, he chose to tell her that SD6 isn't feeling well.

I just wish he would stand up to her. Call her on all of the horrible stuff that she does. But he still tiptoes around her. It is my opinion that she is doing the worst thing she can do. She is trying to take his daughter away from him, but I guess it just hasn't sunk in for him yet? I don't know. He acts as though he is afraid that if he makes her mad she will not allow him to see SD6, but we are currently awaiting the decision of a family court on that very thing. We have reached the line. I just wish I could make him see that.

The latest thing she has done is to start brainwashing SD6. So far it is just little things like telling her that DH wants to take her away from mommy, and DH is lying about little things and basically trying to cut us out.

Sometimes I wonder why I chose this life for myself. Whether we win or lose custody there is always going to be another problem around the corner it seems.