Hello Everyone- I thought I would join you! I have a 16 yo SD. DH and I have been married for five years. BM is a crazy woman. As in certifiably crazy. A list of her darling qualities include being physcially and emotionally abusive to every man that comes into her life (and there are many), biopolar x100, emotionally abusive to her children, eating disordered, pathological liar...the list goes on. I go from feeling bad for SD to wanting to claw my own eyes out whenever I hear her name. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. She ignores me and my son (DH and I have a 23 month old), she whines to get what she wants, manipulates both parents, plays them off from each other, and takes your regular old teen selfishness to a whole new level. DH has zero balls what so ever when it comes to both SD16 and BM. He won't stand up to BM even though he could literally have his child removed from her house...and allows SD16 to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants. It makes me sick. Steplife has taken a big tole on our marriage as I can't stand the way he parents (or doesn't) and he doesn't want to hear a word about it. Yet, I have to endure each new manic episode of BM, which lands SD16 in our house for a few extra days (we usually have her sat-mon)...with DH truly believing each time that "this time she is going to stay" (he wants nothing more than to have SD with us all the time :O )...only to have things go back to normal again in a day or two...and both SD16 and BM pretend nothing ever happened. I feel like I am watching a train wreck every day and am not to have an opinion on any of it. I hate hate hate being a step parent. I have given up on the illusion that we would be one big happy family, but it took awhile. I am working on disengagement, but it is hard. I am happy I have found all of you...because this can be extremely isolating.