Making a long story short, I married my husband 13 years ago. My husband had been previously married to a woman while he was in the military, who had 3 children from another man and got pregnant of him when they had been together for 4 months. Fast forward a few years, my husband got out of the military while they were still married. He raised her 3 other children plus the child they had together.

At some point, she was unfaithful to him, claimed he hit her and put him in jail with false accusation, but the judge dropped the charges. His life was destroyed. Six hrs after he left the house, she put another man in the house. Fast forward 3 years I came into the picture. We got married and I became a stepmom of a 9 years old girl.

The back and forth was awful. We had our daughter 42% of the time, and my husband was hopeful I was going to offer the girl the love and structure her mom wasn’t offering her. However her mom was a swinger (exchanged sexual partners while she was married to her new husband), and her only concern was to hurt my husband and I through our daughter. We then had a son when she was 14. Things were ok for the most part. We had intense fights at times. Then after four months my son had been born, we discovered our daughter was cutting herself.

She had 3 other siblings. One of her sisters ran away from home at some point when she was only 17, due to the fact that her mom wanted to deem her an unfit parents so she could take her new baby away and collect child support from the baby's dad. This sister encouraged her to move in full time with us so we could help her go through the custody change.

After the longest 9 months of custody battle, my husband and I had full custody of her. I didn’t know how to handle a depressed teenager who was glued to my hip. Her mom told my husband that she did not want her own daughter visiting her over the dummer because her daughter hurt her family. My husband took her to CA to visit family so I could breathe for a moment. We had lots of ups and downs, fights and all, but we also had wonderful moments as a family. Knowing my daughter missed her mother and knowing she wrote a suicidal song, we had a talk with her. I didn’t know what to say. I asked her if by wanting to commit suicide was the best way to handle her problems and that by commiting suicide she would be  running away from her problems, in that at the end of the day our lives would move on and she would no longer be here to live her life.

Fast forward a couple years, my daughter decided to move back in with her mom when she was 18 years old. She wanted to go to nursing school just like me, but neither her dad  or her mom ever planned for college funding, and I couldn’t sign loans for her to go to school and accumulate another $100,000 in bills for her, while I myself was going to nursing school and accumulating that kind of that for my own schooling. Her mom wasn’t going to help. Then my daughter wanted to join the Marines  so she could get college money at the end of her time.

One year after she joined the Marines she decided to marry the boyfriend she had from high school. She just wanted a courthouse wedding, but I offered with my son-in-law‘s mom to put together wedding at his parents house. My daughter wore my wedding dress that I got married a.m. and she had a beautiful wedding. After that time things got so much better, and I visited her in Disneyland and took her my son to Disneyland, I sent her gifts, I tried to be encouraging and try to do anything and everything a parent could do for her despite the fact that her years as a teenager leaving In my house you were very rocky. We have fights. But every parent told me that fights were normal between teenager daughters and moms, even more so with stepmom’s. So I knew that things will get better at some point..

But then last year something happened in the military  that shook us up. My daughter was raped. She tried to commit suicide. But nobody told me this until most likely in August of last year. We had a family reunion here in my house in July of last year and my daughter came. She barely spoke with me and she never wanted to spend any time with me. I couldn’t understand. Then I learned about everything and tried to be more sympathetic toward what she was feeling. We went to Disneyland at the end of September and my husband told me how much my daughter was having a hard time with me about all we went through when she was a teenager even though that had been a long time ago. My daughter decided to move back to Oregon When her time was up from the military nothing happened to the guy who raped her. She came to my house for Christmas which we celebrated on December 23rd, I gave her and my son-in-law wonderful gifts and they came to my house at 10 o’clock in the morning and didn’t leave until almost 11 o’clock at night.

My 40th birthday came around in January which she went to the birthday gathering in a restaurant with all of her friends. She never spoke with me more than just saying happy birthday. But then I learned that she’s in a very dark place and that she doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore because how much she hurt from what we went through when she was a teenager.  I gave her in my son-in-law wonderful gifts and they came to my house at 10 o’clock in the morning and didn’t leave until almost 11 o’clock at night. I couldn't understand how could a person come and spend so much time inside my house while she hates me this much. She doesn’t remember that a lot of what she went through was due to what her mom did by cheating on her dad, putting him in jail, leaving a life of exchanges sexual partners. Not only that her mom wanted to use her to hurt my husband and I.

I tried to do the best that I could, but nothing made a difference. It’s been five years that our relationship has gotten so much better and to my daughter she doesn’t want anything to do with me. She just now told me two days ago that she never wants to see me again and then she hates me more than anybody in this world. I am understand she is hurting and she doesn’t understand how big of a mess the divorce of her parents affected her. However yes we fought,  yes we both said things that we shouldn’t have said to each other, but to be honest with you every person says things that they shouldn’t have said from time to time. We then met up on Friday and after she asked me why did I hate her, why did I resented her, why did I tell her that we were going to move on if she committed suicide, and all I told her was that honey I love you, our situation was very stressful, and a lot of times  my lack of knowledge and experience with her situation and specific didn’t allow me to do what I should have done for her and I asked for her forgiveness. She then at 8:31 am in the morning cut me off of her life. I still haven’t talk to my husband about it as I know he is very confused about everything that’s happening and feels a lot of guilt for what she went through even though it wasn’t his  fault, the fact that he’s ex-wife cheated on him and did everything she could to destroy him. Now I honestly don’t know what to do. My daughter has so much anger in darkness inside of her and she blames everything on me even though the events that she remembers didn’t quite happen the way that she says they did as I am as we know every story has two sides.

I honestly don’t know what to do. My daughter has so much anger and darkness inside of her and she blames everything on me even though the events that she remembers didn’t quite happen the way that she says they did as we know that  every story has two sides. My husband is confused, and he says that we are never going to get divorced because our son is not going to go through what his daughter went through. But now there is this division and I know because she has so much anger she’s going to try to poke me and try to get a reaction from me so the drama can perpetuate. I wasn’t perfect as I know I am never perfect. I try to do the best that I could with the little knowledge I had and with the best intentions to raise her to be a decent adult, not be pregnant as a teenager as pregnancy during the teenager years (this was a common thing on her mom side of the family as every woman in that family got pregnant while they were teenagers). I honestly don’t know what to do. I want to confront my husband but I need to understand his side and be compassionate that his daughter is in a very dark place. Can anyone give me an advice?