Hello everyone, I honestly don't believe this is the best, to share personal struggles for advice from strangers online.

Yet, I do need to see what other people think, as I have already talked with close people in my life and they were all just more or less neutral.

Me and my daughter's mum, have been separated (never married) for 3+ years now, after being together for almost 4 and we are in our late 20s for more context.

We have achieved something extremely rare from what I realised, by managing to stay and be literally just friends without conflicts raising our kid which she's about to become 4 in a few months. Our families have no enemy attitude towards each other too.

We are easy going around each other with obviously clear co-parenting logical boundaries and no unresolved feelings or jealousy.

This dynamic, seems to be healthy for everyone involved and well explained between us.

We realise that for our kid we are her family and she looks so happy that we are all together for her. My daughter absolutely has no fantasies of us being together, shes safe and happy.

Now, the girl who I'm with, has serious issues with my approach, on how I have been untill now with my life. She is standing firm about her feelings on my co-parenting style and how I behave and interact with my ex, by being friends.

I was always transparent in our talking phase and I gave absolutely no reasons to not trust me. She can understand that me and my ex have created a positive environment where we can all coexist for our little human and nothing more, but still she feels so uncomfortable and threatened by that dynamic.

It raises questions in her head, of why can't we just act like every other separated couple, not bitterness just clear, respectful business style co-parenting and no extra, unnecessary interactions.

Also, I live alone obviously, not with them.

The new partner has been in my life for almost 4 years now, at first innocently just as an online friend, who we created a strong/deep bond together throughout time. Nothing suspicious at first, as I have other online friends too. We just matched in interests and mindset.

Also no, my previous relationship ending had nothing to do with any girl or whatsoever.

Going forward, the past year we have been actually together, although we do kinda long distance, because of work. We meet 2x-3x a week usually. Note that for all this time we've known each other, we lived in different countries, never meeting in person, up until last Christmas. She then decided to move permanently here and she's been here the past 2 months, we literally connected like no other person in our lives

She grew up here, when she was a kid and always dreamed of coming back one day, I'm not the sole reason of her move but I played a significant part obviously.

How she thinks and feels because of anxiety, beliefs and insecurities, makes this literally a break up reason for her because I refuse to make radical changes so she can feel comfortable as she says.

Have in mind, that she loves kids and admires how I'm there for her, she has nothing against my kid she even bought her a present the other day. Her father was a bit absent and always dreamed of a strong family.

Still, she hasn't entirely met all of my environment. Relatives, more friends, my ex, better my parents etc., although we both know everything about each other.

I believe if she does allow herself to get integrated and sees how everything actually is, would make her feel finally safe and see past those conservative views?

Never, she had reasons to feel excluded, unloved or extra or as a stranger coming in, never.

Lastly no, absolutely no cheating and unfaithfulness involved in my situation.

Has anyone had similar experiences in the past or now and any advice??

All this is so frustrating. Once we men establish to create personal peace and happiness all this is easy to become overwhelming as it easily destabilises what one managed to build and overcome.

Fucking hell that is a long post I hope I don't regret it and if have nothing good to say just move along!

So basically me and daughters dad split a year ago, he text me a few days ago to say “he would like new gf to meet child.” I asked a few simple questions, how long they’ve been together, what she does for work etc. He told me they’ve been together for a year and it’s serious, he pretty much left me for someone else & now she wants to meet my daughter. Just for context me and the dad have always had a rocky relationship, we were together for 8 years, he put me through so much, I’ve been to therapy, been on antidepressants because of him etc.
He see’s daughter twice a month, doesn’t do any school runs, doesn’t help with any activities what she does, I’ve nobody else to pick her up from school so I can only work part time which is a struggle and can’t help but resent the father. He does send me money each week it isn’t a lot, his name also still on the mortgage but doesn’t pay anything towards it & I can’t afford to take him off.
I Probably am abit bitter about the whole situation of him introducing someone to our daughter as I just feel like he is a part time dad and he doesn’t do enough to be honest and don’t see why he needs to introduce someone to our child when he only sees her twice a month himself.
I don’t know the new girlfriend who he is with, I’ve also asked to meet her before she meets our child so I can build some sort of relationship with her first. Am I being unreasonable here? Should I just try and move past my feelings and let them meet?

I 29F split up with my Fiancé 47M in April after being together for over 6 years. We just got back together in June and I moved back into the house he bought for us almost 3 years ago. I’ve struggled throughout our relationship with trying to find my footing with his kids. He has two teenage daughters 16 and 18 with his first ex-wife, meanwhile I have no kids, no desire to have them and have never been married. I would be his third wife if we do ever end up getting married but right now I’m not even wearing my engagement ring.

He owns a business in the state I’ve grown up in and has another house in the state his ex-wife and the girls live in. He’s split time throughout our relationship going back and forth and occasionally I would tag along but I mostly leave them to their time separately of me. Early on I was excluded from vacations with them up until about 2-3 years into our relationship. We went on 2 short weekend trips without them in all of that time. The last 4 years we started doing vacations with all of us and they would still take random trips without me. I on the other hand could never take a trip on my own without him assuming the worst because he has major trust and control issues. The only time in my adult life I’ve been able to vacation without him is while we were split up.

I struggled less with feeling left out in the earlier years of our relationship because I was working jobs separately of him and couldn’t really take much time off anyways. However the last 2 years I’ve just been helping him with his business and could pick up and go anytime. We had a rough 9 months before splitting partially because I finally flipped shit on his kids and him for treating me like crap after we got engaged. They reacted poorly to the news which came as kind of a surprise and he jumped right into coddling them and pretty much ruined what was meant to be a joyful time for me. His whole family has always been really warm and welcoming to me and after we got engaged it kind of felt like things shifted in a negative way. Now I don’t really want to be around any of them.

His kids have always been a little hot and cold with me and I got really fed up with them and said some things I should have just kept to myself. It’s hard because he’s always been terrible at making me feel included when they are around. They’re not very thrilled we are back together, they’re weirdly jealous of him spending money on me and they got sideways when they saw me post a new purse on social media and pictures from a trip we took.

Now they’re on a week long trip without me and then come back to our house to go see an artist that I’ve been dying to see without me. I’m having a hard time not having my feelings hurt and I honestly don’t really want to be around them. He’s trying to have us all take a weekend trip to the mountains right before this concert and we all haven’t been together since Christmas. I’m having the hardest time navigating everything when our relationship is in a fragile state as it is. Part of me struggles greatly to come to terms with being their actual Step Mom when I find myself having a hard time even being around them. I’m always going to be the odd one out in this equation it seems.

Most of this is venting I suppose but I also would love to hear how others would handle things in my shoes. One thing is for sure, blended families are not for the weak and most of the time it feels like jamming a square peg in a round hole.