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AITA for refusing to spend another dime on stepkids and step grands
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The husband seems so not invested in this gift drama. I think he's right, and that she's being dramatic. They're just gifts. She doesn't have to spend money on her stepchildren and no one asked her to. They clearly don't care either way.
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This woman is a little over her head. She was fine giving free gifts to her stepsiblings without anything in return. But what sets her off is that they don't give gifts to her newborn? Yeah, if they don't care about her what makes her think they'll care about her baby?
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Ungrateful stepchildren never return the favor of gift giving to father’s wife, she finally refuses to lend a dime when they don’t buy her 1-year-old a Christmas gift: “They didn’t even include me in the family photoshoot”
Mixing families is a double edged sword. There are times when things work out, when the families merge appropriately and happily, but there are other times when there's tension, friction, and resistance to the whole process. Your mother's new husband may never be the father you wanted, and your father's new wife may be a horrible woman to live with. You never know what you're going to get when you start living with stepparents or stepsiblings.
When I was growing up I had a close friend whose parents were divorced, and it was sort of a nightmare for her. Packing her bags every week, having to see her parents with different people. She liked her stepfather okay, but her stepmother was a nightmare. It didn't matter if the stepmother tried to get on her good side, she was never going to like her.
In the story below, the protagonist has stepsiblings from her husband, as well as a baby of their own. Every year she sends them gifts and money for holidays and their birthdays with nothing in return. She's initially fine with this until they refuse to buy gifts for her baby's first Christmas.