We’ve said over and over again that blending families – or at least, doing it well – is a lot harder than most people think it will be.

OP and his wife have been married for five years. They have three daughters, two of hers who are married with kids (but living at home), and one of his, who is just 18.

I’ve been married to my wife Beth for 5 years. I have a bio daughter named Jessica (she’s 18). And I also have two stepdaughters named Monica and Leah.

They’re 25 & 28. Both are single moms and live with us currently.

His daughter often babysits for the stepsisters’ kids, though OP’s wife pays her, because they wanted to cheap out.

there’s been issues about my stepdaughters asking my daughter to babysit the kids.

Jessica didn’t have a problem with it at first since this is what she does to earn money but since her stepsisters don’t pay her much, she’d just refuse to babysit.

We worked this out by having my wife take care of paying for the babysitting.

OP planned a vacation for the whole family. There was a lot of whining during the runup to the day, because the stepsisters wanted OP’s daughter to stay home and babysit.

Since she wanted to go, OP told them to knock it off.

I planned a family vacation for 3 days and everyone wanted to go.

However, Both Monica & Leah suggested that Jessica stay home and watch the kids since Beth doesn’t want her grandkids to come. They said it’s because the kids are used to Jessica and hiring another babysitter would cause issues. And also said that Jessica isn’t too “fond” of our destination but it was obvious that Jessica wanted to go.

They insisted and Beth offered to pay her double and there was just..a lot of back and forth on this til I demanded they stop bringing it up.

On the day of the trip, though, his daughter couldn’t find her passport. They searched but after awhile, the stepdaughters and OP’s wife said they should just go and leave her behind so they all didn’t miss out.

We were supposed to go last week but when everybody had bagged their bags and was time to go, Jessica found out that she didn’t have her passport on her.

We searched her bag then went home and searched there. Beth and my stepdaughters kept insisting that we go back to the airport or else we’d miss our flight.

They insisted that Jessica stay at home with the kids. They even told the new babysitter to go home cause she was no longer needed.

He said no way, and eventually he learned they had hidden his daughter’s passport in an attempt to get her to stay home.

I refused to go and kept searching for the passport til Monica admitted that she helped Leah hide Jessica’s passport to get her to stay home with the kids.

I was livid I tried to get her to tell me where it was but she said Leah had it, Leah denied so I threatened to cancel the vacation that’s when they gave it back.

OP canceled the trip for everyone and now his wife and stepdaughters are pouting.

I decided to actually cancel the vacation and blew up at both of them and berated them.

They stayed upstairs for a while and Beth refused to speak to me and said that I punished my stepdaughters for worrying about their kids and wanting them to stay with someone they know.

I got told I overreacted and ruined the trip for everybody.

Was he really wrong, though? Let’s hear Reddit’s take on the matter!

The top comment says his wife and stepdaughters are really immature.

They for sure think OP’s wife knew what was going on the whole time.

Also, what they pulled is a federal crime.

They do think OP should have taken his daughter on vacay alone, though.

This is like a real-life Cinderella.

Too bad it didn’t have quite the happy ending.