Blended families can be great — but also challenging.

What would you do if you married someone who had a teenager who hated you? Would you try everything to bond with the step child, or would you respect their wishes and leave them alone?

In this story, one stepdad has been dealing with this situation with his stepson, and he finally lost his cool at his stepson’s birthday party.

Now, he’s wondering if he messed up. Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITA for calling my stepson an ungrateful brat?

My (40M) wife Serena (42F) got divorced from her first husband just about three years ago over her having an affair.

I met her about a year and a half in.

She has a boy and two girls, and we have a son together, and I have a son with my ex-wife.

Enter: the main character, Brian.

Her oldest, my stepson Brian (16M), try as I might — he completely hates me for some reason.

His sisters like me just fine, and he’s loving towards his half brother, and he’s even cordial to my son.

His boyfriend and friends even likes me just fine, and his dad is mostly friendly with me.

Me, though, he’ll barely say three words to or I get aggressive “what do you wants” and “I don’t want you heres.”

Brian never gives the OP an easy time — and he’s pretty direct.

Sometimes, he’s even outright rude to me for no particular reason.

He is a total daddy’s boy and would probably spend every waking moment with his dad if he could and will constantly tell me I’m not his dad.

I tried to bond with him over stuff he likes [but] it’s ” go away.”

But the stepdad says he’s tried everything.

I try to go to all his wrestling meets, baseball games, plays and all I get is “why are you here? I only wanted my dad to come.”

I try to watch games with him, even try to make it a boys’ night with some grilling, and he just runs off to his dad’s to watch the game with him.

And it even continued with his birthday bash.

So, he turned 16 last week, and so I’m the one that plans his whole birthday party on Saturday, and I make sure it’s something he’d want, and I get him stuff I knew he liked.

I was running late Saturday cause I got stuck with a work thing, but I hear how much fun he’s having.

I rush there [once] I get done, and I tell him happy birthday and all that.

He just ask me why I’m there and again just gives me the cold shoulder.

That’s when it happened…

I’m sorry but that cracked me and I asked his problem was.

He actually yells at me that I’m not his dad, and that I could never replace him.

I yelled back at him that I’m not trying to, and I shouldn’t have to put up with this from such an ungrateful brat.

He just storms off somewhere and everyone is just looking at me crazy. Later his mom says she gets it, but I shouldn’t have went off at him like that during the party.

AITA?

Did the stepdad take this too far? Was this stepson in need of a harsh truth? Let’s see what Reddit thinks.

Redditors were quick to side with the stepson.

People also wondered why the OP linked up with a cheater.

One Redditor called BS on the OP’s obliviousness.

This kid has every right to feel the way he does.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.