Imagine growing up in a blended family where everyone in the family perfectly blended like The Brady Bunch except for you. You didn’t blend. Would you still want to be around your family even if they kept trying to force you to blend, or would you want to stay away?

In this story, one teenage girl is in this situation, and now that she’s in college, she doesn’t plan on going back home even for her summer break. Her dad is not okay with that.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for planning to stay with friends this summer instead of going home because I’m blamed for my blended family not being perfect?

I’m (18F) in college and I made plans to find a place with my friends this summer instead of going home. We’re hoping to all live together anyway so it made sense for us to start now and stay close and work.

For me the decision was easy because going home would make for a toxic summer.

My dad disagrees and he’s annoyed I won’t come home.

Her family seems pretty well blended.

The problem is we have a blended family and I’m not on the same page as everyone else.

Dad has me, my sister (13) and my brother (12). My dad’s wife has my stepbrother (12) and stepsister (10).

Everyone lost a parent. Me and my siblings lost our mom and my stepsiblings lost their dad.

My siblings and stepsiblings consider dad and his wife their mom and dad and all of us siblings with no step in the title. They don’t even really see our individual dead parents as parents anymore.

Except for her. She didn’t blend.

But I never saw it the same.

My dad’s wife is not my mom. I did not agree to it and when my dad and his wife adopted each other’s kids, I was the exception to it.

And even though I don’t hate my stepsiblings to me they are stepsiblings and they are not the same as my actual siblings.

I don’t love them particularly and while I like them it’s not on the same level.

She refused to be adopted by her stepmom.

It meant feelings were hurt over the years since they married when I was 12.

My dad’s wife hated that I didn’t see her as any kind of mom to me.

She said even if I called her something like ma or mama it would mean a lot even if it wasn’t mom. She also said I could figure something else to call her if I was adopted and me refusing 25 times to be adopted upset her a lot.

My dad got mad at me for hurting his wife’s feelings.

Her siblings wanted her to blend like the rest of them.

My siblings didn’t like me being outside of the family unit and they gave me a hard time for hurting dad’s wife.

Our relationship got so bad before I left because they said if everyone else saw us as just a family and not a blended family, why should I be different. They told me I was being selfish and ruining everything for them.

My stepsiblings knew on some level my relationship with them was different than the one with my siblings and it hurt their feelings because they saw me as a sister like they saw my siblings as their brother and sister.

I was nice to them but not physically affectionate. It felt wrong. I didn’t have that bond with them.

I can really understand why she wouldn’t want to come home after the way her dad dismissed her feelings about her mom and her blended family.

My dad and I fought a lot my final year at home. He told me I was preventing us from being a perfect family. He said I was bringing the household down by insisting on being different. He told me I had no good reason to reject being adopted “almost 50 times” which it wasn’t that many and yeah I counted.

He said I should be grateful and should love his wife just for being so willing to adopt me. Then he’d call me a brat constantly.

A few times he even told me he wished he could’ve forced the adoption against my wishes and made me “freaking live with it”.

A few days before I moved out we had our worst fight and he told me he would never forgive me for making it harder for him to move on. He said my desperation to cling to mom, my refusal to fully embrace the new family, and my unwillingness to move forward like he wanted was unforgivable in his eyes.

He told me he felt like everyone would have been better off if I wasn’t there.

She realized her dad was right. Not about her feelings but about her family being happier when she’s not around.

I actually agree that they are.

I visited for Christmas and it was clear there was a lot of sadness and tension.

I didn’t even stay with them. I stayed with my grandma for the two weeks I was home. But my presence was enough to bring out the unhappy in them.

I know it was in part because being away didn’t change my feelings and I wasn’t calling dad’s wife my mom or anything when I came back.

And while I missed my siblings they were the only people I actually missed and I suspect that was felt on some level.

It made me realize I couldn’t do that more.

Her dad still wants her to come home.

Dad told me I should be staying for the summer and we should be focusing on our family bonds. That I will break my stepsiblings hearts and make them blame themselves and my siblings will feel like I stopped caring about them. That they still don’t forgive me but they miss me anyway.

He told me I need to try and become a full part of the family and quit with the childish nonsense.

I don’t think it’s childish but I know my dad and probably his wife disagree. AITA?

Trying to force a child to blend in a blended family and trying to force the child to think of the stepparent as a replacement for their deceased parent is not going to help in any way. As in this story, it’s only going to push the child further away.

I don’t blame her for not going home. They’ll probably all be happier this way.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Seriously. You can’t force kids to blend.

They were wrong to try to erase her mom.

It’s not too late for therapy.

This person was in a similar situation.

When you don’t respect someone’s feelings, don’t expect them to respect yours.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.