No one is going to argue that blending families is easy. That said, some people make it so hard it’s a wonder the new spouses/families stick around at all.

OP is the father to one adult daughter who still lives in the home. His wife also has two adult daughters who live in the home, though they are ten years older and OP’s daughter and have children of their own.

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.

They are always trying to get OP’s daughter to babysit for lower wages than she would normally accept. They mitigated her concerns by having his wife take care of paying for the babysitting.

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.

When OP booked a vacation for the entire family, though, the stepsisters were basically insisting his daughter stay home with their children, since their grandmother “didn’t want them to go.”

OP told them to knock it off, that she wanted to come and she was coming.

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.

The day they were set to leave, though, his daughter could not find her passport. Her stepsisters and stepmother shrugged it off and were ready to leave her home with the kids.

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.

OP kept searching for the passport, stating he would rather cancel the whole thing than go without her.

That’s when they fessed up that they had stolen the passport in an attempt to force her into staying home with the kids.

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.

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

At that point OP did cancel the trip and now his family is telling him he overreacted.

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.

Editing to mention that kicking my stepdaughters out isn’t possible since my wife co-owns the house that we currently live in.

What does Reddit think? Because I doubt they agree with the wife!

The top comment points out the obvious, which is that the stepdaughters are way too old to be acting that way.

This person isn’t buying the wife’s innocent act, either.

At least one commenter wasn’t afraid to drop the D word.

This commenter definitely agrees.

No one has any sympathy for the wife or her daughters here.

This is absolutely appalling behavior from women who are both mothers and about to be 30.

I don’t think I would be able to forgive and forget, if I’m being honest.