Dear Prudence,
I have been married 15 years, and my husband was divorced a decade before that. His three kids were in college when we met. Unfortunately, the year we got married, his ex got diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and died roughly four months after we got married.
My stepdaughter, “Heather,” didn’t take it well, to put it mildly. She took all her stress and grief and threw it at my husband and me, including making a scene at our wedding brunch, where she openly accused her father of “abandoning” her and us of having an affair (we didn’t even live in the same state at the time of my husband’s first marriage and he never cheated to my knowledge). It was so bizarre and out of left field that her other brother and sister tried to take her to the ER. Heather refused to go. This was just one of a long line of incidents.
At the funeral, I stayed in the hotel and avoided being around Heather and hoped that she would eventually get some help. That hasn’t happened. I learned not to host Heather in my house; I am lucky to get a civil conversation on a good day and there are rarely good days. Heather has fixated on me as being her personal devil and has even blamed me for her strained relationships with her siblings. I genuinely have a good relationship with them both and am grandma to my other stepdaughter’s children. This drives Heather crazy and she has openly told my 4-year-old grandson that I am not grandma, despite her sister telling her to stop.
This became the final straw over Christmas, when my husband and I were visiting other family but had a brief Zoom call with our grandson. Heather was visiting but not on the call. Apparently, after it ended, she terrorized her nephew about how he was making his real grandma cry in heaven and said that I was a “bad” person. She and her sister had a huge fight and Heather was asked to leave early. Both my stepson and stepdaughter have told their father that they are sick of their sister’s antics and don’t want anything to do with her until she changes.
This is breaking my husband’s heart and I don’t know what to do. He has asked me to play peacemaker, and I told him I am not getting into it. Heather has some kind of mental illness going on, considering how nearly every job and relationship ends up crashing and burning. She will not seek treatment.
Heather was an adult when I met her and whatever sympathy I had for the loss of her mother has long since worn away. I love my husband and have built positive relationships with his other children, but every overture I’ve made to Heather has gotten thrown in my face along with whatever bizarre story she has made up in her head. How do I support my husband in this?