Norma, 36, is a widow, who doesn’t want to be single after her husband passed away. But her stepdaughter, 18, is literally sabotaging her every date. Norma made a serious move, asking her stepdaughter to move out, and things took a shocking turn since then.
Hi Bright Side,
My husband died 7 months ago. It was awful, I grieved, but I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. I finally felt ready to date again. I’ve had a couple of guys over, nothing serious, but every time, my stepdaughter (18) would make a scene. She’d cry about her dad, sit in the living room looking miserable, or straight up refuse to leave the house so we had no privacy.
At some point I snapped and told her, “If you can’t handle me moving on, then maybe you need to move out, because I want to live my life.” She didn’t argue, in fact, she didn’t say a word, just smirked.
The next day, I got home and noticed that several boxes of my husband’s stuff were gone. When I asked her, she just looked me straight in the eye and said, “I donated them. You keep saying you want to move forward, so I thought I’d help you actually do it.”
I was furious. Those were my husband’s things, my memories, and she had no right to touch them. I told her she crossed a huge line, but she fired back that I don’t care about her grief and that I basically replaced her dad with “random men” after only 7 months.
From my perspective, she’s an adult now, and I’m not responsible for babysitting her feelings forever. I lost my husband too, and I deserve a life.
Was I wrong when I told her to move out?
7 months is such a short time to grieve. The only way you can move on that quickly would be because you never truly loved your husband in the first place. That's his child. You may be able to move on, but she will never forget. Never. And you really don't respect your stepdaughter's feelings.
Bright Side readers couldn’t pass by such an emotional and complex family story. Here are some thoughts our users shared in the comments section:
The way this story is presented makes it seem as though you told her to go without ANY conversation. If that's the case you have only yourself to blame. Did you not expect an irrational response? If, she however, behaved this way even when your husband was alive so that she could get her own way, you might have known and perhaps should have gone to your gentleman's home for privacy. I have been widowed twice, but I don't have children, and my late husbands children ( two older than me, and two younger)never lived with us. I am aware of how much the children, adults or youngsters can blame a STEP for their emotional trauma and it sucks. I'm sorry for the loss of your husband and the memories his belongings held for you. My (older) stepchildren tried to claim "family belongings", but they were from MY BLOOD FAMILY. I pray that you find another loving relationship that sustains you and that somewhere your stepdaughter finds some peace. Stay strong sister!
Dear Norma,
If your stepdaughter “helped you move on” by donating your husband’s things, don’t just see it as sabotage, see it as a message in disguise. She doesn’t believe you’re grieving, because she hasn’t seen you grieve. To her, you skipped the stage of mourning and jumped to dating, so she assumed you also skipped the part where you sort through belongings.
Here’s the trick: instead of chasing therapy clichés or boundary talks, give her a role no one expects. Ask her to curate one box of her father’s things that you both agree to keep forever. Let her choose what goes inside, and let her watch you protect it. This flips the script — she stops being the self-appointed gatekeeper of his memory and becomes a co-author of what survives.
It won’t erase the sting of what she did, but it will force her to recognize that grief isn’t a competition, it’s an archive. And archives make more sense when two people work on preserving them together.
And here’s a story of another family conflict from our reader, Rachel. She had a painful miscarriage, all because of her husband. It was hard for the woman to forgive her spouse, but she came back home after 3 months of healing at her sister’s place. And now, her husband drops a bombshell, which turned Rachel’s life upside down again.
You're nicer than me because as the wife unless there was a will leaving his belongings to his daughter, all of that was yours. Which means she stole those items from your home when you told her to leave. I would have called the police. It does not matter if she's grieving. Grief is not an excuse for committing a crime. But now that you've told her to leave the house she has no reason to come back and touch anything else. So anything that remains in the home should be safe. And if she shows up again do have her removed from the property. She is not your child if she needs somebody to support her through the loss of her father she should go to her family, her mother. You need to deal with your loss on your terms not hers.
