Sticky Situation

I have a rather unique, complicated problem.

I've been married and divorced twice, by the age of 27. After my second wife, I was kind of gunshy about relationships, and didn't seek any out after a couple years.

I met a wonderful, beautiful person on the internet. We emailed, then talked for sometime, and we came to fall in love. We have many things in common, and got along very well, and eventually I moved to be with her.

Now, the sticky part. She is married to an ex-Marine who was disabled (blinded, some cognitive problems.)in Vietnam. She married him because she had been molested by a family member as a teen, and didn't feel physical contact would be an issue, and she felt sorry for him because he came from a terrible family.

There's never really been anything between them, and after undergoing therapy for some emotional problems,(bipolar disorder, domineering father.) many years ago, she came to develop some self esteem, and my coming to be with her helped to stabilize both of us, as we both needed someone who loved us for us.

They ended up with a daughter,(Now 30, but doesn't always act it.) and she simply idolizes her father. Neither my lady friend or I have designs on marriage. Her income consists of his disability from the service, and I don't have the income to take care of the house she already has a mortgage on and pay the bills. Because of this, we take care of his needs, and everything quite honestly has been fine, I love her to death, and don't mind at all helping with him.

But. Her daughter had a baby a couple of years ago.(She'll be 3 in June.) She's a beautiful little girl, and I enjoy the time we spend with her, and doing the things that grandpas do. She's starting to talk more, and for the longest time, she would call my lady friend Bam, and me Bop because she couldn't say grandma and grandpa. She called my lady friends husband bop too, but awhile back, started making sure she called my lady friend Grammy, and him grampy, while still addressing me as "Bop". One time she took her to see him, and she said, "See Bop?", and she responded, "Not Bop, Grandpa." My lady friend gets called grammy, he gets called grampy, her parents are nanny and grampy, she even calls my mother nanny two, and here I am still being called Bop. I know it doesn't REALLY matter what you're called, it's the things you do and the time you spend and the relationship you have, but sometimes it grates at me, and makes me feel left out. I feel my "stepdaughter" doesn't want her to call me grampy because of her father, even though when my mother visits, she calls her nanny.

Shortly after I moved here, my lady friend had a fight with her daughter and her husband, and they made the sggestion that I would leave her and take her money. Also, there have been thinly veiled jabs at me that suggest that they aren't completely happy with my presence here. One example is, there have been times where they're leaving, and I'm working in the garage. When they're going, they'll say, "See you later, BOP." With a real sarcastic, snide tone to it. It bothers me, it really does. On my birthday last year, something similiar. They ask me, "What are you now, 55?" Her father was 55 at the time. They never say anything in that tone or when anyone else is around, only when they've been leaving. Although I've helped them in several ways on several different occasions, including giving them the last $300 they needed for the closing costs on a house they wanted to buy, I sometimes feel as though I'm more tolerated than accepted. I wasn't trying to buy her acceptance, I just wanted her to be happy, and to help. I've been that way all my life, so that's nothing new. I don't feel that she's trying to cause anything between us, she knows there's nothing between her mother and father. She knows her mother may not have even stayed around if we wern't together. However, she was kind of spoiled, and is still kind of childish, and sometimes I feel like she's living in some little fairy tale where everything turns out the way she wants it. Even my lady friend admits that.

I don't necessarily need things to change as I can accept the whys and wherefores, but I could definitely use some advice on how to deal with this feeling of "alienation" or being tolerated. (The only way I could think of to put it.) I sometimes get.

I tried to be as economical as I could in this post. I don't want to take up the whole site! ;) Tweet