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[quote=Anonymous]So here's a situation with my family (and I will try to make it as straight forward as possible).

My father remarried when I was 10 and had another girl (his third, I am the oldest) when I was 13.  Due to issues with my mother (namely her inability to handle a chronic depressive/bi-polar disorder), I chose to live with them around this time and did so through high school.  I graduated, went to college, moved away, got married, now I'm pregnant and 29.  My sister is a teenager in high school.

Unfortunately for my father, his second marriage/wife was also plagued with mental instabilities.  The house was constant fighting between the two of them and the two of us (my stepmother and myself).  After I left, there was (much) less fighting between my stepmother and myself, but the fighting remained intense between my father and my stepmother.  As my (half) sister got older, the fighting picked up between my stepmother and my sister and remained awful between my stepmother and my dad.  I really do not have a holiday/special occasion memory that was not completely marred by my stepmother and her antics.  She's very paranoid and explodes very quickly with no regard for the situation, who's around, event etc.  I stopped spending family vacations with them 3 years ago when she ruined 4th of July (our traditional "family" holiday) with yelling and fighting (somebody offered her a drink at dinner and she assumed they were calling her an alcoholic...4 hours of fighting/yelling ensued, carried over into the next day, we went home early).  I stopped spending holidays with them 2 years ago when she lost her s**t on Christmas Eve (sister wanted to go in on an xmas present with me for another family member - she was going to give me $40, stepmother thought I was "stealing" from her).  That Christmas Eve ended with stepmother yelling at sister through bedroom door, me and husband sitting in driveway on phone with sister who is crying, and my dad driving around the block because he just leaves when things get bad.  This went on for hours.  Merry Christmas!

So fast forward to now.  Every time I talk to my dad or sister, they describe how "awful" stepmother is acting and some of her latest yelling/screaming/crazy antics.  She's also become a born again Christian, so FYI we are all going to hell.  About every 3-6 months, my father announces he is getting a divorce to all family members except for my stepmother and never follows through.  Apparently they are going to therapy to fix things, but this routine procedure.  Go to lots of therapists, stepmother hates all of them, one might get her on meds, stepmother's mother tells her she doesn't need them, back to square 1.

When I found out I was pregnant, I invited them over to dinner.  Stepmother didn't come because she was mad that she had not been invited to my friends birthday lunch the previous week (completely irrational - she hadn't seen said friend in years).  And in the 27 weeks that I have been pregnant has not sent so much as a Congratulations text message.

My husband and I have had enough.  Enough with the drama, fighting, anxiety, ruining of events and we are done.  We do not want stepmother to be a part of our lives until her behavior changes and she no longer chronically abuses those close to her.

Well this has gone over like a ton of bricks.  Dad is mad because he swears this is the "wrong choice" and the "cure is worse than the problem."  Sister thinks i have abandoned her (or something?) and refuses to speak to me, except to periodically yell at me via text message incoherently.  Middle sister (who is normally AWOL from all family events) has unnecessarily picked up a sword in this fight and also doesn't respect my decision.  Meanwhile, my dad only has his 90 year old mom to talk to and so she's in a chronic state of worry because she's getting the daily download of what "i've done" to the family.  As a result, neither sister is attending my baby shower (because I didn't invite stepmother).

My husband had the privilege of growing up in a house where yelling and verbal abuse didn't run rampant.  We want to give that to our child.  We want to celebrate events as a family without the anxiety of someone exploding like a Real Housewives Episode.  We want peaceful Christmases and vacations and birthday parties.  Selfishly I want to give myself the chance at the family life I never had, but I also want to make sure that this never becomes my child's or my husband's reality either.  We have a strong marriage and a peaceful home.

What would you do?[/quote]

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