Stepkids exclude her, and husband says to ‘try harder’

Dear Carolyn: My husband has two children who were 18 and 25 when we married. I met him after his divorce. His children now have children, and the mothers told the children I was not a real grandmother because I was a step.

My husband will not address this with them but feels I should try harder – like I am the Velveteen Rabbit trying to earn realness. I don’t want to. I would rather spend the times when I am excluded on myself. – Not Real

Not Real: It is unacceptable that he expects you to “try harder” without doing so himself. Say this to him explicitly. Then, book your spa day. He can think over his options while he goes solo to see his kids. There are obviously subtleties to navigate with any blended family at any stage. But it’s not even remotely debatable that it’s on him to do the heavy lifting with his own family, certainly before he assigns any to his spouse.

Hi, Carolyn: I own a summer cabin with my brother and his wife. We usually are not at the cabin at the same time, but sometimes we overlap.

I recently got a cat, and my brother and sister-in-law said I can’t have the cat at the cabin because my sister-inlaw is highly allergic. I said I would try a different type of cat food that should help with allergies and I would not overlap with them – I would vacate whenever they decided to use it and clean it well before I left.

They said no, I just can’t have the cat there. I will have to board the cat for most of the summer, then, and the cat has been an important companion for me (I’m single).

I don’t have any idea how to bridge this gap since I suggested some compromises and they said no. Any ideas? This was my dad’s cabin, and we inherited it. I’m worried about other negotiations relating to co-ownership because they don’t seem to want to compromise. – Cat Lady

Cat Lady: The attachment to a companion animal is real and valid and warrants consideration, but yours does not get priority over your sister-in-law’s attachment to breathing. Severe allergies are not vehicles for compromise. I’m sorry. It’s not a matter of “want.”

Boarding your cat sounds awful, too, though, even cruel. So maybe this arrangement would work better: alternate summers. It’s still shared ownership, just by the year instead of by the month or week or weekend, to allow deep cleaning and time to neutralize the allergens.

Neither of you will like having to go without your summer place for so long, presumably, but in one sense it’s like the allergy itself: It’s not about what you want, it’s about what is. There’s no wiggle room or special-food option to work on the margins. There’s only a jointly owned summer cabin that you share on a schedule that isn’t ideal but is both cat- and allergy-friendly – or, there’s no more jointly owned cabin.

Being an odd-years-only vacationer sounds a lot better, to me at least, than one of you buying the other out or forcing a sale, which is where you’re headed if one can’t use it and the other won’t budge.