Who’s the Bi*ch?
Tune in to Dr. Phil on Tuesday Dec 1 to hear Jennifer Newcomb Marine and Carol Marine discuss evolving from Mother/Stepmother enemies to friends
There’s a new cultural pressure in town–to befriend your ex’s wife, or your husband’s ex. As you might know from reading my posts, I feel strongly that any woman married to a guy with kids and an ex should feel free to just say no to this pressure–to focus on her marriage and her own mental health and adjustment, given how depleting and decentering the role of stepmother can be and usually is.
But I have to give it up for my friend Jennifer Newcomb Marine and her co-author –and kids’ stepmother–Carol Marine. Like some of you, they chose to put their energy into engineering an effective parenting coalition, and a friendship. And they wrote a book about it: No One’s the Bitch: A Ten-Step Plan for the Mother and Stepmother Relationship. They will be talking about it on Tuesday, December 1st on the Dr. Phil Show. Let’s see if he lets them get a word in edgewise…it should be a great show. Tune in…and then leave a comment! Or just let me know here: how would you describe your relationship with your ex’s wife or partner?
http://www.drphil.com/
Tags: blended family, Carol Marine, divorce, Dr. Phil, Jennifer Newcomb Marine, mother stepmother relationship, No One's the Bitch, remarriage, remarriage with children, stepfamily advice, stepfamily support, stepmonster, stepmother, stepmother advice, stepmother support, stepmothering, stepmothers, wednesday martin, wife and ex-wife relationship
November 30th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
One of the things that I think makes the Marine/Newcomb Marine situation unusual is that it sounds like the mom did intense self-examination, put a lot of work into personal growth and then took the lead on forging a better working relationship with the stepmom and the dad.
I see the stepmom community talking about this book, but I wonder how much it can help stepmoms in situations where the mom isn’t doing all of these things. I suspect that divorced moms who are willing to do this kind of deep work are more likely to be able to bring better working relationships with the stepmom into being — even if the stepmom seems to be initially indifferent. I suspect that it doesn’t work in the opposite direction. I wish I heard about more divorced moms reading this book.
November 30th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Darn that gravatar! I guess that wasn’t so anonymous after all. That’ll teach me.
December 1st, 2009 at 9:09 am
Anonymous, you are anonymous as far as I can see. I agree with you completely. So much of the power in this relationship resides with the mother and if she’s not emotionally or psychologically healthy and willing to develop a relationship, then it’s very hard to go from there. And I am well aware of how easy it is for an outsider to accuse me of malicious backbiting in characterizing me husband’s ex thus, but it’s just the truth. Part of my own experience is colored by the fact that my husband left her for me, literally moved out of her house and into mine (this was over my strong objections, mind you, but he insisted that this would be the best for his daughter, then aged 2). So she blames me for the break-up of her marriage, although it was clearly over long before I ever met him. Having been raised Catholic, I lived with a lot of guilt (which I now believe does not belong to me) over that.
Early on, she and I were friendly-ish, and she used to actually turn to me for advice and help–for example, she was in a relationship with a man who was separated from his wife and she was basically trying to get him to leave his wife for her. She shared some of the details of this with me (which I found, frankly, shocking). This backfired pretty quickly, however, and she realized what a disadvantage it was for me to know these intimate details about her behavior. Since then, it’s been up and down, pretty tumultuous, until this past summer when I decided to simply take myself out of the line of fire and avoid her altogether. She has effectively isolated me–with lots of nasty gossip, I presume–from all of the parents of my stepdaughter’s friends, making her school events unbearable for me. This creates problems for my stepdaughter as well, since she clearly struggles with loyalty issues.
Many years ago, we tried a three-way counseling session, in which she, the ex, had her own therapist present, but that was a disaster. She did a bit of counseling around the time of her divorce, but that 3 way group session made it clear that the therapy was leading her to blame my husband and me for all of her problems. I don’t have any reason to believe that she’s done any counseling in the 9 or so years since that early session (though my husband and I have continued ourselves, and are ever-grateful for it).
I wish it were possible to have a clear and direct conversation with this woman, but she’s so evidently balled up in her own unresolved mother/ step-mother issues that I don’t think she’s even capable of seeing who I am. Earlier this summer, for instance, my husband sent her a very long email explaining a very unpleasant exchange between my stepdaughter and I, and the mother’s response was so hostile, so nasty, so utterly unsympathetic that it seemed clear to us that she’s incapable of reason, let alone compassion.
December 1st, 2009 at 9:38 am
The BF and I have been together for a year and a half. Our situation is a little unique. He was dating a girl who lived 12 hours away; they were long distance and were getting to know each other. She was thinking about moving to where he lived so they started talking and then on her first trip down she got pregnant. They did not have much of a relationship, she lied about taking birth control and wanted to get knocked up so he would marry her and she could get out of the small town she lives in. Unfortunately, for her, the plan backfired and now she is raising her son 12 hours away and the BF has to fly there every month to visit him.
The BF and the ex (I call her PEG) have never really gotten along, their short-lived long distance relationship was coming apart before she even knew she was pregnant, and then they found out. He went to visit her couple of times and went to the sonogram when they determined the sex of the baby but only saw her three times while she was pregnant. After she announced her pregnancy, the BF saw through her games and realized he wanted nothing to do with her and she still is not over him and thinks they are meant to be together since she got pregnant so there is quite a bit of tension.
He sees her as the biggest mistake he has ever made and she sees him as her one true love. It is sad that it has been 3 1/2 years and she has not moved on. She told the BF when he made his final decision to be a part of the son’s life but not hers that she would make his life a living hell and would never let him be happy. I have to admit she had done a pretty good job up until he met me. Since PEG is a little bi-polar and acts out of spite, we do not give her a lot of information.
The BF keeps everything in his life private and does not want to include her because she only tries to make things worse or stir up problems. She does not know we live together or that we are getting married in April. The fact that they cannot be on the same page, and that PEG still wants to be with the BF, trying to have a relationship with her would be impossible.
She is not a good person; she takes advantage of people and manipulates them. She came from a dysfunctional family and it looks as though the cycle is going to repeat itself.
She treats me civil in public, she is all bark and no bite but to my back, she starts gossip and says rude things. I think maybe years from now, if she could meet someone and settle down with, she would lay off us but until that happens; we are in for a long road.
December 1st, 2009 at 9:52 am
I really like the concept of “good bridges and good fences”–with the emphasis on good fences–when it comes to remarriages with children. There are plenty of ways to play these relationships with our partner’s exes, and I don’t think anyone should be judged for shooting to keep it civil, rather than aiming to become BFFs. What I object to is women being judged if they’re NOT best buds with the ex/the “new wife.” It’s okay to be, or not to be.
Jacque Fletcher has gleaned some interesting insights through her research about how a friendship with a husband’s ex can become very high-maintenance and difficult for a wife/stepmother with the best intentions. These relations can be very fraught, charged flashpoints where everyone is vying for power/influence. I always recommend that women be optimistic yet realistic about their husband’s ex and yes, wary.
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:41 am
In the early days of our relationship, I was invited into the ex-wife’s home for a coffee with my now husband. I turned down that offer as I didn’t feel comfortable with that and I had no intention of pursuing a relationship with her. I didn’t find that reaction so abnormal, yet she complained to my husband that I was cold towards her. After all her antics and badmouthing thereafter, I can honestly say that rejecting the invitation to coffee was the best decision I could have made. I kept her very firmly at arm’s length, and I think that has served me well in the long run. All these years later (husband’s children are now adults) there is zero contact between husband and ex-wife, and there hasn’t been for many years. She broke far too many boundaries for comfort.
January 8th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Right now, I’m considering how/when/where I will be meeting my husband’s ex for the first time, and wondering whether the outcome will have me wishing I’d made the same decision as Annesa.
It’s a tough situation to contemplate, and so open to veering in wildly divergent directions: towards a workable co-parenting alliance or straight towards brand new conflict of epic proportions.
When I tell my friends the ex has expresses an interest in meeting me, they all say “That’s great!” like I’ve been granted a royal audience.
Thanks for giving voice to the concerns I share about the pressure on women to ‘make right’ the relationship with the ex.
August 27th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
My husband’s ex is bipolar; diagnosed & untreated. She also has had a second marriage & divorce to an abuser with kids, a third cohabiting relationship to a man with kids, and now her fourth partnership – this time a man with no kids. My stepkids have been through the wringer with her, with step-sibs torn away from them when the break-up happened. We’ve had to sue her to get back support, and she’s about to get more paperwork demanding the 5k in unreimbursed medical expenses. That will create a wave of vitriol, but all I want is the $$ at this point.
I went through the efforts to befriend her, and she has asked me, over the years, to attend her divorce hearing from her abuser (which I did); write her a letter of recommendation for grad school (which I did reluctantly, and very carefully worded; luckily she turned down the chance to go to grad school); both of which were mistakes on my part, as it communicated a friendship I didn’t feel. My boundaries were very bad then.
I invited her into our home to celebrate my stepdaughter’s 20th birthday, and she came. She was on very good behavior that day, probably because she brought her mother, my step daughter’s grandmother. Her parents actually wrote us a letter thanking us for taking such good care of their grandchildren! I cherish that affirmation.
And we all spent last Thanksgiving at her parents home – for which I should receive hazardous duty pay at the very least. The person I most connected with was her new boyfriend’s mother. She was the only neutral person in the room, and she was wonderful – we ended up sitting in the TV room together knitting & talking. What a Godsend! I will never again do that – and though it was as a gift to my stepkids, who wanted it to happen, it just won’t. I’m done shunting myself for the appearance of cross-family unity.
After all of this, and the intensity of her bipolar freak-outs, if I never see her again it won’t be too soon.