Holiday Tip #9 for Stepmothers from Reader Kim–Stop Being a Stepmother
How good would it feel to step away from stepmothering for a few hours or a day? Give it a try.
This tip is born from the concerns of a number of readers who have been emailing me about holiday worries, dramas, and tribulations. It seems that the holidays can bring out the worst when it comes to charged relations with exes; “visitation shenanigans” as one reader puts it; and unresolved issues between us and stepkinder.
If it gets stressful over the next days, take a minute to remind yourself that you are not necessarily a “stepmother.” You are a woman who married a guy with children, and there is a whole spectrum of “normal” when it comes to how you will be with those children, and how they will be with you.
Remember what you were like before you married a guy with kids? You’re still that person, too.
Remembering that you are a person first–a person with interests, talents, ambitions, gifts, and desires of your own–is something women with stepkids too often forget. Stepmothering can be so overwhelming, so demanding, and so depleting that you may give yourself over to it too completely. Which leads to resentment. Kim writes:
“The last time I was ‘away’ by myself was in October and it’s overdue for me to go again. Even though it was for a conference, I was relieved of my responsibilities and I started to feel like my old self again.
Then, today, when I was out getting the making for the desserts I’m contributing to several events and I was buzzing between stores, I had a sudden desire to go to my favorite bakery for a quiche and a cappuccino. The place is so popular that the line is out the door. Instead of fretting about how long it was taking me, I just waited. I waited and breathed and did my people-watching and ran into some people I know. By the time I left, I felt “youthful” again . . . in the way that having a spontaneous and carefree moment can bring. It was precious . . . that moment ‘out’ of it all”
Taking time to reconnect with friends and your family of origin, go to your book group or just your favorite cafe for a cappuccino, solo, Kim reminds us, can help you get back into your own skin and reconnect with the woman you were and still are. Remember her?
Tags: blended family, divorce, divorce with children, family, holiday stress, holiday tip, remarriage, remarriage with children, stepmonster, stepmother, stepmother advice, stepmother support, stepmothering, wednesday martin
December 24th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Amen, sista! This past week, I’ve begun each day with some quiet reading in bed–at the moment, my reading happens to be “Finding Your Own North Star” by Martha Beck, which is funny, interesting, thoughtful, and most of all, focused on the value of individual selfhood. When things get crazy during the day, I think back on the morning’s reading and it reminds me of my own individual, personal value. This year, so far, thank God, we’ve been pretty happy and have avoided step-drama, (so far) but I’ve certainly had times in the past when my body pulsed with anxiety and I felt like I was literally poisoned with stress. Especially when visiting in-laws. But even if you can’t find a coffee shop where you can escape (which often happens for me–no place to go when I need it most) you can escape into your own head, and that’s what my morning reading ritual helps me to do. And then, of course, as it has often been pointed out here, there’s always wine….
December 24th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Funny: I was just thinking this morning about this. I am “away,” far away, from stepkinder and partner, and from people in general. It’s wonderful.
But recently worries have intruded again. One of the stepdaughters just got engaged last weekend. Our couples therapist (who is a stepfamily expert) told my partner that no doubt she would want me to meet her fiance and his family. We’ve been through this before: stepdaughter gets engaged, and I’m supposed to pretend
that it’s all sweetness and light in her family, and that they never treated me badly, threatened me, yelled at me, called me names, etc. I didn’t go to the last wedding, because I was so afraid of them, and for a while the bride was mad at me. (She got over it.)
The core of the problem with my stepkids and the rest of the extended family is that I am NOT a real person to them. I have to go a thousand miles away to remember that I am a real person, as good as anybody else.
Is there any solution to this? Can you be “nice” without betraying yourself? If I forgive and forget and start over with them, in the interest of making them look good to prospective in-laws, will they just turn around and stab me in the back later, when they don’t need a good reference any more?
Why doesn’t anybody think about their reputation *ahead of time* ? One’s personal integrity and reputation as an honest, good person used to be important, one’s most precious possession. Not any more.
I don’t know what to do about this. Pretending all that never happened–and some of it was quite recent between this new bride and me–seems a betrayal of myself, the woman I was before, and still am. I seem to have to choose constantly between being loyal to myself, and getting along with my new family (of eleven years).
December 24th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
I need to vent a little more so please indulge me.
I had a conversation over the phone with my partner about his daughter and her fiance coming to our house for dinner. He thinks they will want to because of the recent engagement, and so her fiance “can meet me.”
I don’t want to meet her or her fiance or pretend that everything’s ok, because it’s not: she has treated me really bad for over a year and last spring she was really mean to me and never apologized.
But my partner said, “I just want to say to my daughter something like, ‘When can you and your fiance come over? And how can we make it comfortable for you?’”
I got really mad.
“Comfortable for HER? What about us? She makes everybody around her uncomfortable, yelling at them and hitting them. Why would you ever try to make things more comfortable for her? She’s perfectly comfortable as long as nobody sets any limits on her. That’s how you send the wrong message to her: by asking her how we can make HER feel comfortable!”
But this little speech really upset my partner and he had a sort of crying attack that went on for some time. I feel as if he needed to hear this: his constantly bending over backward to accomodate the meanest of his children just makes them meaner. But I felt bad that he got so upset by what I said.
He said he felt like nothing he says or does is right, and everything is just getting worse instead of better. He slips easily into this kind of despair. It’s awful. But if I don’t talk to him about these issues, that’s bad too. What can I do?
December 24th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Oh, Elizabeth, I’m sorry your holiday time is being polluted with this drama. May I suggest the mantra that’s sustained me through many a crisis? I repeat to myself, very gently: “Not my kid; not my problem.” It’s your partner’s daughter. It’s his situation. It may be that he’s (subconsciously) trying to get you to say the unpleasant truths that he’s unable to say himself. I suggest (gently and kindly) that you (gently and kindly) back off and let him process this. If you don’t feel comfortable inviting your stepdaughter’s (clearly negative) energy into your space, then there are loads of restaurants that would love to feed you. Do what you need to do to protect yourself. But it sounds like maybe he’s fundamentally unable to provide the kind of understanding and support that you need here, so venting to your girlfriends (or anonymous friends like us) is *exactly* the way to go.
One day at a time; this could all change in a heartbeat. Christmastime engagements are filled with drama and expectation, so keep to yourself and watch it all unfold.
December 24th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
One more thing, Elizabeth–my husband also leans toward the kind of self-blame and near despair that you describe. I have found that for me, it brings out my better self if I can be compassionate towards this pain he feels, rather than try to make him “see the light” of my point of view. Men are really emotionally crippled compared to women, and I find it helpful to cut my man some slack there. It’s better for him, it’s much better for the relationship, and as I said before, it does bring out my better self if I can be more compassionate rather than always angry. That anger really drains me.
December 25th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Thanks, Kathy. “Not my kid, not my problem”: my new mantra.
And you are right; there are lots of great restaurants that would be fun to go to. If my partner and his daughter and her fiance are upset by my absence, tough cuss.
I was pretty nice while he was very upset. I kept saying, “We’re making progress; it will all work out,” etc. And he sort of calmed down.
Today we worked out a compromise/solution: he is going to present a deal to his daughter. The deal is: “You stop trying to break up our relationship and you stop treating Elizabeth badly, and in return we’ll welcome your new fiance into the family and we’ll be nice to him.” He’s going to try to do this in the office of his therapist, who can act as mediator and traffic cop, in case of explosions. Also, he’s going to role-play this with his therapist ahead of time, so as to be sure and do it right. (IN the past he’s had a really hard time setting any limits at all; he backs down, apologizes, etc.).
I agree with you that men are surprisingly fragile emotionally. This is the third man I’ve been with for ten years or more, and the others were like that too, either repressing or drinking away feelings, and then becoming overwhelmed when they could no longer repress or drown the feelings. Women are much tougher emotionally. I guess we have to be.
December 26th, 2009 at 9:16 am
I realized after I wrote the above that I didn’t explain very well in my first two posts that for me to be absent when the mean daughter comes over with her fiance is not acceptable to my partner. He thinks that this would hurt her feelings and embarrass her in front of her fiance. The new fiance would figure out that something’s up: why won’t Dad’s Girlfriend be in the same room with his bride to be?
My partner had to go to a family party on Christmas Eve, and he thought that at this party, his daughter might invite herself and her fiance over. He wanted to say yes, and have me be there, because that would be “the whole point,” as he put it: for the fiance to meet me. But if my son had been 1/10 as mean to my partner as his daughter has been to me, I wouldn’t “make” them be together: I would keep them apart. But my partner has always been this way: the meaner kids are, the more he wants me to hang with them!
This morning I figured something out: this is no accident. He has a lot of disowned rage against women, I think. His mother died when he was a baby. His father remarried, and then his stepmother died. The maid that took care of him left. His wife emotionally abandoned him years before they divorced. He can’t express any anger at all, ever, at anybody. Aha. The daughter is now The Return of the Repressed. This is a role that her brother played for many years, until he became too sick to do it any more. (He has a mysterious auto-immune disease.)
I learned from a book called If Men Could Talk that it’s not unusual for men to act out their disowned anger at women in weird ways. They often can’t talk about it, or even think about it. In my partner’s case, I think he can’t even act on it himself: he projects it onto his kids, and they act it out. (No doubt they are acting out some of their mother’s anger as well.)
For a long time, I thought this anger was just normal stepfamily drama, in the early years after a divorce. Now I think it’s more than that: it’s been 11 years, and the kids are adults. Now it’s starting to seem like some kind of Greek drama, about the Curse of the House of X, where the children inherit the karma of the fathers.
It seems rational for me to distance myself from the Fall of this House as much as possible, until my partner wakes up from his dream. If he does.
December 26th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
We had a lovely Christmas.. as the stepkids were off with their Mother.
More “fun” is coming, however, when they return and arrive here, expectant for gifts.
I’m beating myself up at the moment, because my 16 year old stepson, who cannot bear to even address me, and will speak over me in my own home as if I do not exist, (and who only comes around here when it is gift giving time) is getting nothing from me (and very little from my husband), compared to my 13 year old step-daughter, who loves to come despite the pressure she receives from her Mother.
Wednesday – do you have any thoughts on how to approach the whole gift situation? On the one hand, I don’t think I’m being “fair”. On the other hand.. I’m just “Dad’s wife”, so who says I have to be?!
December 26th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Elizabeth – how did the “deal ” go?
December 27th, 2009 at 11:49 am
The deal has evolved further. Now I’m not required to make an appearance at all at any occasions celebrating this engagement. Yay!
December 29th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Elizabeth,
That sounds like a good outcome, and one you’re happy with. Glad you found voices of encouragement and understanding here, and presumably elsewhere as well!
Anna,
I do have a whole section in my book Stepmonster on gift-giving in stepfamilies and how overdetermined it can be. One solution to your dilemma might be to bow out of gift-giving entirely and let it be your husband’s deal. Do nothing in that regard, nothing, no buying, no wrapping, no giving, until both your stepkids are older and your stepson gets a grip and learns the deal. Gifts are given in an exchange economy. Life is not a potlatch. You and your husband don’t “owe” his son because your husband divorced his mother, etc. My book goes into the psychology behind why stepchildren don’t give.
Another option is to have a gift available should your stepson give one to you. If he gives, you give. If he doesn’t, you don’t. Plain and simple. It’s the way life works and 16 is pretty late to be learning it. He’s more than ready.
So there are a couple of options. This might be advice that’s too late–I’ve been on vacation. But would love to know how it all turned/turns out.
best,
wednesday
December 30th, 2009 at 10:25 am
It’s a good outcome for me, but I think my partner is not entirely happy with it. He woke up in the night very distressed, and would only say it had something to do with The Kids, and wouldn’t talk about it further.
I realized later that when I remove myself from potential harm’s way, some of The Kids don’t like it, and so they penalize him. That made me realize that all along, the deal has been, “Dad, we’ll be nice to you if you let us beat up on Elizabeth. If not, not.” I’ve had enough of that, and so now he’s worried about retaliation, especially from the newly engaged daughter.
I wonder how common this quid pro quo is.
January 3rd, 2010 at 10:20 pm
Elizabeth – “Dad, we’ll be nice to you if you let us beat up on Elizabeth.” I’ve experienced something similar. Early on in my relationship with my husband, my StepSon had problems (highly fueled by his Mother and her lies) with accepting me on any level. Most of the advice I received was to “take the high road” remember that “I was the adult he was just a kid” and “persevere with being friendly to him despite how badly he treats you, he will come around eventually”… basically… “suck it up”. Well intentioned, but misleading advice, as it lead to a dynamic where StepSon felt he had permission then to take out any anger or frustration about his parent’s divorce on me. As time when on, I became the universal scapegoat for anything that went wrong in his life. Flunked a class at school? Be nasty to Anna. Broke up with a girl? Take it out on Anna. You get the picture. When I took myself out of the firing line, he had to find another scapegoat, as he had never learned to deal with his emotions in a mature way.
Wednesday – thanks so much for that. I have tried to cultivate relationships with my stepkids that are separate from our relationships with my husband. This has worked with my stepdaughter but not my stepson. I think it very much reflects the ages I came into their lives as per your book. (Which I devoured in one sitting and then lent to a friend.. I must get it back!) I really like the idea of giving him a gift if he has one for me. We have still not seen them for “Christmas” but should be picking them up tomorrow. Actually, it will only be my stepdaughter as stepson has already informed husband that he does not intend coming. We live “too far away” from all of his friends. (Only a 10 minute drive from his Mom’s.) I can’t say I’m unhappy about that, as I can now give my stepdaughter her gifts and not have to worry about StepSon.
January 4th, 2010 at 8:50 am
Oh yes – I’ve taken to lying in bed with my laptop and letting my stepboys’ Dad fix breakfast. Bliss.
And spending an extra night at my favourite music festival after my partner and the boys had headed back home was a great reminder of the things and people I chose for myself BEFORE this crazy family came along, and need to actively keep choosing at each step to retain my sanity.
On the present thing, after some nasty, intrusive pre-Christmas questioning about what I gave them last year (for the purpose of demonstrating that I’m not as “good” a step-parent as their mum’s boyfriend), my stepboys got Dadventures this year – an different activity each to do one on one with Dad while I cared for their siblings.
It was very popular. It could be as cheap or expensive as you like. It got me out of the game of who gave biggest, best, fastest, more. It gave them what they really wanted most – time alone with Dad.
This is going to be my gold standard for gift giving from now on.
Oh, and they didn’t get me anything this year, but I’ve decided that gifts to them are like postcards (as is all of stepparenting, for that matter!) – you send it out and don’t necessarily expect to get it back.
Thanks as always, Wednesday!
January 4th, 2010 at 8:27 pm
Anna,
I’m delighted that your stepson is focused on his peers. That is a good sign, and a relief for you I’m sure. Not to mention developmentally appropriate! And nice that you will have reprieve from worrying about the gifting.
Love Stepmum of the Year’s idea of giving Dad Time as an Xmas gift. Not surprised that it was very popular!
I continue to be concerned about Elizabeth’s situation with an adult stepdaughter who cannot let go of her hostility and resentment. Elizabeth, what are you doing for yourself these days? I see your solution of removing yourself as constructive, and perhaps your only option at this point. Please keep us posted.
All best and happy new year with my wishes for plenty of interpersonal peace and prosperity to all readers,
xx wednesday
January 7th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
I think this tip offers some excellent advice. I am a new stepmom (five months in) and I am already finding myself resentful that the world seems to revolve around the kids and kid activities. I have started to say no. I am not as accomodating as I was at first. I have given myself permission to take time for me.
The bottom line is that the kids already have two parents — plus me and their stepdad. How fortunate for me that I am not a primary parent — I am a bonus parent. I will leave the primary parenting to the two people who brought the kids into the world.
I want to support my husband and make things easier on him, but if making things easier for him just means that the burden becomes my own, my resentment will just build. It is not good for any of us if I continue to let that happen.