The Stepmom Wall: A Stepmom's Say

I don't have time to do my own writing anymore. Mainly because I'm spending too much time posting other people's stuff on my facebook wall. After all I am what I put at the top of my blog. A conduit. So I am promoting work that touches me.

Here's a blog I stumbled upon today. I have to admit Matt & I have struggled in this area. I shut my heart down for protection but remain ultimately open emotionally to my biological children, despite what they might do to hurt me. He is the same. There IS a difference in the connection between yourself and another person's child. It is unavoidable. Your child is YOURS. And a stepchild is not. You are only the step parent, even if you are in it 24/7. You remain the other.

As my children get older, I find myself in an almost constant state of reflection regarding my relationship with them and my place/importance in their lives. Having taught middle school for 10 years, I know what a complex and annoying creature an almost-teenager can be. Therefore, it is no surprise to me that there is an awkwardness that hovers over our house these days in our relationship with my stepsons.

We’re not cool anymore, and we sure as heck don’t have the answers they want to hear. It’s all normal.

Still, I know that the things I have been feeling aren’t exactly “normal.” As my own children grow older and begin to do the things that my stepsons were doing when I entered their lives, I am forced to admit that I feel differently about most things. I enjoy things with my children in ways that I never enjoyed with my stepsons. Most stepmoms will face this realization (if they can) with a sense of guilt and horror that they have somehow failed. There is a part of me that does feel like that.

But there’s another part of me that is beginning to understand what my role was never meant to be. The more I come to grips with my life as a mother, the more I understand my life as a stepmother.

We all have some walls that we surround ourselves with in order to guard against disappointment and hurt. If we are lucky, those walls aren’t that big or thick, and we make sure the gate is always open for those we love. I think most stepmoms (including myself) keep the gate locked for our stepchildren. I definitely scale the wall to meet them outside—and I really do love them—but the truth is, I have not let them as close to my heart as my own sons. I just can’t. Their potential to hurt me is so much greater than my own sons.

Funny how that works, huh?

I have had so many people tell me how important it is that I don’t treat my stepsons any differently than my own sons. To the extent that I can, I absolutely do this. Any variations in rules and expectations are mostly due to age. But there is something so false about this premise that I almost get angry when I think about what people are asking me to do.

There are many people in my life that I love. That I have CHOSEN to love. But this love is not unconditional in a way that a mother’s love is. I love my stepsons as much as I could ever love someone else’s kids. But I don’t love them the same way that I love my children. In addition, when you bring a child into the world, your heart is given to them in a way that is virtually impossible to give to another human being. For all of the intense feelings of love that we have for others, there is nothing like what we feel for our children. For some reason though, we expect a “good” stepmom to love her stepchildren the same way she loves her children. As if love is something that we just will ourselves into.

As much as I hate to admit it, some of why I have a stepmom wall is because of my stepsons’ mother. I just can’t let them get close enough to me so that she can use them to hurt me. I just can’t. Maybe this makes me weak, but it is just the truth. And I know it is not fair to them—–but it’s just how it is.

At this point in my life, I’m not sure that The Stepmom Wall is a bad thing. For me, it has allowed me to have a healthier, albeit more distant, relationship with my stepsons. It’s a fact of life for right now and it allows me to be the kind of mother I need to be for my sons. I hope that someday when my stepsons are adults, I will be able to have a more open relationship with them without the fear that BM will use them to hurt me. But for now, the wall stays.

As much as the perception and expectations of stepmoms is a constant source of frustration for me, I think that we all need to be a little bit more patient with the ignorant masses. The truth is, you honestly don’t know what it is like to be a stepmom until you are one. The best we can do is try our hardest and inform those around us about the realities of what we do and what we face.

And for people like me, put it out there for you to read.


http://astepmomssay.wordpress.com/

Advice for 2nd Marriages part 1 - FOTF

Psychologist Bill Meier, with guests Ron Deal, Author of The Smart Step Family and couple Jim & Susan Owens, remarried for over 20 years. The topic is remarriage and how to help children blend in to a new family.

Dr. Meier: What was your experience like when you entered into remarriage? Did you find that it was all hearts & butterflies? (laughter) or did things rapidly change for you?

Jim: Well again you have to understand with our marriage, we had 5 children that were blended instantly. My oldest was 13 and they went down to 5 and she had 2 children that were 2 & 3. And instantly you had little boys and little girls and there is a constant problem area that is lurking out there. I think more than anything the discipline of the children and the step parent syndrome are the things that create the problem. Not to mention there’s another mother and another father out there. When the children would go away for the weekend and come back, we would have to go through a kind of a recycle to start over again, when they were back home.

The 2 little boys, when we divorced, we’d have to drive 2 ½ hour to meet their father to pick them up. We tried several times how to break that up to make it a little bit of fun. We discovered that if both of us didn’t go, it’d always be a situation where one son would be in the front seat, one in the back because we’d have to deprogram them back to our household. Because they would be fighting or angry or upset, there’s a lot of issues.

Suzie: Well the dynamics of living in 2 different houses with completely 2 different personalities is very tough.

Jim: And there would be simple things that we would never think about. If they were going camping or fishing w/their father and we didn’t send the right clothes, the right swimming suit. You know there were a lot of little funny things like that.

Dr. Meier: As they talk you can hear that there’s, all of that complexity brings a level of stress to the marriage relationship. One of the things that is most amazing to realize for most people is that the level of stress that remarried couples face the first 2 years is equal to the level of stress that most people experience the first 2 years after divorce. 3 times higher than the normal level of stress in a biological first marriage home. And so what do they do with that? They have to have good conflict resolution skills, good coping skills, good negotiation skills, because if they don’t the stress builds up and it erodes the marriage.

Jim: It ain’t the Brady Bunch is it?

Meier: No, I like to say the Brady Bunch lied!

Suzie: Big misnomer, that’s not it at all. It was awful.

Now Jim & Susan, I’m guessing with both of you, coming out of the divorce, there were some issues with the exes. How was that process for you?

Susan: Well it’s a very hard adjustment for everyone involved. At the time Jim & I remarried, your happy, while you’re in that dating process, very selfish, very single minded, your not really thinking about all the ripple effects that it has. But then the adjustments are phenomenal. The boys father lost his sons! And we moved 350 miles away from him. On the other hand, the boys lost their father. And it was a very hard process for all of us – and to this day (20 years later) it’s still an adjustment that you really don’t think about at the time. And the girls and their mother. It’s very hard.

Jim: And through the years that we’ve been married, things have gotten better. I don’t know how we decided this, but one of the things we’ve done is we never tried to talk ugly or be negative about the other parent. There were times behind closed doors we’d tear it up, but never in front of the kids. If I come out and really say what I feel about the ex, the son feels like I’m attacking his parent and that creates a wedge between me & my step son. We had issues – the oldest son was 4 when we remarried and he was probably the most difficult for me to blend that relationship. And I think that part of what Ron says in the book is you gotta take time, you can’t rush that, And there are so many little issues like that – discipline, when you’ve been raising your children and you discipline them one way and you blend a family, then you have different issues, different things to do – it’s a constant area that you’ve got to work on and be conscious of. A lot of times we would do something, then go behind closed doors and have to go back and say “I’m sorry”.

Susan: Oh yea there were many times the disagreements you have with children in a christian home, single marriage, you have terrible problems with raising children. It’s a difficult thing. It’s VERY difficult being a step parent. Yea, I can’t tell you how many times we went behind closed doors and I told Jim “I don’t agree with that”. Never did this in front of the children, never – in fact our children are now adults, beautiful children and we still, watch out what we say about their other parents.

Meier: Well I admire you two about that because that is actually quite rare. Ron has experienced that in his work. Many couples can’t put aside that bitterness for the sake of their children. In fact, you have a saying in your book “When two elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers”.

Ron: When the elephants are fighting, they’re not aware of what’s going on with the grass. And unfortunately, the hurt, anger, bitterness, pain of the past, with the ex spouse relationship, becomes a barrier to the new relationships. And here the couple thinks it’s about them. And the truth is, it is about them but it’s also about parenting & step parenting. It is also about dealing between households with an ex spouse. It is all of that wrapped up in to one. Again, most couples intuitively know that there’s going to be some challenges but they don’t really know how to navigate all that complexity. And that’s what gets them in trouble.