My Teddy Bear aka Stepmom Bible

I am so engrossed into the Stepmonster book by Wednesday Martin, that I have had little time to reflect my thoughts here. I'd like to pull a few of the quotes from the book that really hit home with me - though that may be something hard to do because the whole book vibrates everything I have felt and dealt with to some degree or another. Of course, I'll reflect on the thoughts and feelings as I read through as well...

I referred this book in my past post as my teddy bear... Buckeye Bonusmom on Facebook commented on how many stepmoms refer this book as their bible. Ya, that sums it up right about there... I so need to purchase this book for my little comfort blanket.

In the introduction, Wednesday says this:

"And I had no idea. Not because everything was fine - from the very first moment, things hadn't been fine exactly - but because I had my head placed firmly in the sand. I wanted this thing to work. I wanted a wedding and a happy ending, and I was  going to ignore everything and anything I had to in order to make it happen."

For me personally, I don't think I even really thought about the "stepmom syndrome" - the bad talk of stepmoms, and all that goes along with it, and why and the crappy fairy tales of evil stepmoms and how much of a role that has on people's thinking towards stepmoms - now those fairy tales are like crazy tales for me and demeaning and I don't want them in our household.

I am not sure if I have even said it before, but one of our biggest problems was is that we just didn't have the knowledge of the tools necessary in blending our stepfamily together - like it would just maybe all work out, but that was far from the truth and I knew it early on.

Another quote from the introduction:

"I was nice; I was fun; I was young(ish). Step-hell was for stepmonsters, and I wasn't going there. Until I was."

 That pretty much sums it up.

Wednesday goes onto say about how she wrote "this book about women with stepchildren, for women with stepchildren, because being a woman with stepchildren is not easy." She notes "E. Mavis Hetherington, Ph.D,, psychologist and author of the landmark, three-decade Virginia Longitudinal Study of 1400 families that divorced and remarried, notes that whereas children frequently come to appreciate having a stepfather - particularly if he brings in income, provides companionship to Mom, and proves to be a friend to the child - "the situation with stepmothers is more difficult and stepchild resentment is more intense." "And this state of affairs is more ore less unavoidable. As Hetherington writes, "even those [women] who would like to be less involved [in running the family] rarely have the chance. They are often expected to be nurturers to already difficult and suspicious children [and] to impose some kind of order on the household, which is angrily and bitterly resented by many stepchildren." Heatherington found "a real demonizing of the stepmother" in situations where the husband did not support his wife's efforts to parent and discipline, and where the husband's ex treated her as a rival and was highly involved in the children's lives and their father's household."

Now, I am not here to berate and belittle my DH. Our journey like many others has been very hard for several reasons. I am not saying I am perfect, I am not pointing blame - though all of us contributed to how it started, where it went, and where we are at now. We are moving forward and we are learning and that is what is most important. I am sharing my thoughts here because I want to be able to reach out to others who are struggling, who need a lift and realize that they are very normal for the feelings they have and are going through. There was a time where I was shocked even at the feelings I was having in the midst of my stepmotherhood. It was so not me, at the same time I felt like my stepmotherhood was tainting who I was and who I stood for and what I wanted to be. So please keep that in mind when I share some thoughts here. I love my DH dearly, and I love my family dearly and if I didn't I don't know how I could remotely survive the hell that stepmoms go through. So I press forward.

I never wanted to be the one that disciplined my SS, rather I wanted to be the one that was the back-up for DH in these matters. Not only did it not every fair well with SS, and why should it?  It was one of the stepping stones to a rocky start of our stepfamily blending and any kind of bond that I might have with SS. Of course, his mom didn't help with those matters either. In the very beginning, I was trying to find my niche - but was always unable to, I was isolated, I was not part of the family - though I tried, it was like no big deal to DH because in his eyes I was simply a bonus mom, but in SS's eyes now that we were married I was the intruder. His behavior was bad, and bad towards me, but no one ever stuck up for me except me. We are all seeing the effects of this through the years and down the road - resentment on everyone's part, the continued behavioral issues etc. Oh but then there is BM who wants us to not have any kind of relationship with SS and does everything in her power to make it miserable for us to deal with SS, to have any kind of bond with him. Revving him up for things that she says will happen in our household, which are totally unrealistic, and when they don't happen the glass is half-empty always. When things are good here, and he goes home and shares that, she suddenly calls on us and acts like something terrible happened and she has to send him to his therapist - making it seem like there is something wrong with him. When things are good here, the loyalty bind comes into play and he turns around and tells things that are not so... making us/me look bad. I stopped altogether buying him clothing for here unless it was for church because he flat-out refused to wear anything we/I bought him. Again, a loyalty thing with his mom... Yet others outside the box judge me/us and think that we are not providing, that he is suffering from not getting things. Oh he is getting plenty, from us and from his mom, though I wish the CS we send to her, we have a say in how that is spent on SS. And now I am getting side-tracked here. That is easy to do when there is SO much.

"But the stepmonster, it seems, is a uniquely female hybrid. She is easy to hate; she is pervasive in the culture (including our collective unconscious); and we are petrified of becoming her. Often we turn ourselves inside out to avoid it or berate ourselves for having feelings that strike us as "stepmonsterish." It is no shock, then, that several studies find that stepmothers have the most problematic role in the "family" and experience significant adjustment difficulties."

"Yet stepfamily life, remarriage with children - whatever you want to call it - has been largely viewed through the prism of its repercussions and emotional effects on the children. Books on the subject tell women how their stepchildren feel, what their stepchildren need and want, and how they can help their stepchildren to adjust to and accept their father's remarriage." This is tremendously helpful - it can only improve matters to know where his kids are coming from and to have confirmation that it is all more or less normal. But where, we are likely to wonder at some point is the stuff about stepmothers and how we feel? That is more difficult to find. And friends, however well-intentioned and sympathetic, aren't always a lot of help either. None of mine had stepkids, for example, and so, like the how-tos I finally picked up when the going got rough, they tended to advise things that felt maddeningly child-centric and unreasonable - even impossible. How for example, could I possibly be expected to always think about the kids when they weren't mine and their mere presence sometimes seemed enough to tear my relationship apart? ...." 

I married in with no children of my own, remarried myself, and after having 5 miscarriages in my previous marriage I had little hope of having any of my own. My relationship before marriage with my SS was fantastic, after marriage I became the intruder and was misery. Eventually, I became physically ill right before each time he would come because every weekend we had him was just that - miserable. Well, a month after we married, my Dr. told me if we wanted to try and have children, now would be the time to try otherwise one of my ovaries would be taken out - as it suffered much scar tissue from having several surgeries. We were blessed to be expecting right away, though it followed with bedrest the last 6 months of pregnancy, which did not help with any possible bonding with SS. The bad feelings, resentment... I hated feeling it and I tried numerous times to work through it just for it to slap me back in the face over and over and over again. My support circle was nothing, until I came across some friends online which was a Godsend to me and they are my best friends, they saved me from the dark cloud that was constant overhead, they helped me realize that I was not alone, that the feelings I felt were much of the same feelings they were going through.

I was judged by many when I wanted to get a family portrait done with SS in it and without SS in it. It was one of those feelings that seemed to fall under the stepmonsterish feelings. I wanted him to be a part of the family, but I always felt far from what I wanted. For years, all I ever wanted was to be a mother, a mom and now I was - to MY child, so I wanted a family picture with MY child because I had a BOND with MY child. But of course, maybe you're now reading this and thinking the same thing so many others felt and probably still think that I was selfish and rude toward SS. I can't tell you how hard it was for me to go through all the feelings I felt during that time. It was hell though.

Oh I once was asked by a family member why I didn't always put SS's name on the birthday cards... I don't really have an solid answer to that question. Sometimes I simply didn't think about it to tell you the truth, other times writing his name was just simply hard for me to do with everything that tacked onto his name. I know... don't say it - I've heard it a thousand times and I have told myself a thousand times "I am the adult. Be the adult." Ya okay, I'd like YOU to go through all that I have gone through, all that we have gone through and then you come to me and tell me how that feels when people say that to you. You kind of just lose yourself in all the drama.

That was the first time and the last time that I had a professional portrait done of just our family. I know, does that just provoke bad feelings in you when I say that too? Because SS IS a part of the family or should be or I should look at it that way... I have always included him, always tried to include him in everything. He on the other hand doesn't always feel inclined to be a part of it because he is still stuck in the mode of wanting to just be with dad... and again who could blame him? Oh but try having him try and tear you and his dad apart, in hopes that his mom and his dad will get back together. That would never happen, even if we were torn apart. It has been years since they separated, both is mom and dad are remarried - but children, no matter their age have the downfall of not being able to choose whether their parents divorce or not. They get the brunt of it all... and of course he is going to want the two people he loves the most to be together... So, the cycle continues and feelings from one direction to another continues and we move forward.

The book explores the "issue of how children can threaten and stress a marriage..." It goes onto say "...that stepchildren have incredibly power to break the remarriage up. They may intentionally create divisiveness between spouses and siblings and set parent against steparent. They also may pass along unkind messages or invite interference from member of the other household, creating conflict and tremendous resentment."

 "Acknowledging the simple fact that stepchildren can and do affect a remarriage, sometimes for the worse- that they are, if you will, actors as well as acted upon - can help us better understand what we might call "stepmother reality" Wednesday goes onto to say: "I believe that we tend to sweep the stepmother's difficulties under the rug because they strike us as unseemly. Her pain, struggles, and failures set us on edge, make us want to turn away, because they smack of guilt. A stepmother's suffering is, more than anything else, an indictment - of her. Ad admission not so much that she is falling short as that she is flawed. Thinking we understand it, we decide there is nothing more to learn - "Anna's stepmother is awful!" "If the stepmom is nice, everything will be fine; if there are problems, it's because she's not trying hard enough" - and so we are left to comprehending very little. Disliking stepmothers is easy; suspecting them is more or less automatic. Caring about stepmothers, expressing concern about what they're going through, considering their realty at any length - all this requires a leap of faith."

All I have ever asked of anyone who just doesn't get it, who has judged, who has never bothered to ask but talks behind my back is to ASK. Simply care and ask why we do what we do, why I have felt this way or that way, why... You have NO idea what we've been through unless you ask, you think you could do it better? Trying stepping in my reality. Just try.

I feel like the judgements are a dark cloud from others hanging over my head, diminishing my capabilities in their eyes, diminishing my judgement in their eyes, and always questioning. Perhaps in many eyes I am just not true like they thought I was, like I was before I became a stepmother. It's like even though I haven't done anything to you, it still affects you personally, like I have walked all over you because of what I have gone through.

Oh I can totally relate to this:

 "...our bonds to our biological and adopted children are different - stronger - than those to our stepchildren."

 Someone asked me once why do I even put "step" in front of child. Because he is, because the bond is different, because he doesn't live with us, because the time he is here it is for a limited amount of time, and the majority of that time is tension related... I could go on and on, but I won't.

"It is time, then, for radical reconsideration of what we might realistically expect women with stepchildren to feel, think, and accomplish. For example, we cannot always make our husbands' children love or even like us. Sometimes the feeling may be mutual, and it is time to strip away the veil of distorting sentiment about "female nature" and "the inherent openness of children toward all good women" that have thus far compelled and confounded us on this topic."

AMEN!