The shame of exposure (via Stepsleuth)

Stepsleuth writes one of the most thoughtful, well-informed stepmother blogs around.

I always enjoy her writing and ideas; this post particularly resonated, though, since I’ve become so accustomed to the slow-up-and-down-eyes of first family wives when we are introduced and they realise that the Lovely Man’s Boys are not also my boys.

Accustomed isn’t perhaps the ideal word; nothing could “accustom” me to the unpleasantness of those judgemental, slowly appraising glances.

I wonder if/when it will stop?

I will confess—I love going to B&Bs. I love all the hokey decorations and the faux Victorian stylings. But the one thing I don’t love so much is having to talk to the owners and other guests at breakfast. I prefer my breakfasts quiet—just my husband and me—and (I have to be honest) I really don’t care about chatting it up with people I’ll never see again. But what makes every B&B breakfast ever so much more uncomfortable is everyone’s ine … Read More

via Stepsleuth

Warning signs for stepmothers

Ask a stepmother what advice she’d give to another woman deciding whether to get involved with a man with kids, and the cliché is that she’ll screech:

Run! Run like the wind!

I’ve been tempted to trot this one out couple of times, like when a close friend told me that her new guy had her stay at his house for three days without ever admitting to his full-custody thirteen-year-old daughter that they were dating. And that he referred to this same daughter as “My Special Princess”.

[pukes]

Mostly, though, I resist sounding the fire alarm in these situations. Despite the challenges of stepfamily life, I’m very happy with the Lovely Man, and the Boys certainly keep life interesting.

In any case, we all know what the honeymoon phase of a new relationship feels like; warnings, however justified and well-intended, tend to fall bounce right off the warnee – and generally, rebound to hit the warner schmack! in the face.

Six months in, the warnee may well realise that indeed, it’s not ideal that her partner douses his breakfast cereal in scotch each morning, or has a penchant for wearing garments made from the pelts of stray cats.

Six weeks in, though, when the lust – ahem! – love is still coursing unhindered by pesky reality, funny little details like that get dismissed as merely eccentric, and the warner is written off as simply small-minded/intolerant/jealous.

Nonetheless, here is my list of five things you might want to pay careful attention to as a new/potential stepmother.

Scrape off the love scales and look around.

Look again, harder.

If more than a couple of these are going down, consider keeping your exit strategy dust-free and in good order, because you might need it.

Or at least have a good stepfamily counsellor at the ready.

(Cue Jaws music…)

1. Many months – or more – into the new relationship, things are serious, you’re talking marriage/moving in, but he seems ultra-resistant to the idea of you meeting his kids.

Actually, he seems terrified. He may have made and broken a series of promises with excuses like:

We’ll just wait until the kids graduate kindergarten/high school/college/finally get all their wisdom teeth through/finish learning to fly.

You’ve got to wonder, is he afraid you’ll morph into a fairytale wicked stepmother? Does he feel like he doesn’t truly deserve to have a partner or be happy? What’s really happening here?

There’s no real consensus about the appropriate time to introduce a new partner, except that it probably shouldn’t be before you are seriously committed to each other and have spent enough months together to genuinely know what being committed to each other means, the bads as well as the goods.

For many men, though, there is so much fear of and for their kids rolled up in the “all-important” introduction that they leave the woman they say they want to build a life with feeling like a dirty little secret – for many months or even years. Not a good look.

2. On the other hand, be wary if he wants you to instantly meet the kids.

(Especially if there’s talk of babysitting! Does this guy want a wife/mother replacement or a partner?)

Flattering as it may seem, your trouble-on-two-legs sirens should be blaring if he talks in any way that implies you will be a “new Mummy” to his children, or make up to them for alleged poor mothering by his ex.

Why? Because anyone who thinks their child’s biological parent can be replaced so seamlessly is not only deluded, but almost certain to expect that you’ll love his kids “like your own”.

Holy Recipe for Misery and Disaster, Batman!

3. A related concern would be where you’ve met the kids, maybe even moved in and he wants you to take charge of discipline.

Orangutans at the local zoo could tell you this isn’t going to work, but it’s incredible how many women launch in, determined to shine the Holy Light of Reasonable Boundaries on an out-of-control, rule-free-zone stepfamily.

As Wednesday Martin says in Stepmonster, this is a nothing but a cop-out. In theory, he wants his kids to benefit from better discipline but only if he doesn’t have to be the bad guy. He’s sacrificing your chance of a good relationship with the kids to maintain his own parenting comfort zone.

And worst of all? When you try to implement the agreed consequences, he’ll almost certainly trot out the sensational climax of the Daddy Rocks Popularity Revue by over-ruling your efforts because you’re being “way too tough” on his little darlings.

4. Another valid basis for a freak-out is if you notice that when his ex says “jump!”, your bloke says “how high?” (or, even worse, “off what?”)

Sometimes it’s because he’s desperate to keep the peace; more often, I suspect, it’s because whatever his legal status, his emotional divorce is incomplete. Sure, he might be keen to start again, but he hasn’t really left his marriage behind – guilt, unprocessed sorrow and unacknowledged loss tangle together, tying him emotionally to his ex.

Not precisely what you signed up for, although it may not be the end of the world.

If it doesn’t wind up quickly, though, you risk blinking out of the love haze to find that your relationship is a hotbed of emotional adultery, with all the consequences that entails for intimacy, for trust, financially and in a million other ways.

5. Finally, if the man you’re seeing seems to want his kids’ or ex-wife’s seal of approval on his decision to date you, be very, VERY afraid.

For instance, if his teenage daughter boasts about having had power of veto over his past girlfriends, or a four-year-old seems to be calling the shots on how long you are “allowed” stay out at dinner….

Or if he tells you his ex has a “No skanks around the kids” policy (a verbatim quote from a separated mum I know – quelle horreur!) and insists on popping you into the hot seat to face twenty [thousand] questions from her on what was meant to be your fourth or even your fourteenth date….

Run! Run like the wind!

Ruuuuuuuunnn – while you still can!

What other warning signs should a new stepmother/woman dating a man with kids keep in mind?

Meditations on conflict

A recent peek into my blog stats showed up this search string:

“killer care bear”

And this:

“vicious care bear”

And my favourite:

“care bears with guns”

As a mediator, I know that a “care bear” conflict style (often called a “teddy bear” conflict style) is more sinister and dangerous than the pastel-fluffy saccharine images the phrase conjures up would suggest.

(Kind of like My Little Pony: Reign of Buttercup Sprinkles, then.)

Seriously, though, being a typical stepfamily care bear – not speaking up, always putting the kids first, minimising your own needs – may have a short-term payoff in terms of not having to engage in confronting conflict, but it comes at an enormous price in terms of withdrawal, rumination and ultimately, stepmother depression.

I don’t know what the research says (or even if there is any), but it’s easy to speculate that a large proportion of stepfamily breakdowns could well be attributable to unmanaged depression. It’s hard to invest in your relationship when you’re depressed, and the normal emotional rough-and-tumble of stepfamily life quickly becomes overwhelming when your emotional resources are depleted.

By their very nature (and not because your family is a failure), stepfamilies are often rife with family conflict. It’s normal, especially over the first two to five years.

But it’s worth paying special attention to how you “do” conflict in order to learn strategies for managing conflict in your family.

For instance, you could use a self-assessment tool to investigate whether you have a care bear/teddy bear conflict style.

If you do, I strongly recommend Self-Assertion For Women by Pamela E. Butler. It’s available inexpensively on Amazon and provides insights that are potentially quite life-changing.

For instance, did you know that there are four main types of assertive behaviour (expressing positive feelings, expressing negative feeling, setting limits and taking self-initiation action) and that you may struggle with some areas but be appropriately assertive in others?

Whether this has anything to do with an apparent reader obsession with plush toys with fangs, I can’t say.

* * * * * * * * *

Less chirpily, my blogs stats also dredged up this search:

“when stepkids blackmail stepmum”

Hmmm. Saints preserve us.

* * * * * * * * *

As well as:

“what is mean stepmother’s day“

If that’s a question, I sure don’t have an answer!

* * * * * * * * *

Finally, though, there was this:

“i am lucky to have my stepmom”

[Smiles]

Umm, the kids don’t come first (from Skepticlawyer)

A snippet from a fascinating, stepfamily-relevant new post over at Skepticlawyer:

An oft-repeated mantra, everywhere from law courts to dating agencies, is that ‘children come first’. No-one ever provides any argument to back this assertion, and attempts (by me) to dig up social science research supporting the argument that privileging children’s needs over the needs of their adult parents, their teachers (or anyone else) is good for either (a) those children’s long term welfare or (b) good for anyone else have proven fruitless. This I find perplexing, and I’d be very interested to see what people think of the oft-invoked ‘in the best interests of the children’ (the standard family court line) or ‘my kids come first’ (spattered all over people’s online dating profiles).

See (contrarian that I am), I suspect it’s not true. Not only do I suspect it’s not true, but I also think it’s fed into a culture of child privileging that has led to the great bulk of young people — at least in developed countries — displaying the most extraordinary sense of entitlement. My feminist friends call this kind of thing ‘privilege’, and while the two concepts are similar, I’m not sure they’re the same. Most people, I suspect, don’t have any privilege by virtue of what they are. They have to have it conferred on them, and to my jaundiced eye, it seems that conferral is done, by and large, when they are children. Their needs are placed above the needs of their parents, their teachers and wider society. And then their sense of entitlement blows up in everyone’s faces.

…..

Ultimately I think this issue is really about permissive parenting and divorce guilt, something we stepfamily types tend to be all-too-familiar with.

Head over for the rest of the article; the lively comments are also well worth a read.

More on Marrying the Wrong Person (via Marriage Gems)

Following on from my post yesterday Do you ever think your partner is Mr Wrong? is Lori Lowe’s sequel article More on Marrying the Wrong Person.

Lori’s Marriage Gems blog is a fabulous resource, and a timely reminder for stepmothers about the importance of insisting on investing in our marriage/relationship instead of throwing ourselves headfirst into wrangling the stepkids or fighting the ex-wife wars at its expense.

After all, we made this commitment primarily to our partners, and while we may have readily signed up for all the “extras” stepfamily life entails, it’s important not to get so caught up by the free set of steak knives that we leave the George Foreman Miracle Marvel Magic Grill Centre* to forlornly gather dust in a corner cupboard.

Or something like that…

*Product may be imaginary and may not be available, instore or online, now or ever.

“I have no way of knowing whether or not you married the wrong person. But I do know that if you treat the wrong person like the right person, you could well end up having married the right person after all. It is far more important to be the right kind of person than it is to marry the right person.” — author and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar This quote summarizes the discussion we’ve been having about marrying the wrong person. My post last … Read More

via Marriage Gems

Do you ever think your partner is Mr Wrong?

Sorry – random, I know. Yes, and maybe even a tiny bit sexist.

Not at all fair comment on the Lovely Man, either.

Anyway, Lori Lowe’s fabulous article We All Married the Wrong Person on her blog Marriage Gems is hugely worth a read if you’ve ever wondered if your partner is “Mr Not Right For Me”.

And seriously, in a stepfamily situation complete with rampant stress and over-the-phone expletives and mashed potato flying about at mealtimes, who hasn’t?

Lori suggests that marrying/partnering with the right person is actually a question of commitment and not of finding the mythical “perfect match”.

Stepfamilies understand commitment in a uniquely powerful way, I think.

Certainly, one of the most profoundly positive aspects of life in a stepfamily is the enormous reserve of commitment so many of us find in ourselves and our partners; commitment to caring for and nurturing children not our own, to sticking with our partners in the face of enormous challenges from kids and exes, to educating and equipping ourselves for stepfamily life.

Sometimes, that commitment may need a slight refocus – an important part of your commitment to your stepfamily should include a commitment to nurturing yourself, lest you turn into a Disappearing Woman.

How does your commitment show in your stepfamily?

How can you commit to caring for yourself better?

Speak Up Week Challenge – first check-in

The Speak Up Week challenge continues.

Our last few days with the Boys were spent taking them interstate to visit the Lovely Man’s extended family. I find travelling with the kids a real “hot button” time when the biological force field is more in evidence than usual, and my outsider status tends to throb like a particularly bad bruise.

During our time away, I…

- expressed to the Lovely Man that I preferred Boy C not share the bedroom he and I had when we all stayed with relatives, given there was space for him to sleep comfortably elsewhere;

- explained how disposable I feel in the family when we’re all out somewhere and the Lovely Man and boys just cruise off without me while I’m in the bathroom, leaving me looking around for them in a panic; and

- spent a happy morning alone trawling the markets for vintage clothes while the Boys and the Lovely Man browsed Lego stalls, instead of tagging along because I “should” and feeling irritated the whole time.

The sense of freedom this honesty brings is wonderful. Yes, there’s a degree of fronting up for potential conflict in the process of speaking out, and that’s scary, but it’s so much less burdening than the internal conflicts that result from pasting on a smile and stewing inside.

What kinds of things do you try to speak up about?

Quote for the Day: Guilt

“Guilt is [a] menacing emotion [in remarriage and stepfamily life]. Whether it relates to decisions you made or circumstances your children have been forced to endure through no fault of your own, guilt is debilitating if we allow it to be.

For example, parents who think their children “have suffered enough” frequently loosen their discipline and lower their expectations for proper behaviour. This simply teaches children that acting mad, depressed, or hurt gives them license to get their way.

While we must be sensitive to children’s emotions, we should not fall victim to them. Boundaries need to be firm and expectations maintained.”

From The Smart Step-Family by Ron L. Deal, 2006 edition, pp. 178-179.* (Paragraphs and emphasis mine.)

Probably there’s not a stepmother alive who hasn’t seen parental guilt acted out in her stepfamily. The ramifications of guilt can be very toxic and spread outwards from the person feeling guilty in many directions.

It’s easy to assume that the biological parent in the stepfamily is the one with an exclusive on guilty behaviour, but I am noticing more and more that I routinely “put up” with situations that are unacceptable to me without flagging that my boundaries have been breached because I feel guilty about “rocking the boat”, or as though my comfort level is less important than that of others in the family.

Then, of course, I also get to feel guilty when those unexpressed boundaries “leak out” in a way that is less than optimal. So I’m getting TWICE the value on my guilty feelings…. tops!

I know that the ultimate solution is to learn to express my boundaries clearly and healthily; it’s a slow process, though, and one that is only just beginning.

How does guilt impact on your stepfamily?

* I love this book, and also own the companion book The Smart Stepmom, reviewed here at The Stepmom’s Tool Box. Ron Deal is incredibly insightful about stepfamilies and his books are full of practical advice. Please be aware, though, that his books are firmly faith-based. I’m an agnostic and find the Biblical emphasis manageable; this might be different for other non-religious or non-Christian people.

Disengaging

Disengaging is not a new concept in step-land.

But it was new to me when I first came across some articles a few months back.

At that time, I was trying trying trying to get the Lovely Man’s kids, and especially Boy A, to like me.

There were thoughtful little gifts, special efforts to make their favourite foods, questions about their interests and opinions.

Boy B was mostly ok, though he was wary and occasionally rejecting. The day I overheard him tell Boy A that he hated me I went into our bedroom and cried.

Boy C was, as ever, fun and funny to be around, offering me a level of mostly unconditional trust and pleasure at our friendship that felt like it was all that was getting me through.

Boy A, though, was really letting rip. Everything I did was stupid, he felt free to criticise my appearance, my cooking, my family. The sighs of disdain rang out and the eyes rolled and his gaze and ears were always averted from me. He actively sought to exclude me and tried to build alliances with the Lovely Man against me.

My poor sister used to patiently hear out my venting and say:

B, you’ve got to stop trying so hard! Just ignore him if he’s being nasty.

That was her approach with her own (heavily alienated) stepdaughter, and she found there was less pressure on them both.

But me? I Wasn’t Giving Up.

But then, after a particularly awful visit, I came across the disengaging concept.

Here’s the classic piece about The Disengaged Stepparent.

And Help! My Wife is Disengaged, an article aimed at men with frustrated stepparent partners.

And finally, Disengaging Made Easy.

(A lie, I’m afraid. It’s not actually easy. But it’s easier than the alternative!)

I didn’t follow the suggestions exactly.

I haven’t refused to do laundry, or made any big announcements. I will if I need to, though.

Here’s what I now do differently:

I’ve mostly given up cooking for the Boys.

It was causing me way too much grief to have my nice meals rudely rejected, so mostly I allow the Lovely Man make the dinners. If I do cook, it’s something their Dad makes that they’ve had a million times before, or a dessert that they’ve eaten in the past and liked. School lunches, when I make them, are exactly what they had the previous day.

The best thing? I’m not giving anyone a hook to hang their loyalty issues or desire to reject me on.

I now almost never buy little treats or presents for the Boys.

I liked doing it, but I didn’t like being expected to do it or not being thanked, so I stopped.

If, for instance, I decide to go to the fancy deli to buy Boy A’s favourite gourmet jam so he has an extra breakfast option, I don’t mention it, or I let him think the Lovely Man bought it.

It’s not that I don’t want to do nice things for the Boys – I do – it’s that I don’t want the stress of being unhappy with the way they choose to react, or to add to the “pity spoiling” they already get from other family members.

Instead, I aim to be completely present in the time I spend with them, whether that’s wrestling on the floor or helping with their homework.

I play with Boys B and C and hang out when and as much as I feel like.

Generally, we have a play session each day, but if I feel like staying in my bedroom with a book, then I do it without feeling guilty.

And because I’m actually enjoying the time I spend with the younger Boys rather than forcing it, we have more fun. They beg me to come and play now.

I no longer try to include Boy A. He’d be welcome if he wanted to join in, but he never does and I don’t mind at all.

I try to do what I say I will rather than “give in” to be popular.

So last visit I told the Boys they could choose a treat for two days of smooth morning school runs. If both mornings hadn’t ended being smooth, they would not have gotten their treat.

I tell Boy C exactly what time I will read until in the evenings, and it is his job to be in his PJs and in bed with clean teeth before that time. The longer he takes getting ready, the shorter his reading time. I don’t give in to cries of “just a few more minutes!”

Because I said I wouldn’t, that’s why. And I want them to know that I can’t be swayed by begging, pouting or bad behaviour.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Ironically, I’m both happier in myself and more popular with the Boys as a result of my decision to disengage.

There are different approaches to disengaging as a stepparent. Depending on the situation, it may not need to be full-scale, on-strike, you’re-hitchhiking-to-school revolution. But I bet there’s a few things in almost every stepmother’s life that might benefit from a strategic disengagement.

What do you disengage from in your stepfamily?

What could you disengage from?

The Unnegotiables

Boy A once described something as “unnegotiable” – I’ve never forgotten the clumsy word.

A brilliant post from Urban Stepmom got me thinking about what is “unnegotiable” for me.

In the past, I’ve tended to put up and shut up a lot, endeavouring to silently tolerate situations that leave me grinding my teeth.

It’s not that I’m planning to institute a Reign of Terror, but there are certainly aspects of our stepfamily life that give me so much stress or plain niggling annoyance that I need to try to change them.

In the end, gritting my teeth and trying to endure just causes a kind of overflow effect, where the pent-up stress makes me less able to handle other stresses that wouldn’t normally rock me.

The little things often seem to create more frustration that the Big Bad Majorly Ugly Issues.

I’ve always taken the view that I can’t make changes happen by myself; without the Lovely Man on board nothing will be different. Some of these I’ve half-heartedly tackled in the past, been met with assurances that things will change and then watched, frustrated, as the same old song kept on a-playin’.

Maybe it’s a question of really speaking clearly and firmly about my feelings, negotiating solutions and then following through with determination.

In a stepfamily don’t ask, don’t get sometimes translates to don’t insist, don’t get.

One thing I’ve learned is that in selected matters that are REALLY important to you, you can’t afford for your concerns to represent the path of least resistance, or the extended family members who don’t mind recruiting Nasty or Whingy to get their way will automatically prevail.

After all, if I say I really want something, but back down from insisting, the Boys or their Mum’s contrary wishes will always bulldoze through, leaving me waving my tiny garden trowel and squeaking But!.. But!.. in their wake.

So here are some matters I’m going to aim to have formally added to the Family Unnegotiable List over the next few months.

No kids in my ensuite bathroom.

The Lovely Man recently commented that if we were to do a planned remodel where we move the weirdly-sited back toilet into the main bathroom and turn the extra space into a walk-in pantry, we would need to be flexible about letting the Boys use the ensuite if another kid was already in the main bathroom.

If that’s the deal, I’d rather keep my cooking appliances in their current unreachable ten foot high storage cupboards and retain my ensuite sanctuary.

After all, we have another bathroom that the Boys can use in the studio.

Our ensuite is the only place I have in the entire house guaranteed kid free. Otherwise known as The Sanity Room.

Sanity and wee on the floor are mutually incompatible, in my view.

No toys in the loungeroom

Our loungeroom is basically a wide hallway. I’ve tried asking the Lovely Man to encourage the kids to keep toys out of the walkway. I’ve even corralled toys onto one rug so we can transit the loungeroom without clocking up painful Kid Recreational Equipment Injuries.

No matter what I do, the lounge instantly becomes an obstacle course of Lego, remote-controlled vehicles of various descriptions, comics and general junk the moment the kids arrive in our city. I can’t handle the complete encroachment of kid chaos any more.

From next visit, there will be a designated playroom set up near the kitchen.

(Oh, and please don’t tell me That’s just living with kids. We are talking about domestic crazy of Hurricane In ToyWorld proportions here, not just normal kid mess. I have the pictures to prove it.)

Pleases and Thankyous – every time!

Self-explanatory… I don’t feel good about giving or doing for the Boys unless they Use Their Manners.

They’re getting a lot better already – at the instigation of the Lovely Man, impolite requests and answers are met with Pardon? Pardon?

I’m sure it’s violently irritating to them. But it’s also highly, highly effective.

Effective is good.

Kids who don’t answer when offered food/asked for their flavour preference/their opinion don’t get what’s on offer/don’t get consulted further.

I am not going to stand begging them to pick from raspberry or chocolate like they are doing me a favour.

Currently they know that the Lovely Man will make sure he persists until they eventually decide to pay attention.

This visit, they’re going to learn that if they’re not on the ball by my second inquiry, the opportunity to get whatever it is will just fade away.

What’s on your “Unnegotiables” wish list? Or what would you like to put on there if you could?