Thursday, May 6, 2010

Happy Mother's Day.

According to https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary The official definition of "mother" is this:
Pronunciation: \ˈmə-thər\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English moder, from Old English mōdor; akin to Old High German muoter mother, Latin mater, Greek mētēr, Sanskrit mātṛ
Date: before 12th century
1 a : a female parent b (1) : a woman in authority; specifically : the superior of a religious community of women (2) : an old or elderly woman
2 : source, origin
3 : maternal tenderness or affection
4 [short for motherfucker] sometimes vulgar : motherfucker
5 : something that is an extreme or ultimate example of its kind especially in terms of scale


Interesting to note it says nothing about giving birth, carrying a child, conception, none of that. Interesting.

(Thanks to Stepmama mia for this information)

I am hopping mad right now!  I just had a run in with the ex.  Words were exchanged and I could just scream!  Here's the story:

My DH decided that the kids could walk to school on their own (they are 7,9 and we live 5 houses from the school).  I generally meet the BM at school so I wrote a quick email stating that I would drop the youngest to her at her home (we have shared custody but she baby-sits them for the day when DH is working since she refuses to get a job).  I hear nothing from her my DH hears nothing from her and then this morning there is a nasty email- sent to me only- saying she does not agree with the girls walking and that she will be at my door at 8:00 in the morning.  I responded that I would take the kids to school until she had a chance to talk to their Father. 

So she shows up at the door all pissy and I tell the kids to go upstair and we have words.  I tell her she needs to discuss things with the children's Father, NOT ME.  Things digress from there.  She tells me I don't repsect her (and to be honest I really do not...I do respect that she is their Mother and they love her but I do not respect her as a person AT ALL!).  I tell her she treats me like shit.  I tell her I do not want to deal with her at all and she tells me GOOD!  She says I over step my boundries (pls note she thinks my being good to the kids is over stepping and that I am not in a parenting role).  She tells me shared custody has been bad for the kids and I tell her it has been wonderful for the kids.  She goes on to say that I bad mouth her to the kids...this is NOT true.  When we do talk about her if the kids are in the house we speak in French (the kids can't understand or speak the language) and we use a "code" name for her not her real name.  I tell her not to come to my home uninvited that neither my DH nor I show up at her door uninvited and that she should not come to ours, it is inappropriate. 

I wish I never had to deal with that heinous bitch!  I know she wishes the same and I am sure with the same sentiment. 

I have tried and tried and tried some more...I generally try to get along but today I just lost it AGAIN! 

So my question is this...how do I turn the corner (AGAIN) from absolutely HATING this woman to being able to stomach her in the least?  And do I even bother to try?

As strange as it seems clothes and the return of them becomes a bone of contention for blended families. 

In my situation I have no issue with sending over "our" clothes to the BioMom's house but she refuses to use them and on the flip side she refuses to send any outerwear over with the kids so we end up with a lot of double purchases and money wasted.  I swear if she could send them naked she would.  Now I will point out that we (my household) send over $1450 per month and the kids live with us %50 of the time.  When we ask for rainboots,raincoats,sneakers etc to be sent over we are ignored and forced to pay a second time for the same thing.  Once with child support and once with what is left for our household.  Now I would not take issue with this if we were filthy rich but with the amount we pay out we are left struggling every month.  Should the outerwear not be shared especially with the amount of support my husband pays?

Another pet peeve is that the BioMom will not wash any of "our" clothing that the children wear to her home at custody exchange (we exchange custody every Friday).  This leads to stained smelly clothing being returned to us in a garbage bag when the kids come home from her house (a week later).  She even goes so far as to send stained underwear (including underwear that has been peed in due to a bathroom accident) back without washing it.  Am I wrong to expect more of a grown person?

So what has been my method of dealing?  Well I DO wash "her" clothes and then I put them back on the kids on Friday mornings and send them back to her home wearing them.  Now this being said our two girls now like to pick their own clothes and do not always want to wear what they came in (I should add that she sends them looking like hobos most of the time in ill fitting clothes...she saves the nice clothes bought with child support for when they are at her home) so I make no issue with them wearing something of "ours" on Friday's if they wish.  I then send "her" clean clothes back that evening. 

So now to the terms "ours","hers" and the question "who's clothes are they anyway".  They are not my clothes, they don't fit, nor are they my husband's clothes, he does not look very good in a dress and even though he has a great bod he would look disgusting in a boys size 5 t-shirt.  I believe they are the children's clothing and as such should be treated with respect, washed and sent back to the children's other home clean and ready to be worn.  It does not matter to me that I did not buy the clothing, it belongs to the kids and therefore I treat it as such. 

I would say the biggest pet peeve for me here is that something so petty and ridiculous as fighting over "who's clothes" is now something I can write an entire blog about. 

I would love to hear about your experiences in this area...is it just me or are there more stepMom's out there wondering when they stopped fighting the good fight and started fighting the "war of the clothes"??

As seen in StepMother magize

written by Wednesday Martin

As Seen in the September 2009 Issue of StepMother Magazine.

“I Wish
His Kids
Weren’t
Coming…”

What Resentment Means:


By Wednesday Martin, Ph.D.

In the course of researching my book Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel,
and Act the Way We Do, I was reminded time and again that there are a handful of emotions that are just
too taboo for those of us married to men with kids to admit having. Often an interview with one of my
subjects would have to go on for 30 or 45 minutes before the woman speaking with me felt she could
express feelings she feared I might judge her for having. More than once, I had to pave the way to
disclosure by going first: "There were days I was so angry at my husband and his daughter for shutting
me out that I wanted to leave." After that, the floodgates opened: women with stepkids are hungry for
understanding and compassion, particularly when it comes to the Feelings That Dare Not Speak Their
Names. But they are also wary: the confessions I heard were invariably prefaced with a plea for
understanding, along the lines of, "You have to understand, I really am a nice person. I'm the type who
helps blind people cross the street, but my stepdaughter..." or "I can make friends with a person in line at
the grocery store, I swear I am that friendly. But with my stepkids..."

Jealousy is one of the biggest taboo emotions--there's nothing uglier, it seems, or more shameful to us,
than embodying the cliché of the green eyed stepmonster. Unless it's being a petty, resentful stepwitch.
"My stepmother resents us spending any time with our dad," one young woman, who had been a
stepdaughter for more than a dozen years, told me. "When my brother and I show up, I give it two days
before she starts refusing to look at us and rushing out because she's so 'busy.' "

The young woman I spoke with seemed to feel that dad's wife's resentment came out of nowhere, and
was stepmom's doing--and "fault"-- alone. Indeed, many of us who have stepkids harbor the same
suspicion. "I feel awful that I dread them showing up. But I do," more than one woman told me in a
shamed, hushed tone. Other women confessed that they resented the kids for being a financial drain, for
being allowed to determine visitation themselves rather than adhering to the schedule, or just for being
the apple of their father's eye. "He's such a sap for her," one woman told me miserably. "He never draws
the line, and so he's turned her into a brat. And I resent him for it, and I resent her." She looked me in the
eye and said, guilty, "There. I said it. It felt good for a second. And now I hate myself."

The dynamic of experiencing a taboo emotion and then excoriating ourselves for it is a common one. But
that doesn't mean it is necessary. Resentment, for example, is not what it seems, is not proof that a
woman married to a man with kids is mean or unkind. In fact, it is arguably evidence of precisely the
opposite: it tells us, among other things, that she is very likely being way too nice, and excessively patient

10

© 2009 StepMom Magazine


and understanding as well. Resentment is evidence that something in the system – not the stepmother –
is off.

In her breakthrough research, Elizabeth Church, a Canadian stepfamily expert, social psychologist, and
stepmother herself, has "translated" resentment, showing that it is more like a detour, or a sleight-of-hand
in which one emotion hides another. The resentful stepmother, Church tells us, is a woman whose many
efforts to reach out to her stepchildren have gone unreciprocated and have perhaps even been rebuffed.
I would add that she is also likely to appear resentful when her hope to be invited to the center of the
family culture has been dashed--after a weekend or decade of trying. After years of attempting to
connect, of putting his kids first, a woman with stepkids who remains the stuck outsider in the stepfamily
architecture cannot help but see his kids showing up as a weekend or holiday of banishment--her own.
Too often, the minute they walk through the door, she goes from the cozy inside of a couple relationship
to an excluded outsider, and moreover is pathologized as "petty and selfish" for having any negative
feelings about it. What a set up. Most of us don't even realize it's happening--it's feelings of self-hatred,
rather than an understanding that our own entire stepfamily system is sick, that hit us.

When we consider the additional fact that stepchildren (even adult stepchildren) who experience loyalty
binds (the sense that liking stepmom would be a betrayal of mom) often hold their stepmothers at arms
length forever, stepmother resentment reads very differently than the witchy way we've been taught to
understand it. Whenever I hear a stepchild accuse a stepmother of being resentful, I am frankly
astonished that he or she (if they are adults) fails to consider that this accusation implicates them as well.
To put it boldly, rather than presuming this is all about stepmom, we might also ask the adult stepchild,
What have you done to make your stepmother resentful? Were you a very difficult adolescent, and have
you never since spoken to your stepmother about it? Do you show up with your kids, make a mess or act
disrespectful of her household rules, thus setting her up to feel like a bitch if she says anything to you?
Do you still attempt to "split the couple" by playing dad off stepmom in subtle or not-so-subtle ways? Or
attempt to "exclude" stepmom or put her on the outside whenever you show up (for example, by talking a
lot about things you with dad, or mom and dad, before stepmom came onto the scene)? Many adult
stepchildren who accuse their stepmothers of being resentful actually may be unconsciously "baiting" her
with these behaviors, behaviors their father has refused to bring up with them for years, likely figuring that
"my wife can just deal with it--they're hardly ever here and when they are, I don't want to argue with
them." What woman wouldn't chafe against such a dynamic?

A woman with stepkids who feels resentful, Church and other experts who truly understand stepmother
reality tell us, needs to dial back her efforts with his children. Rather than giving them the opportunity to
elicit the feeling, "I do and I do for them," she might try doing less, and stepping out more when they are
around. This will take away their chance to rebuff her, and give them the alone time with dad they crave.
The resentful (that is, excluded and rebuffed) woman with stepkids might also find relief by bringing up
the topic of being the stuck outsider in the stepfamily architecture with her husband or partner. Hearing
that the phenomenon is so common that it has a name--rather than just being one of his wife's quirky
"problems"--will likely come as a relief to him, and may spur him to action. Just as ”resentment" indicates
much different issues, a stepmonster is not what she seems. It takes an entire family to create her.


Wednesday Martin, Ph.D. is the author of Stepmonster (Houghton Mifflin,
2009). She has worked as a writer and social researcher for almost two
decades. Wednesday lives in New York City with her husband of ten
years and their two young sons. Her stepdaughters are in their twenties.

© 2009 StepMom Magazine

Welcome to my insanity:).

I thought I should start this blog by talking a bit about myself and why I feel that I have something to say that others may be able to relate to in some small way.

I am a 37 yr old women married to a man that has 3 young children.  I guess that would make me stepmom to 3 young children, two girls- 7, 9 and a boy- almost 5.  My husband and I have shared custody with his ex-wife meaning that his children live with us 50% of the time. For the first 2 years of our relationship the children lived with their Mother and my husband had limited access to his children.  This was not due to any failing on his part to be a great father and provider it was due to their Mother's belief that they did not need to see him in order to be happy young children nor healthy adults.  My husband, boyfriend at the time, felt differently and I whole heartedly agreed.  This is where people start to assume I had any clue as to what I was getting myself into.  Being a person that always leaps before I look and jumps in with both feet and a blind fold I very altruistically announced that he needed to fight for shared custody of his children and that I was going to help him by doing whatever it took.  Little did I know that it would take a 1.5 yr court battle, our life savings, constant animosity and anger from his ex-wife and a portion of my sanity?  

His ex-wife had purchased a duplex in a bedroom community outside of the city where I loved to live.  Did I mention I was a career girl living in the city with no children of my own?  So we decided to get rid of my lovely flat with its English Garden and non-kid friendly 1 bedroom, well two but I was using the second bedroom for my shoes and clothes, and moved to a 3 bedroom house in Suburbia.  Again, people assume I knew what I was doing.  Let me ask at this point...does anyone really  know what they are doing when they give up their city life for the burbs, their single life for marriage or their kid free life for three already born already have a Mom and a life before you kids?

My love and I were convinced that all would be settled by October at the latest (we bought the house in August).  Well the fates were certainly laughing at us and our foolhardy belief in the family court system.  I will skim over the next two years as I will be sharing some of that time in later blogs but suffice to say that a year past and then another 8 months and $50,000before a judge finally granted my husband the ability to be involved in the upbringing of his children.

Well, you would think that all has been sunshine and roses ever since...we both got what we wanted after all.  We had shared custody, he could be a father, I could be a whatever it is I am- taxi driver, punching bag, bank, women trying to steal her children, not a Mother but still not not a Mother (sorry for the double negative but it fits here).  Loved by the children, hated by their Mother and her family, loved by my husband, whispered about at school and so on and so forth. 

When I testified for my husband in court, yes ladies I had to testify and be cross examined, his ex-wife's lawyer asked me "what exactly is a Stepmother?”  To which I answered "that is a really good question.  I am confused by it too".

So I am here looking for the answer to that question and hoping to find a sisterhood of women looking to do the same.  I am not a doctor or a shrink, I will not be able to make the 'bitch' go away or make the kids behave and accept their situation.  I am simply a women looking for the answer to the age old question "where the hell am I,how did I get here and how do I live here now that I am?” 

And for the record so I never have to hear it again- I so did not 'know what I was getting myself into.'

Thanks for listening and bye for now

TNESm (the not so evil stepmom)

I welcome your comments and experiences.