The Wicked Stepmother's Club

 I became a stepmother at the ripe old age of 22.  That was when I married my second husband, who had two daughters,who at the time, were 3 and 6.  I had always had a rule never to date a guy with kids.  I just didn't want to deal with the baggage.  But, as I'm sure most of you know, life is what happens when you are busy making other plans, you can't choose who you fall in love with, yada yada yada.  Anyhow, I wasn't overly worried.  I mean, they were little.  I figured as long as I had come into their lives before the formidable teenage years, I was probably safe.  My own parents had divorced when I was 15, and I remembered all too well how easy it was to just hate everyone at that age.  Besides, kids freakin loved me.  Yeah....think again Bucky.

I will never ever forget the first time I met my husband's girls.  We had not been dating long at all, really only a few weeks; probably too soon to be meeting the kids, but his kids lived in another state with their mom,and were visiting for Thanksgiving; so as with most things in our relationship, we threw out the playbook and just decided to go with the flow of the available circumstances. 

The very first thing that drew me to the man I am now married to was his love for his kids.  I myself was the single mother of a 9 month old baby.  Most guys my age were way too busy clubbing and "hooking up" to have any interest in dating a single mom.  On our first date, he talked about his kids non stop.  And when he did, his whole face lit up.  I still don't think to this day they have any clue how completely and utterly smitten he is with them, which is sad.  Anyhow, my then boyfriend and I met at the mall after his kids arrived to take them all to see Santa.  This was my little girl's first Christmas, so I was pretty excited about participating in all of the Holiday Hoopla.  His mom was there as well, and he invited me to her home later that evening for dinner.  I assumed he had already discussed this with her.  This was my first lesson in assuming.  Assume makes and ass out of u and me. 

So I show up for dinner, more than a little nervous.  I mean, I don't even know for sure what me and this guy are yet, and here I am meeting his whole family and his girls, who went through a pretty tumultous divorce less than a year ago.  I walk in to his mom's house, and his oldest daughter (who was six at the time), looks me right in the eye with a look of defiance that she is still a pro at, and says, "My grandma doesn't want you here."  I wanted to climb in the nearest hole and die.  Now let me add that my now mother in law and I have a fabulous relationship, and we laugh about that moment all the time now.  She later confided in me that her son had not discussed having me over for dinner, he just invited me, and she had just gotten back from a 14 hour road trip to get the girls, had to make Thanksgiving dinner the next day, and was going through a pretty tumutlous divorce herself.  My point in all of this is that I now realize that I became the Wicked Stepmother that very day.

And the sad thing is, it wouldn't have mattered if I had been Mary Poppins herself.  Those girls had hatred on their side and I had absolutely nothing on mine.  Divorce is a very traumatizing thing for a kid, it does not matter how young or old they are, and when the parents move on, it's really hard for kids to grasp this.  Enter a resentful, hateful, and simply mean spirited mother into the equation and you have a recipe for disaster.

I am not going to get into the details of my husband's ex wife.  It would require an entire novel that would really read more like a horror story.  My point in all of this is this.  I understand that marriages do not always work out.  I understand that, unfortunately, kids are the casualties of war.  However, if you are going through a divorce,or think you might, and you have kids....please, please,please remember a few vital pieces of information.

Your kids are going to take their cues from you and your ex on how to handle this.  This can have a few different scenarios.

1. You can be an adult who is mature and tries to foster a loving relationship between your kids and your ex, no matter what the circumstances were that ended the marriage, while your ex does anything and everything to sabotage the relationship you have with them.
2. Your ex might be the adult who is mature while you are the sabotage artist.
3. You might both be angry, bitter sabotage artists.
4. You might both be the mature adults who understand that what happened between you two is just that, between you two, and that your kids need both parents and don't need to be drug through the mud of your mistakes.

The really sad thing is, I would venture to guess that 99.5% of divorces involving children include scenarios 1-3, with a miniscule percentage involving scenario #4.

As someone who has been involved in both scenarios, let me share some advice with you.

GROW THE HELL UP.

My daughter's father and I did not work out.  I actually realized while I was still pregnant with her that we wouldn't, and I chose to leave the relationship at that time.  My daughter did not even know he existed until she was 5.  The man I am married to always has been her father.  However, when she did meet her real dad, I chose to set my feelings aside and let them form whatever relationship they were destined to form with each other.  I do not stand in the way of her seeing him, and,to my knowledge, neither of us ever says anything negative about the other one to her.  Is he my favorite person in the world who I hope will always be my BFF?  Um, no,not exactly.  And I doubt I am his.  But guess what, folks?  It's not about me.  It's not about him.  It's about our daughter.  She has never, ever, heard us fight or argue, and she knows that we both support her having an equal relationship with the both of us. 

Now, some of you might be thinking, "Ok, but what does this have to do with stepmoms?"  My daughter has a step mom.  She has a great stepmom.  They have a great relationship (even though her and my daughter's dad are now divorced), and guess what?  I'm ok with that.  I do not feel threatened by her, nor jealous, or any of the other emotions that fuel irrational behavior.  She has never treated my daughter unfairly and that is all that matters.  Case closed.

Now, if I harbored negative feelings toward my ex or his wife that I vocalized to my daughter, I imagine she would probably dislike one or both of them.  But probably most likely the stepmom.  Like I said, your kids take their cues on how to handle divorce from you.  You show hatred, contempt, jealousy and immaturity, and that is what you will breed in your kids.  But if you show respect, maturity and an uncommon thing I like to call common sense, your kid will too.

Now let me illustrate the other end of the spectrum, as I have both in my life.  My husband's ex has deemed it her personal goal in life to make ours miserable since day one.  She was the one who left the marriage, she did not want him anymore. But women are funny creatures that way. She didn't want him but she didn't want anyone else to have him either.  She has spent the last 10 years making our lives miserable,and has now succeeded in completely destroying his relationship with his girls, who are now in their teens.  They despise me.  They blame me for the loss of their family, for their innocence,for everything.  While I have come to terms with it, I'm not okay with it.  Because it did not have to be this way.  She could just as easily have swallowed her pride,decided to be the bigger person, and encouraged them to have a relationship with their dad.  It really would not even have been that difficult or inconvenient, as they live over 400 miles away from us and only saw us 4-5 times a year as it was.  But instead, we have spent countless hours and thousands of dollars and at the end of the day, the only thing that has been accomplished is they now have nothing to do with any of us.  I imagine she thinks she has won.  Which is so very, very sad.  Because the people who actually lost were her daughters.  They have missed out on knowing what an amazing dad they have.  They have not come to know the biggest thing that made me fall in love with him- his abilities as a father to love, protect, teach and play with his kids.  I feel so very sorry for them for that.  I fear they are growing up to be hateful,spiteful humans as well, which I believe is a travesty.

So the next time you feel like making a snide comment about your ex, think about what it is doing to your child.  You may think it is a small comment, but trust me, kids remember things that we think are minor.  Those little offhand comments will stay with them forever and may have repercussions that we may never understand.

If you are or have found yourself in a position of ending a marriage, I beg of you, at least where the kids are concerned,to be an adult. 

This country is falling apart around us. Many would argue that the fall of traditional families and morals have contributed to that decline.  I am not naive enough to think that we will go back to the 50's and "traditional" families will make a come back.  But I can hope that we will wake up and decide to end a cycle of hatred to ensure that the next generation knows the love of family, no matter what theirs happens to look like.