How I Became the Evil Stepmom
Being a stepparent isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s hard to fully understand what you’re signing up for.
While I’m still navigating these waters even 9 years later, there are so many things I wish I knew or considered.
In the last year, I have had little to no contact with my stepsons. A lot of blame has been assigned to me. I don’t necessarily agree with all of it and I do believe they could take some responsibility, but I have so much clarity in retrospect, more understanding for why they might see me a certain way and am more able to own up to ways I’ve impacted them.
Here are some important things that shaped their view of me:
1.Their dad was changing.
It didn’t matter that he was changing for the better or that for the first time in his life, he felt less angry, understood the depth and repercussions of his childhood trauma, and felt more at peace. To them, he was different. And the change was associated and catalyzed by my presence.
It was easier in the beginning. My now husband and I were still getting to know each other. We weren’t living together and we only saw the kids on the weekends. We didn’t have the weight of weekday routines and homework. We had the freedom and luxury of spare time, spontaneity, video games, movies and constant fun.
Things turned around — FAST. In our second year of dating, shortly after moving in together, I fell extremely ill and ended up in the ICU. I was disabled for a year during which their dad’s priorities shifted. He would be found caring for me whenever he wasn’t at work.
I imagine there was some grieving happening for the kids who had just turned 13 and 14 at the time. Their dad, who was lighthearted and carefree on the weekends, who used to go skateboarding and play video games with them, who catered to their whims, was now preoccupied with caring for his disabled partner. That couldn’t have been easy for them.
I imagine they felt deprioritized. Abandoned by him. They probably felt as if their dad chose me over them. How painful that must have been.
I see that now.
2. I was changing, too. And I didn’t talk to them about it.
Like my husband, my priorities shifted too. Having fun and taking them random places was no longer toward the top of the list. I had my healing to focus on. Add to the mix that while recovering, I started graduate school to be a therapist and well, it didn’t necessarily make for an enjoyable time, especially for teenagers.
Not only was I healing physically, but grad school brought up all my unresolved traumas. My focus was no longer on them but rather trying to make sense of the last 30 years of my life. I inadvertently left them behind.
What’s more, I was constantly reading and writing papers and required silence in the house. There was no room for them to be their boisterous teenage selves. I realize now this was probably one of the things that made them feel shut out and may have been the beginning of our drifting apart.
They stopped coming around on the weekends, first one then the other. They had friends to hang out with and parties to go to. It was all developmentally appropriate. Regardless, I still wish I had the discretion to have been transparent with them about all the changes. I wish I sat them down and had ongoing conversations with them, let alone one. I wish I had explained everything, checked in with them regularly about their feelings and been more inviting of their experiences and how things were impacting them.
3. The divide between their parents made it easy to villainize me (or whoever wasn’t on their good side).
My husband does not get along with his ex-wife (and mother of his two kids). They exchange a handful of texts and phone calls in a given year, if that. While I understand why, it has been a huge hurdle in parenting the boys who have undoubtedly internalized the divide and learned to adapt to it but also how to manipulate it.
They learned to complain about whichever parent was not around. When they were with us, they complained about their mom and her various live-in partners throughout the years.
It was naive of me to think that I might be an exception. I’m almost certain now that they complained about their dad and, as hard as it is to stomach, about me. Ouch.
The polarity between the households was not healthy. There was no sense of unity or cohesion. They played into our biases against each other and twisted it in their favor. That was our (both sets of parents’) fault for allowing the divide. That was our fault for letting the resentment fester and take precedence over their upbringing.
The boys did not learn to tolerate disagreement. They did not learn that navigating the difficult parts of relationships is part of life. That no one is perfect and each person has qualities we like and qualities we don’t like.
They, instead, lived in extremes.
If conflict arose in any of their relationships, instead of seeing the other as a whole person, the disagreement became the focal point, any unbecoming qualities became exaggerated, and the other became the enemy.
Similarly, if one parent pissed them off, they would just go to the other parent and bitch. We didn’t model healthy communication and working through conflict. We modeled stubbornness and rigidity, separation and isolation.
The boys didn’t learn to tolerate the messy parts of relationships, persevere or collaborate. They learned to blame and cut people off.
4. I/We parented based on what their mom was or wasn’t doing for them.
There are no rules at their mom’s house — at least that’s what I gather. There were numerous situations where I would have expected some kind of consequence but apparently, there were none. One of the more extreme situations was when my youngest stepson was indefinitely suspended from middle school for selling marijuana to a classmate. The police were involved and he was on the verge of being kicked out of the entire school district. To our dismay, his mother did not enforce any disciplinary action and he continued to go out with friends and have the same privileges while suspended. It was as if nothing happened.
This same stepson continued on to high school and was on the brink of failing every grade. We feared he wouldn’t graduate. He had been pleading with his mom to move in with his dad and I for years, but she consistently refused. The summer before his senior year of high school, she finally conceded.
My husband and I understood our role to be, first and foremost, helping him graduate from high school. We had structure and rules. We expected him to ask permission to go out. If he got bad grades, didn’t complete his chores or was outright disrespectful, there were consequences. Based on our own upbringings and feedback from other parents and kids, these expectations were not out of the norm. To my stepson, however, we were unyieldingly strict. (His girlfriend at the time told me this.)
When you come from a home with no rules, any rules no matter how reasonable will be seen as restrictive, excessive and met with resistance.
And this is one of my many regrets:
We parented based on what their mom was or wasn’t doing for them.
We didn’t check in with ourselves to understand who we wanted to be as parents or what we wanted our relationship with the kids to look like. Our approach revolved around hers. If there was no structure at her house, that meant we were going to implement a lot of structure at ours. We thought we were providing balance, but in hindsight it was just more confusing and polarizing for the boys.
We parented from a place of resentment toward her.
To this day, we don’t always agree with how she parents, but I would be remiss if I didn’t also admit there is a safety there. As much as the boys complain about her, they always go back home and stay in regular contact with her. Her home is home base. She is home base.
And maybe it was easier for that to be created and for them to feel that comfort because they were there 5 days out of 7 — for years. I wish we would have seen that at the time and tried extra hard to provide whatever safety and comfort at our house as well. Sure, it might have been harder and there would be no guarantee that it would be on the same level, but we still could have tried.
Seeing them only on the weekends meant they were growing so fast and it almost felt like we couldn’t keep up.
We could have been more intentional with the limited time they had with us. We could have reflected on our roles and the messages we wanted to communicate with them. We could have zoomed out and had discernment around the life lessons they were taking in and how these might carry into their adult lives. Every weekend wasn’t just time to go to the movies and eat together but an opportunity to connect and teach and mentor. We didn’t understand the significance of those moments and the lasting impacts they would have.
5. I expected too much/had unrealistic expectations.
When my youngest stepson moved in with us, I expected him to adjust to us, to our already established household and dynamic. He was the “newcomer” after all.
That was wrong. So wrong. There was no room for him to be himself.
I expected him to follow our rules to a T. My husband and I expected him to be the obedient child we each were in our younger years. This was a setup for failure. For everyone.
Fact of the matter was he’s not us. To expect that of him was foolish, almost arrogant. We often found ourselves speaking some iteration of, “When I was your age, I walked 5 miles to school in the snow…” I remember being astonished that that was even coming out of my mouth. It seemed so cliche, but it was the only point of reference I had. I had never been a parent and my husband had not been a full-time parent in over 10 years since the divorce. We didn’t know what we were doing.
When my stepson disobeyed one of our rules or didn’t follow through on a promise, I became frustrated, angry, and saw him as defiant.
I could have been more patient, more forgiving. I could have facilitated conversation and demonstrated compassion instead of becoming immediately offended by his disobedience. I took it too personally. But it wasn’t about me.
I see that now.
I could have had understanding that the adjustment from no rules to rules would be hard, that he might slip up at times and that that’s okay. I could have had more consideration for his context and background. I could have had realistic expectations around the transition. I could have let go a lot more and accepted that I, too, would need to adjust.
I see that now.
I could have had more room for the gray instead of living in the black and white. I could have had less focus on whether or not rules were followed and instead, been more curious about why he might not have been following them. I could have been more open to the ways his inner child was calling for help and affection. I could have tried harder to read between the lines and understand the messages he was trying to communicate with me. I could have stood by him, exhibited faith and encouraged him, instead of becoming disheartened and eventually, giving up.
I could have been more open to considering different forms of parenting instead of being so adamantly attached to what was unconsciously natural to me.
I see all this now but it feels too late. I have become associated with all these things. Certain narratives floating around their mom’s house don’t help either.
To one stepson, I am the one responsible for everything changing. And to the youngest, I am the one he could never please or be good enough for.
I guess this piece is, in some ways, me doing what I wish I did back then — being more compassionate, having understanding for their experiences and being open to whatever feelings they have no matter how messy or unpleasant.
I hope they, too, come to have more room for the gray area. I hope they let back in the good memories of me they probably blocked out. I hope they remember the times we laughed and joined forces to tease their dad. I hope they remember the times I advocated for them to their mom. I hope they remember the ways I made it a point to include them in my family.
And despite the tension these last couple years, I hope they know that I’m not all bad just like I know they are not all bad.
