My Life is a Fairy Tale???

Growing up I didn’t dream of being a stepmom. I didn’t dress up and go get my dolls from their mom’s house to play with them and then take them back to their mom’s house. I didn’t separate my weekends knowing that this weekend I would have my babies and next weekend I could play with my friends. I didn’t grow up thinking that the love of my life would have been married to someone else and I didn’t play Barbie with Ken having more than one family. I grew up believing I would grow up and become a princess. That changed and I wanted to be a doctor, a vet, a teacher, or many other professions. I never wanted to be a stepmom. I had a stepmom at 16 and I knew that I didn’t want to be that kind of a person. Little did I know that it wasn’t about being a stepmom, it was about the person who became the stepmom.

That being said, my life is a fairy tale because it seems I have magical powers.  I have to power to control minds. It seems that hubby had no choice when it came to leaving TM. Things were perfect between them and he was happy. Once I set my sites on him it was all over, because he had no choice. Ladies beware, I have this magical power and it doesn’t matter if your husband loves you and is devoted to you, because I have the power to make him fall in love with me and leave you. This is what TM has told her friends and family, to never leave their husbands alone in an area with me; I just might steal the husband away. I also have the power to make the things that the child has done disappear. Homework disappears after she has done it because it is my intention for her to fail her classes. Also, anything she has studied disappears from her brain after I help her because I want her to fail her tests. I also have the power to make what she has cleaned dirty again right after she cleaned. If she dusts I have the power to take that dust and spread it again just in the way it was. Oh maybe that is the power to control time for objects, making them revert to their dirty stage of before she cleaned. I’m not too sure about this power but I do know that the affect is that everything the child cleans or does looks like she never touched it when hubby checked on her. I am also able to get whatever I want whenever I want and I have the power to make people give me anything I want. Those are my powers; I only wished I knew how to use them at will. L

My life is a fairy tale because I’ve married a man that is a partner, friend, and lover. I don’t know that I would have met a person that was more in tune with me if I tried. I do know I could have found someone who would have made me happy without the problems created by the child, but I don’t know that he would understand me the way that hubby understands me. I can say that where we are today isn’t something that happened right away, it took work and a whole lot of communication and compromise, but the fact that we were both willing to work at it and we were both willing to compromise is what makes our relationship unique. No one ever said happily ever after was easy.

Days Like Today

Days like today I realize just how lucky I am. Yesterday hubby sent me flowers. He ordered them during the huge blow up last week with TM and the child and his message was: "Sorry for your loss. Hope you get a better skid next time." I laughed and asked what next time he was talking about and he said next time, meaning next anniversary, I laughted and said next time I get married it will be to a guy with no kids. He laughed and said the next time WE get married it might be to a man with no kids because his kid has disowned him unless she wants something. A huge weight has lifted from my shoulders. He gets it. He knows how badly his own daughter treats him and he gets that I'm treated even worse. Even at my worse, I tried to treat my stepmom better then my dad because it wasn't her fault that he made the decisions he did. It wasn't until she started to do things that it hardened my heart. Even then, I never told her I hated her, I never wrote it on the walls, I never told it to my friends or family. In my heart, I didn't hate her, I didn't understand her. The best part, her own daughter felt about her the same way I felt about her, which made things easier on me.
Back to my story, last night hubby and I were talking while cooking dinner. He was complaining about having to work late two nights in a row. He's been working 9 1/2 hours a day and doesn't have time to take his bike rides. We agreed to start playing the PS3 Move games together to get our work out and spend time together, as the whole working thing was really getting in the way of that. This started me looking at our games and the fact that some of the games we got for the child and they are collecting dust because neither hubby or myself play those games. I asked him what he wanted to do with the games and he really didn't know so I left that alone, but while cooking dinner he said that he was thinking about Christmas and the fact that we are buying our Christmas presents for each other early because there is a party we want to go to in November that is a Pirate theme and we need the outfits and the fact that we are actually able to spend our money on ourselves and not the child. He was happy. I asked what he wanted to do for Christmas, as it looks like nothing will change. He said that unless the child does a 180 and comes to us he will do a $25 gift card to Starbucks and a card, that's it. He was still hurt over her F*ck Father's Day, I love my mom post on Twitter and the fact that she wants nothing to do with him unless she wants something from him.
This really got me thinking. A child that was not raised to act this was is acting this way because there are no consequences to her behavior. I know teenagers are all about themselves and since her mom allows it there is nothing we can do. So I just sat back, supported my hubby, and it made me love him so much more.

A Grown Up Stepdaughter

I was 16 when my dad remarried. I remember having a talk with my dad about what was going to change and what would remain the same. You see my brother and I wanted my dad to wait until we finished high school before he got married. I had a scholarship program that I was in that I couldn't transfer to another school. I spent the summer working on this program and I was in. This meant college would be paid for at a really good school, I just had to finish the program. Added to that, I was on the path to early graduation so I could start college earlier. My senior year was already planned, I would take classes at the college while finishing my high school years and be able to finish college in 3 years. My brother wanted to finish his senior year with the friends he had since 5th grade. He was going to the Navy right after graduation and it was his last year to be a kid. My dad promised, he actually pinky promised me, that we would still attend the same high school and he allowed us to register for all of our classes. The morning before school was suppose to start my brother and I were getting ready and our dad was actually up sitting in his chair. We had to catch the bus to school, about 1 1/2 hours on the bus so it was really early. Dad said he would take us to school. On the way to school he told us that they, he and stepmom, had decided that we would be changing schools. "They" thought that 3 hours on the bus was a long time and that we wouldn't have enough time to do school work. I remember crying harder that day then any day before. My dad had just broken a pinky promise. My brother and I felt betrayed. We had to play the happy family for our stepmom during the wedding and to everyone when they visited and our carrot was staying in our high school. I was so mad at my dad. I didn't care that he talked to my stepmom, in my mind she didn't matter, she was his wife and I had to respect her as his wife, she really wasn't anything to me, even though she pretended to be, I'm sorry, marrying a man does not make you love his children, I know. She didn't get to make this decision. I remember looking at my dad and telling him I wanted nothing to do with him or his "new" family. He broke a pinky promise.

The Green Eyed Monster

Heather Hetchler is doing a 3 part series on jealousy between a stepmom and stepdaughter. The first part talks about jealousy that the stepmom feels, the second part talks about the jealousy that the stepdaughter feels, and the third part talks about understanding the feelings and trying to understand it. The first part was in StepMom Magazine’s September 2011 issue and the second part was in the October 2011 issue. The third part is not out until next month, so I’ll update after I read it, but the second part was just too much for me to remain silent on.

The first part, from this stepmom’s stand point was pretty on cue.  Feeling like an outsider, I don’t think that is specific for stepmom/stepdaughter relationship, I think that’s pretty much every stepmom out there. Who wouldn’t feel a little tug at the inside joke and history that you were not a part of. How many times did I need to hear, “do you remember when you and mom when to the pet store to get me my dog?” “Do you remember our trip to Disneyland when you and mom…..” “Remember when you and I went shopping for mom’s….” Every day, several times a day, I was reminded that I was not a part of the family and I wasn’t involved in these special times. We started making our own memories, and yet those memories just never lived up to those memories the child had of “mom and dad”. Added to that, whatever plans we had before the child came over went out the window because the child wanted to do something different. I can’t remember how many times I told hubby to just go without me and I would handle our obligations.

The second part on the first series, again from my own standpoint, was very spot on and again, it is not specific to the stepmom/stepdaughter relationship. The good old Disneyland dad turning a blind eye to what is going on in the house is the cause of a whole lot of problems. When the child didn’t do her chores, do her homework, and acted like a terror she was rewarded with dinners out and friends coming over. That was fine with me, except for the tension it caused between hubby and I. I would have to nag hubby because of the mess, he wouldn’t make the child clean it up and he would not clean it up himself until I worked myself into a frenzy and threw everything away.  Until hubby got tired of being treated like an ATM he allowed the behavior. Also, because of how much he was already paying in child support, he couldn’t afford to give the child everything she wanted, just everything he could afford that she wanted, but lucky for me, she abused what he gave her and he stopped buying.

Reading the second part of the series made me want to reach into the pages and shake some sense into these girls. These girls felt pushed aside because dad wanted to spend time with stepmom and it’s not all about her. Some of the girls admitted to doing underhanded things to get stepmom out of the picture. SELFISH! Who cares about what dad wants? The fact that dad gives stepmom power in the home like picking what to eat for dinner and decorating makes the stepmom evil and wicked. No, leave the house exactly how I want is because you are the outsider!!! I will hate and resent you if you don’t. Don’t show stepmom any affection, that’s all for me. I recommend reading the second part of the series because it really opens your eyes to just how nasty these girls are and it starts young.