step parents support thread

[tallybee]

Hi ladies,
Very happy this thread was started!!! I havent had a chance to read through it all yet, but I will.....
i dont have time to write all of our story here. MY DH and I have four children between us. One is 'mine' two are 'his' and one is 'ours'. But they are all ours. His two sons from previous marriage live half with us and half with his ex (hereafter to be known as the megabitch). My husband left her because he was so desperately unhappy with her. There was no other woman involved and he and I got together after they had been divorced for 3 months (they were separated for a year before the divorce which is the law in australia). The megabitch is nasty and always uses the children to get what she wants. She manipulates them to want what she wants. She hates me simply because I exist (and probably because I am WAAAYYYY hotter than her! Lol)
I'll explain more later (must get ready for work) but I look forward to recieving advice and support from this thread.

This sounds so much like our situation!! Welcome along

 

[Amber_Lynn822]

Hi everyone
First off thank you for starting this thread!!! I feel step-parents need MORE support than bio-parents. It's a mine field out there!!!
So my step parenting biography... I met my husband in Idaho where he was temporarily working for his father, We met in March and by August I was so heads-over-heels I agreed to move to California with him Where I met my wonderful "steppie" Taylor, gosh she just stole my heart from day one. Hubby never really asked me to marry him, just started telling people he was going to marry me SO I told him "Don't you have to ask me something first?" So we were married in May of 2008, and immediately started TTC. In March of last year my hubby lost his job so we decided it was just too expensive to live in Cali ($950- for a remodeled garage!!) so we choose to move to Colorado with the help of my WONDERFUL Grammie.
I don't think anyone can understand how hard it was for us to leave Taylor, it felt as if I was stuck in such a bad position, but we quickly realized we can give her a better life by living in another state, we could better support her needs and start a savings account for her, and we see her at LEAST twice a year for a few weeks.
The good news is right now we have a great relationship with bio-mom, she's a bit of a party girl which drives me insane, but she's trying to make sure we have no issues reaching Taylor when ever we want to. My only problem we have with her? She won't let Taylor fly alone (We'd pay for the airline stewardess of course! But she refuses even that, so when we fly her out we even up having to buy three round trip tickets instead of two )


Are there any other other Out-of-state step-parents and how do you make it work?

 

[tallybee]

:wave: Amber welcome along Glad you've found us!

It's refreshing to hear that not all exes are psychotic and impossible to deal with

xx

 

[netty]

:wave:
Hi Amber
Glad to hear you have a reasonable realitionship with bio-mum.

How old is Taylor?
Do you have phone or online / email contact with her inbetween your visits?

x

 

[netty]

:wave:

Hi Melly.

Welcome. Like you my sd biomum dislikes me because I even exist. Never mind they had split before we got together. Never mind I try and give her daughter a nice time with us. I treat her exactly the same as my 2 boys but at the end of the day we are threat!

Do you have problems with discipline too?
It is hard when one child is ours and one is mine and one is his especially when the other parents are worlds apart in how they bring up children so we have so many different expectations :doh:

welcome aboard everyone and it so nice to see this taking off

 

[princess_1991]

netty i agree with the discipline thing, not asmuch with my OH youngest lad cuz hes been around me since he was 10 months old so tends to listen to me more then the others, we go for the naughty room/step way of disciplining them, which like i say works if i put the youngest in the naughty room/step but the other two dont pay attention to me at all, i gave up with them, i just say to my OH will you deal with them please!

the problem is with him tho, is he doesnt like to discipline them at all, but thats where the problem arises, they literally fist fight over his affection and attention, if the daughters gettin a cuddle the lad will pull her hair or vice versa, now the little ones started with the biting, ive got no quarms with puttin them in the naughty room but like i said i can only do it with one, theres no point disciplining one and not the others and cuz he doesnt tell them off for it they continue to do it! there soo violent towards one and other and i really dont know where they get it from, or maybe ii do, not long after the wedding the biomum was pickin kids up from ours, and she was pissed about summat and actually punched my husband and grabbed him round the throat infront of the kids!! now tell me thats the mind of a sane woman!!
i was livid when i found out but OH refused to call the police -.-
which obvs caused a massive arguement

but its the kids its effecting more not us :/

xx

 

[hopeandpray]

Just wanted to send some to you ladies, step parents get such a bad rep but they do such a difficult job with so many more restrictions than a bio parent. I admire all of you

 

[Amber_Lynn822]

:wave:
Hi Amber
Glad to hear you have a reasonable realitionship with bio-mum.

How old is Taylor?
Do you have phone or online / email contact with her inbetween your visits?

x

Taylor is going to be 10 in June (She's getting so big!!!) We have both online (email/ facebook from her G-ma's house) and phone contact. We did buy her a phone for her birthday We've blocked everything and she can only contact like 5 people, but I know my miother in law is going to flip out lol

 

[fallenangel11]

Hi gals,

Just thought I'd drop in quickly with a hi to all and a short (oh okay it's pretty long, but really this IS the condensed version) back story for us...

DH and I got together just after he finally split with the Bio-mum (known as The Bitch or bitchface etc)...they had just been in a casual relationship so no marriage or living together or anything. DH would see his daughter during the relationship about 4-5 times a week and would get to have her at his house often. Unfortunately The Bitch found out not long after we made it official, and all hell broke loose. DH wasn't allowed to see his daughter, then 2, for months at a time.
When he finally could see her it was for a few hours once a week and I was definately NOT allowed near my SD. This continued for some time, but when DH and I moved in together we wanted my SD to spend time at our house.....eventually (after a lot of problems...really hell's got nothing on us) we took matters to court.
Fastforward 2 years (court, more court and sooooo much money- $30,000, and for me and DH, only 23 at the time, thats A LOT of money!)....but we got what we asked for. SD lives with us 6 nights out of two weeks and then full 50/50 when she starts school which will be next year. (in between all this drama, hard times and bullsh*t DH and I got married- we knew it was true love if we could both go thru all that and come out still holding each other and smiling).

Now things are more settled. Because we have Court Orders, THe Bitch can't mess us around too much (she still tries to cause problems every chance she gets but we're better at handling it). We still hate her, but we've come to move past all the problems of the past and focus on our lives with SD, making the most out of the time we have with her. We ignore The Bitch's evil comments and immature ways and live how we want and raise SD how we see fit. I think we are both damn good parents!

DH and I have a baby brother or sister for SD on the way and I am finally at a point in my life where I can look back on our short time together (DH and I have only been together just under 3 years!) and not be like....'how did we get thru it all?'

Because I came into SD's life when she was 2, she hasn't really known anything other than me and her Dad beign together. And in our house, we hare her parents (me a step-prent and dh a parent) and we both discipline, praise, feed, bath, care for and love her. At the bio-mum's house she can do as she likes, but we do not answer to her or give in to her rediculous demands (last problem was The Bitch was trying to stop me picking SD up from childcare on our time, coz I'm not a blood relative!)

All in all, I'd just like some of you other gals out there to know, it does get better, eventually. Somethimes you have to change your way of thinking, sometimes the Bio-mum gets a life and leaves you alone, or sometimes court orders help....but it does get better.

Of course there are times I might wish I wasn't in a step-family and sometimes I'll even wish it was just DH and me, but I love my SD (really I don't think I could have gone thru all that if I didn't love her sooooo much- sometimes more than her bio-mum I think). Being in a step-family is hard work!

 

[pinkflamingo]

Hi all, just wanted to drop in and join you ladies if that is ok. I have a 13 year old .

DH and I have been married for nearly 2 years and together for going on 6. He was in the process of splitting from SS mum when we met (as in the house was on the market, living sep lives but neither could afford to move out until the house sold). They had both moved on and were seeing other people, she used to even bring men back to the house when SS was asleep upstairs so it wasn't nice. Even when they were together it was an incredibly volatile environment for SS and his mum has suffered with mental health issues over the years. All in all over the last 6 years she has been that psycho ex!!

All of these things have naturally impacted SS but i don't think we are fully aware of the damage. He doesn't really open up to anyone but naturally at 13 there is more of an attitude coming out, and I think this may be the start of a very diff time for us all. Of course it is a difficult age for anyone but with all that he must have stored up inside I think it will be extra hard. On top of that we are tcc, and have just suffered a miscarriage (he didn't know about the baby) but I worry that when we do have a baby that his mum will try and poison him against it. she has told SS that his dad doesn't love him and that he only loves me, and lots and lots of awful things like that. She has even told him that she is so stressed about HIM getting married as she does not want to spend the day in the same place as me and his dad! he is 13 years old!! I am sure that is enough to put him off getting married at all!!

SS comes and stays with us every other weekend so we see him on a regular basis but again with a baby in the house full time, it may make him feel distant from our family. I know it's down to us to make him feel a part, but I guess he is at that age when he will want to choose to spend more time at home as that is where all his friends are etc, so he will prob come to us less too. He has already asked about us having children and been really negative about it 'oh well its not like it will be my real brother or sister anyway', which made me sad. I have a half brother and so I could relate to what he was saying in a positive way, saying that I never considered my brother to not be my brother.

I am sure that once we are pregnant it will be difficult but I hope that once the house fills up with babies (I hope!!) that things will work themselves out!!

Sorry for my rant!!

xxx

 

[pinkflamingo]

DH and I got together just after he finally split with the Bio-mum (known as The Bitch or bitchface etc)...

That made me burst out laughing as we have used that very same phrase many a time!!!!

Must be the official term for a psycho bio-mum!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[fallenangel11]

Yeah! I think its actually a nicer way of saying bitch. It's become her official name now (obviously never used in front of SD!). My DH hates her so much he can't even say her name, refering to her as 'your mother' if he has to speak about her with
SD, but he usually doesn't talk much about her to SD.

Poor SD asked DH the other day, 'do you like my mummy?'. DH didn't know what to say. He changed the subject and then asked me what he should do. I told him not to lie, there's no point in telling SD that 'yes we like your mummy,' when really we hate her guts. SD is a very smart child and I'm sure she has picked up on the fact that we don't like her mother. And she hates us even more.
So I told DH to tell SD, 'No, we're not friends with your mummy. But Fallenangel and I love you and your mummy loves you too.' We want SD to know that she is loved but that she has two sets of parents, her mother and us.
When SD asked me this same question a while ago I just said, 'No but I don't really know your mummy, darling.' We never see Bitchface as handovers are done at SD's kindergarten or at the paternal grandparents, so we never have direct dealings with her (contact is made via text messages or emails).

 

[pinkflamingo]

Fallenangel we sound like we have a lot of similarities! We have always done the handovers through school so there is no need to see his mum, and also now all communication is done via email. She would phone and shout abuse down the phone at DH, but funnily enough she has never said a rude word to me when i have been on the phone to her, it was all to my DH at the start. In the past few years she has spoken more to me than she has him which is odd, but then so is she!

SS knows blatantly that they hate each other, and DH often has to explain why she is saying certain things or acting a certain way, and will start it with 'you know that me and your mother don't get along with each other....' which is the understatement of the year!

Sadly it has impacted the relationship that DH has with SS, so much that SS has not felt comfortable enough to tell us that his mum has been in a relationship and recently got engaged!! We only found out that the boyfriend was moving in by accident, but SS had denied that them moving into a larger house had anything to do with anyone else moving in. I knew that had to be the reason but it's sad that he kept denying it when we asked him directly.

I just wish that these mothers (and I use the term loosely in our scenario!) actually put the children first and not their own stupid need to be as awkward and as bitter as possible. It's just so selfish.

 

[tallybee]

DH and I got together just after he finally split with the Bio-mum (known as The Bitch or bitchface etc)...

That made me burst out laughing as we have used that very same phrase many a time!!!!

Must be the official term for a psycho bio-mum!!!!!!!!!!!

It totally is!!!


https://www.thepsychoexwife.com/

Very interesting site, lots of stories etc, been eye opening for me to see how many have such horrendously similar and twistedly different hell-stories involving bitch-faces and suchlike....

 

[tallybee]

Fallenangel we sound like we have a lot of similarities! We have always done the handovers through school so there is no need to see his mum, and also now all communication is done via email. She would phone and shout abuse down the phone at DH, but funnily enough she has never said a rude word to me when i have been on the phone to her, it was all to my DH at the start. In the past few years she has spoken more to me than she has him which is odd, but then so is she!

SS knows blatantly that they hate each other, and DH often has to explain why she is saying certain things or acting a certain way, and will start it with 'you know that me and your mother don't get along with each other....' which is the understatement of the year!

Sadly it has impacted the relationship that DH has with SS, so much that SS has not felt comfortable enough to tell us that his mum has been in a relationship and recently got engaged!! We only found out that the boyfriend was moving in by accident, but SS had denied that them moving into a larger house had anything to do with anyone else moving in. I knew that had to be the reason but it's sad that he kept denying it when we asked him directly.

I just wish that these mothers (and I use the term loosely in our scenario!) actually put the children first and not their own stupid need to be as awkward and as bitter as possible. It's just so selfish.

You have hit the nail right on the head, a lot of what you say rings true for me.

Bitch-face has actually overstepped the mark into directly insulting me, but the vast majority has been done through OH. I almost left him over his reaction to the first major one, the stupid man still held himself under her thumb and tried to put me there too. I was incensed. Words cannot express the betrayal I felt when confronted with his automatic siding with her over something where I had done nothing wrong and she'd tried to make out I was fucking with her childrens heads out of ME being spiteful. Poisonous woman

Happily, he has grown a pair now and can actually stand up to that cow but that's 2.5 years of me hammering the point home that he owes her nothing. Men are fuckwittishly loyal to the completely wrong things It's such an uphill struggle. I know OH doesn't want to be with her, I know this relationship's right and for the long term, but holy fuck when a man's been kept as someone's bitch and cash machine and unwittingly controlled for so long he needs to pretty much be surgically removed from up that persons arse

So yeah things do get better - They have been for us, and long may that continue. But the hard times would have killed off any possibility of being together if we didn't have a true belief that we are meant to be together.

 

[fallenangel11]

Tallybee- there were a few times when DH tried to do what Bitch wanted, but once he realised that only got him more demands, and he risked loosing me, he finally stood up to her. I think he hoped she would settle down and we could figure out things as adults instead of going to court. But DH has always put me fisrt (well since there was a time I left and said I wouldn't ever be with someone if I was second place- I understand his daughter comes first a lot, but we put her first together, asparents always do. But in everything else I always come first, it's the only way its worked.

By being strong and supportive for my DH I have helped him find his feet and now he stands on his own, he doesn't put up with her bullsh*t anymore and he has even come to stand up to his parents too! He's come such a long way. He is a stronger man snd I love him and can't wait for him to be a daddy to our little baby who will never be poisoned against him (even if god fobid, DH and I do ever split, I wil make sure our baby gets time with their daddy so they know love from both their parents!).

Pinkflamingo- our Bitchface hates me with a passion- she has aimed a lot of her vile behaviour directly at me. She withheld contact from DH, but she has outright attacked me. She says I broke up their happy family unit....ummm what happy family?? (they never lived together, coz SHE would get more from the government as a single mom- HER court affidavits say how bad their relationship was). She was just mad he found someone else and moved on to a happy place. She also hates that I have a good relationship with SD!

If I am ever a Bio-mom and my kids have step parents, I will treat those SP with respect so they feel comfortable loving my kids and treat them well. I will never withhold contact (unless of course there are concerns with drugs/abuse etc). I will accept that what happens in the other house is not under my control but if I am certious and mature I will have a good relationship with the other bio parent and any step parents so that I know my kids are safe and loved!!! How hard is that?
(I know personal feelings of jealousy, anger, betrayal etc, can make it hard but moving on with your life and finding your own happiness is the only way to live- and will make for a happy healthy environment for the kids!)-geeze I should send this to Bitchface

 

[tallybee]

I think being in a step parenting role opens our eyes to how fucked up it can be and shows us how we need to be if our kids ever end up going to stepparents in the future.

fallenangel you're right, the silly men think that being nice will help, though time and time again it just gets abused by the ex. They'll stop at nothing and if we give them an inch they'll take 100 miles. The frustration I have felt whilst OH was still blindly sucking up all her shit was indescribable. Of course the kids come first, but her poisonous twistings were still being believed by him to the point where we were suffering not just through her direct actions but from his misguided reactions. The children don't benefit from their mother's demands anyway!

 

[netty]

oh god - i really didnt realise people thought and felt the same way as me!!

Tallybee - your line about frustration to do with the sucking up is so true and still irritates the hell out of me now 4 years on!!
He just says it would be worse if he didnt go along with it

One of these days I am going to explode and he will feel my wrath rather than hers

 

[djw47]

If I am ever a Bio-mom and my kids have step parents, I will treat those SP with respect so they feel comfortable loving my kids and treat them well. I will never withhold contact (unless of course there are concerns with drugs/abuse etc). I will accept that what happens in the other house is not under my control but if I am certious and mature I will have a good relationship with the other bio parent and any step parents so that I know my kids are safe and loved!!! How hard is that?
(I know personal feelings of jealousy, anger, betrayal etc, can make it hard but moving on with your life and finding your own happiness is the only way to live- and will make for a happy healthy environment for the kids!)-geeze I should send this to Bitchface

I certainly hope you are never in this position, however, having been a step parent I believe it will help you be more mature about things if you do happen to end up there. I have never been a step parent but my daughter has had both a step mother and a step father. My husband and I are still together but my ex and his wife are not. I am good friends with her because my daughter loves her but it was not always that way. It's tough in the beginning. I was never mean to her, but it took time to trust someone I did not know, with my child and know she would look after and love her the same as I would. I probably haven't always been the best ex to deal with from his girlfriends and at one point wife's point of view, but more now than when I was younger, I try to do only exactly what is best for my little girl. I had her when I was 15 so I'm sure I was a little brat to some of his girlfriends in the early years. I was jealous of someone else playing mommy. I am now very happy that she had her step mom to care for her when she was with her dad and I'm sad they did not work out as now I have to get to know ANOTHER lady and see if she is trustworthy. I made sure to be nice from day 1 with this one and try to be her friend but he has forbidden her to talk to me as apparently that makes her not as loyal to him somehow? I thought the common goal was to all play nice for the kids but I guess he doesn't see that. Good luck to everyone in their individual situations. I think we are all doing the best we can. I hope somewhere along the way life decides to just go easy on us!

 

[tallybee]

oh god - i really didnt realise people thought and felt the same way as me!!

Tallybee - your line about frustration to do with the sucking up is so true and still irritates the hell out of me now 4 years on!!
He just says it would be worse if he didnt go along with it

One of these days I am going to explode and he will feel my wrath rather than hers

It's horrible isn't it. My OH has realised now that there's no merit in being nice to her, she'll always throw it back in his/our faces, and it'l always just cause shit between us. It was far worse when he was still mindlessly trying to get her to respond to being nice. OH has felt my wrath over it more than once

He rarely contacts her now and the recent sep agreement is actually fair! He contacts his older son to arrange things, which I don't really think is ideal as it has the potential to put him in an awkward position but it's better than having to deal with her. She does breathe down his neck when she knows it's dad on the phone, but at least he gets to speak to both boys. He can't even contact his older son via facebook any more as bitchface was trolling about on there deleting messages from OH before his son got to see them. She's made him block me, which is sad, but nothing for me to take personally. The boys have never had a problem with me at all in fact when they were still actually coming to our place they loved it as I'd let them bake, plant veggies, and do loads of things like show an interest in them which they don't get from her particularly.

I really just keep clinging to hope that things will ease with time but I won't hold my breath and certainly won't be disappointed if she never improves her attitude

xx