I've wanted to post about this subject for a while now, but haven't.
Mostly because it's not about my biological child, and I don't necessarily feel right about that. Once you put something on the internet, it's out there forever.
That being said, I think maybe my experience as a step mom can possibly help someone in similar shoes.
Stu has a daughter from a previous relationship who is now 7 years old. Her name is Jade, and she's been in my life since she was 3. She's adorable, silly, and in many ways just like her dad. I was really young when Stu and I started dating, and while I love kids I was no where NEAR prepared for being a stepmom. I've never really even considered myself a "stepmom", I've never tried to be a mother figure to Jade. She has a mother already. We have her on the weekends, for approximately 24 hours and usually we also have her for holidays (or we try to anyways).
I have strong opinions and I am fiercely loyal. Sometimes to a fault. I think my role as a "stepmom" has been the hardest role I've ever been in. I've been completely out of my element from day one, and despite many, many, many efforts to get along with all sides and be a good "stepmom" (or even just a friend!), I feel like a complete failure. Completely. I think at this point, after over 4 years, I've exhausted every effort.
The beginning of my step mom journey was very rocky and difficult. Stu and Jade's mom never (and I mean NEVER) got along, and I listened to fight after fight. I listened to Jade's mom call me horrible names over the phone, and I listened to her call Stu horrible things. I even had a friend over hear her at the park telling a friend about how I'm this horrible person. I've never once intervened. I've always left it up to Stu to deal with because I know by interfering, I'd only make everything worse. It's been hard to bite my tongue, but I've done it. I've stood and listened to them yell at each other, or more commonly, her yell at Stu, both before and after we were actually married, and I've been livid but never said a word. Slowly over the years, the fighting decreased and they now get along more often then not. There is still the odd time there is an argument, or something said rudely in tongue and cheek, but Stu is not one for fighting and confrontation, so for the most part he just ignores it. I think I was able to make it through the beginning because half of me was naive and thought "it will get better over time" and the other half of me was just so flabberghasted by the things being said that I didn't know how to respond. I have just always concentrated on making Jade comfortable in our home, and ensuring she has a clean room, clean sheets, toys to play with and clothes to wear. I do her hair in the mornings and make sure Stu remembers to wash her hair at bath time (being a man, that seems to slip his mind often, lol). I do her laundry, buy her birthday gifts and plan her birthday parties, and I buy her Christmas gifts too.
I've tried to be Jade's friend, or just talk to her normally like I assume a stepmom would, and we've set rules for our house that both Stu and I enforce. She's always really polite and well behaved, so we've never had any sort of issues with her. Really our rules are more "make your bed every morning" and "clean your room before going back to your mom's". It seems no matter how well her and I get along one weekend, by the next weekend I have to make this huge effort all over again to have her even just say "hello" to me when she walks in the door. It's like my relationship with her is erased every weekend. She's noticeably uncomfortable with me, and I have no idea why.
I've made a lot of effort over the years to form a close relationship with Jade, and even her mom. Last year, after a fight between both parents, I went to the library looking for books that were "self help" for step mom's. I found this great book about how making that small effort to be nice goes a long way, and the one to truly benefit from all parent figures getting along is the child, which of course is what we all want for Jade, I'm sure. I talked to Stu about it and the next weekend Jade came over, it was her mom's birthday. Jade and I baked her cookies, bought a card, everything. She never said thank you. Never acknowledged my birthday. Stu's birthday was only aknowledged because I texted her asking to have Jade call him and said Happy Birthday. I've made efforts to smile and say hello, only to be met by coldness.
It's exhausting. As horrible as it sounds, I've given up. I'm not going to force a child to have a relationship with me when it's so obvious she doesn't want it. Of course, I still make an effort, but for the most part I involve myself with my own 2 boys and that means Jade can have daddy/daughter time with Stu.
I can't talk to Stu about a lot of this, because Jade is his daughter and he doesn't and can't see things as I do. I sometimes feel completely alone in my thoughts and like I can't talk to anyone about it because no one I know is in a situation like mine. I'm sure at some point it will all blow up in our faces, but until then I've found that keeping quiet is what works best (well, until I wrote this!).
Being a stepmom is really hard. I've even found it more challenging then my role as a mother. I've tried everything I can think of to make this role easier on me, on Jade, on Stuart and on Jade's mom, only to fail miserably. I feel like a lot of the problem exists because I'm the only one making the effort.
I hope that one day when Jade is older, a teen or older, I can sit down and talk to her about all this.
I really hope that by posting this to the blog, I don't have anything bite me in the ass. I hope instead it maybe is read by another stepmom that feels like a failure, so she doesn't have to feel as alone.
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