We all wonder and question what it takes to be a parent, but in this day and age of blended families I now pose the question; what does it take to be a step-parent. The answer is not so easy or straightforward.
As I mentioned before I have met a wonderful fella who I have been in a committed relationship for two years now, and we have recently announced that we are making things permanent. Now this man has two children that I absolutely adore. From day one they latched themselves onto me, which was a little unsettling because usually in these situations you would expect the children to be a bit wary of a new adult entering their domain. But because their mother had been largely absent in their lives for the past few years they eagerly welcomed me into their lives. All was well…. for about two seconds until their mother realized that competition was around. And then the drama started.
So here lies the quandary; how do you be an effective friend/parent in situations such as this? I started out with just being a friend to them and at the same time trying to reach out to their mother and assure her that I was in no way trying to usurp her in their lives. When that was met with not only negativity but outright hostility from the mother, it made things downright difficult.
What makes this so hard is that the girls are so loving, but being children they repeat all that they hear so I was constantly being bombarded with negative energy. “Mommy says your ugly” “Mommy says that you’re a hobo on the street Daddy took in” “Mommy says that your trouble” and the list goes on and on! Many a night the fella found me sobbing away, and of course he said everything he could to comfort me. “Don’t worry she’s a bitch” “No one likes her or listens to what she says” “She’ll get bored and give it up” But if anyone has ever been assaulted with such negativity you know that words can cut deeper than any knife. So I’ve kept quiet in order to keep the peace and I’ve just dealt with it.
Well recently things have come to a head. The youngest child we found out was being sat down and interrogated whenever she returned to her mother’s house after staying with us. Well she had ended up repeating a conversation that we had. Then we get the phone call and the mother issues a statement to the fella “your girlfriend is saying horrible things, things too horrible to repeat” That my dear readers was the straw that broke the camel’s back! I had been dealing with smoke and mirrors and outright lies from this women for too long. So I demanded that he call her back and find out what were these “horrible” things that I supposedly said. Long story short, when confronted she couldn’t come up with one valid horrible thing, and as an added bonus we also brought up several fallacies that had been fed to the children and she had to admit that they were in fact lies. Score one for me! But in fact it isn’t a win at all, because all it did was really was highlight how grownup squabbling was tearing these poor children apart. When we finally talked to his daughter again she was so torn up it would break your heart, but she said something that turned this all around for me. She said that the only person that mommy cares about is mommy. Now one part of me just cried that at such a young age she was having this euphony, but the other part of me realized that yes this was all about her mom and how I was letting this women have control over my life. So out comes the books and we go back to step one……..NO NEGATIVE THOUGHTS, NEGATIVITY ATTRACTS NEGATIVITY.
I have now come to realize that their mother and I will never be friends. But I don’t need that to be an effective step-parent. I have the love of the fella and the girls and as long as I focus on that nothing else will matter. All I have to do is keep positive and remember that I am a good person and people see that. And if someone wants to spew negativity about me, as long as I am positive and keep to the higher ground I will always be the winner.
This is something that we all have to remember to do in all situations in life. There will always be people trying to drag us down, but that is because they perceive us as being above them and they can’t deal with it!
May all that find this live in the love that God intended for us
