Implications of relocation within blended families

The relocation issue. I've made peace with most of it. We actually have the better end of the deal in a shared custody situation. The kids go to school in their mom's city, but we've somehow retained pretty high access. It's taken some time, but we've adjusted. It was a BIG change. One of the things that's hardest about our new schedule with the boys (recap: we now have them overnight Wednesday and 3/4 weekends a month) but on that 1 weekend we don't have them - that's Thursday morning until the following Wednesday that we don't see them. I think it's starting to become noticeable for our youngest son.

And that's been challenging for me to deal with, in terms of how to explain this reality to him. My problem is I'm an idealist, not a realist, so I can't defend accepting reality - I fundamentally disagree with such things. I typically have an ideal that I strive for, and generally stop at nothing to attempt to attain it. This is not to say I think this is right, it is just what is. Hey wait. Funny how I can accept the reality of how I'm made, but really struggle to accept realities imposed on me. It was a cosmic joke that I ended up as a second wife and stepmother - at first glance, the most unideal situation any woman could find herself in. So, this is all to say that when it comes to this whole the-biomom-moved-and-we-just-have-to-live-with-it BS, it doesn't take long for me to lose my zen and get completely wound up about it. But I digress.

Back to my youngest. He's not even 2 1/2 and on those weeks especially, he constantly asks for them, wonders where they are, when they're coming back. I don't know if I'm just projecting on to him, but I really feel like he really does miss them and he really feels sadness when he can't see them. It's all he's ever known, but is it possible that he's starting to sense intrinsically that it's not normal that he isn't with his brothers all the time?

They miss him too, especially my youngest ss. I don't think he'd totally jazzed about his new living arrangements, and it might feel more like "home" with us, despite the fact that I'm not his biomom. He's super close with his daddy. But he's also super close to our little guy - they're joined at the hip 24/7 when he's here. I'm surprised we can get them to sleep in separate rooms. It's gorgeous to watch them. The other day I was thinking, one of the greatest things to see in life is your children being affectionate with each other, as they sat snuggled up on the couch and my ss hugged his baby brother tight and gave him a big kiss on the check. And they just stayed that way, all snuggled up. It seems so wrong for them to be apart at such a young age.

Last week, as we got into our 2 separate cars for the morning commute, the ss's with my husband for transport to their school in another city, and our youngest with me for daycare, my son was asking why the boys were going with daddy and he wasn't. It took every inch of my self control not to say, "because their mom thought it was a good idea to move them far away from us." (voice and tone indicating what an idiot I think she is on this particular decision point).


I'm sure lots of people have dealt with this - any words of wisdom for me? I feel like I need a strategy for coping but also to help my son understand that this is our reality. Since accepting reality isn't my strong suit, I need some help. And it won't be the first time - how strange will it be when he starts school and his big brothers aren't in the same school? In his school life, it will be like he's an only child. But each Wednesday and 3/4 weekends, he's the youngest of 3.

The "new" Family Tree

We had a recent (very frustrating) experience that is not the first, and certainly not the last, in the ever evolving stepfamily saga. My eldest ss, who is 7 and in grade 2, had the "family tree" project. You know. The one where he has to put mom and dad and grandparents on the tree. Except our guy has 2 moms and 2 (ish) dads, and even a maternal grandfather that is in fact a stepdad. Imagine my husbands anger as he heard that "only blood relatives can be on the tree." It was as if I didn't exist as far as the teacher was concerned.

Calls to the school to speak to the teacher ensued.

"Can you imagine how that makes little ss feel? That his family is somehow not able to all be together on the tree?" It's hard enough finding acceptance, imagine starting that battle at school in the second grade?

Teacher says, "we were trying to save space, we didn't even think about it".


Trying to save space.


Trying to save space?

I get home from work and hear about the story, and I can't help but wonder - if stepfamilies are so common, where the hell are they all? Are they in hiding? Are the teachers at his school really so unaware of the environment that their students live in that they'd be unaware that stepfamilies are a very real part of their students existence? Gawd, soooooo frustrating.

Fortunately, my ss handled it like a champ. I think he's just used to it, his family is his 'new normal' and he's like any other 7 year old, just shrugs it off and asks if he can go play. His understanding of family is relationships include, but also go beyond blood. He has no problem accepting that concept. It's the adults that eff it up. Everyone gets so wound up in their roles and titles, and at the end of the day, it's all a bunch of BS. All of the "who am I" to this child and what will they call me, and they better do this or that, is all about us and our ego's. What really matters is that we all have the privilege of influencing the life of a child, showing them different ways that life can be lived, and they get to collect all of this richness and go out and create a gorgeous life. A life that has little pieces of all of us in it, no matter what title we held.

The one thing I know for sure are that all of my hangups about being a stepmother and the role and title and the challenges and frustrations are all about me, my ego, my expectations in life and my perspective about how life should be. And all the while I'm in the throws of that drama, life for my little guys goes on. I imagine for a second the emotions they feel, but don't have the life experience or the developmental maturity to grasp what's happened in their lives, and I'm completely ashamed of my drama. I want to spend the rest of my life making it up to them, just out of sheer compassion. I want to make all of the ignorant people who try to define family for them embarrassed about their ignorance. I imagine that the teacher is shocked she didn't know my little guys were part of a stepfamily - they're so well adjusted and happy and well behaved, that she just assumed such good kids couldn't possibly be from a broken home.

I'll show you, you out-of-date-irrelevant silly woman. A broken home is that much stronger once a lot of love has filled out those cracks and made them stronger. Ha. The joke's on you lady.

Generosity of Spirit for all moms

There is so much about being a stepmom that requires a generous spirit. And I think, also as a bio-mom, generosity of spirit - to the woman who helps raise your children - is paramount. This statement from Bridget Moynahan in response to Tom Brady's new baby boy irks me.
"I wish them the best with their baby and I'm sure my son will enjoy having a half sibling," Moynahan exclusively tells the Daily News. "I ask the press to respect our privacy while we are welcoming this new addition to our extended family."

Love that she refers to Tom and Gisele as her "extended family". It is very much so. we are not really two families, in reality, we are quite an extended one family. It's the half-sibling comment I take issue with. Forget about the actual definition of "half-siblings". I think when you try to feel the relationship between the kids - they're just siblings. These boys will be brothers. To label it anything but that is a huge disservice to the beginning of their relationship. Adults are so intent on their labels and definitions of what is and what isn't so. What is Bridget trying to do by pointing out to the press that this baby is a half-sibling? Lay her claim on half of Tom Brady? The relationship failed, and she's lucky she got a son out of it. The new woman has nothing to do with the fact that those two couldn't work it out. As such, she owes nothing but respect and good will toward Gisele and her new son. Those two brothers deserve the chance to bond and love each other without it being tainted by their parents crap. They'll be each others strength all throughout life, as all siblings can do, whether they are halves or wholes. I myself have two half brothers and one whole, and never throughout our lives did any of us consider us less than wholes.

I wish all three of them all the best for their future. Remembering to have a generous spirit takes full consciousness - it certainly isn't easy. But I keep reflecting on the post by Jennifer Newcombe about what your stepchild's mom wishes you knew about her, and its still really resonating.

Happy Holidays!

Just Breathe ....

This is a nice moment for all of us .... click here to Just Breathe.

Eddie always understands. Thanks man.

Understanding

This post What your stepchild's mom wants you to know about her life, has really, really impacted me. Read on. This (posted below) is a 'biomom' perspective to a stepmom, from the site No One's the Bitch. It's in response to an article posted on Wednesday Martin's blog about what we'd like mom's to know about our lives (as stepmom's). The comments after that post say it all. Being both a mom and a stepmom, I can definitely see both sides. I'd also like to think that because I can see both sides with empathy, that I can do better when it comes to seeing the other side. So in honour of 'the mom', I've pasted Jennifer's post below, which is just so honest.

What your Stepchild's mom wants you to know about her life.

It’s not easy to feel judged and misunderstood
It’s not easy for me to be constantly seen at “the enemy” either. I know that you and your husband likely bonded over a vivid dissection of my flaws and shortcomings. Part of your relationship fantasy about how you two so right for each other probably includes a lot of evidence about he and I were so wrong for each other. This may very well be the case, but please consider how uniquely exposed and vulnerable and yes, even defensive this would make anyone feel. And give some thought to the overall quality of the energy you’re bringing to our relationship. If I continue to sense like you’re gloating over my tiniest mistakes or keeping score on a You Wouldn’t Believe What She Did This Time roster, I’m not going to be very inclined to cut you any slack either. If you’re rude and competitive and snarky with me, how am I supposed to imagine you being patient and kind to my children?

My kids aren’t perfect
If you have your own child with my ex, you know how hard it is to raise kids. Everyone’s a parenting critic, until they have one! I may love my children with all my heart, but does that mean I’m automatically perfectly consistent as a parent? A model disciplinarian? Forever loving, patient and attentive? No, of course not. The truth is, I often feel helpless, embarrassed, confused, and ashamed of the things I can’t handle or improve as a mother. Sometimes I’m just as overwhelmed and clueless about my child’s behavior as you are. The strong-willed toddler, the pre-teen mood swings, the ill-conceived forays into teenage independence, they throw me for a loop too. It seems like just when I get a handle on one of my child’s more difficult “phases,” they move into a new one, rattling my parental confidence. When you criticize my children, you incite my protectiveness, but my unconditional love gets tested too! Giving birth to a child doesn’t mean you are always in control of that child’s behavior, personality, or the trajectory of their life. Also, some of the existing behavior or discipline problems you’re now seeing in my children are a reflection of the things in my marriage that didn’t work between your husband and I. And as you might have experienced yourself as his co-parent, my ex-partner and I were often at odds when it came to reinforcing rules and consequences. This likely contributed to the demise of our marriage, so don’t lay the blame for parenting mistakes squarely on my shoulders. Distribute it fairly.

I’m not expecting everything between us to be all hunky-dory
I’m not looking to be your best friend, but I would like to feel like we’re on the same page as hands-on caretakers of these children. I would like to know that the priority between both households is raising these children well together, instead of proving the other side wrong. I would like to be able to call you to follow-up on a child’s cold, late (or missing) homework, or suspicions that one of them is falling in with the wrong crowd before it becomes a major problem.
The thing that keeps me from going there, in part, is knowing how much you talk about me with my ex. I can’t trust you or confide in you about things I may not be handling well because it doesn’t feel safe. If I knew you weren’t going to be so quick to judge me, it’d be a lot easier to problem-solve together. I know this goes both ways.

I’m scared of my kids loving you. There, I said it.
I have to admit, this strikes fear in my heart: I’m scared of my kids liking you, because if they like you, that could lead to them loving you. Plus, it’s hard to feel like the areas where you’re shining as a stepmom also happen to shed light on areas where I fall short as a parent. So is there a part of me that’s happy they don’t like you? Have I subtly or directly encouraged this? Yes, and I know it’s wrong and selfish and ultimately not in their best interests. But I don’t know you. And I don’t know what your intentions are with my children. Would you be willing to tell me? It’s also hard to feel like a bomb blew up in your family. It’s difficult to see your kids forever schlepping their stuff between two homes. It’s tough to have them go away and not know what’s going on in their lives. I don’t have a crystal ball to see into your household and I worry about them. That’s what moms do! Sure, I want as many people as possible loving my children, but it’s also scary on some level to have it happen out of “viewing range.” And what if love for you mean less of an attachment to me? If you have your own children with my ex, you may think you understand what this primitive fear is like, but if you’ve never shared your children like this with another woman, I can assure you, you don’t.

I’m not my children’s “bio-mom,” I’m their mom. Period.
My children were not created in a test tube! Nor were they adopted (where this term originated). I gave birth to them, much as you don’t want to think about this. Yes, your husband – my ex – and I once went through our own little bubble of history that included joy, wonder, excitement and all the rest of it when our children were born. (Perhaps you two have experienced this yourselves.) Why do you feel the need to belittle my role by changing my name? Are you trying to diminish my sense of power or authority? The things you’re doing out of a sense of competitiveness to prove that you’re the better mom to my kids (“I’ll show them what consistency and higher standards should look like!”) really only serve to objectify your stepchildren, if you think about it. And that can’t be good for them either, just like the blind parenting mistakes I’m making. Perhaps part of your behavior is fueled by the pressure to solidify your marriage and validate your husband’s belief that he did indeed choose the right woman by being with you. But keep in mind, demonizing me lets him off the hook when it comes to him dealing with the deep-seated patterns that led to the demise of his first marriage. You should have a vested interest in seeing those issues resolved, because they may affect your marriage someday too.

I probably still have baggage with my ex
Yes, yes, it’s been however many years, but no matter who initiated the divorce, in some ways emotionally skirting too close to the divorce still causes me great pain and sadness. My family is forever in two pieces now, there’s no going back. This is reality for my children. When they came into this world, I never imagined this was how their lives would be…. I’m sure it’s the same for you, if you have children. Parenting is even harder now that I’m divorced. I don’t have access to a ready ear from the only other person in the world who knows and loves these children (hopefully) just as much as I do — their dad. Now I’m in the dark, trying to do this all on my own. Even if I have a partner, he’s not their father. His patience is tried too. I can tell when he’s trying to bite his own tongue about aspects of their behavior that he doesn’t like. It feels lonely and sad and sometimes I fear for my children’s future because of it. The only way out of this mess is to move through the pain, assign accountability fairly on both sides and forgive. But I’m reluctant to fully grieve the loss of my little original family unit because to do so feels like jumping off a cliff into the mouth of an active volcano. I’m afraid to go there, it seems overwhelming and scary. I don’t know how. So it’s easier for me to just resent my ex and blame him and unfortunately, that means you get thrown into the mix too. I do weird passive-aggressive things with both of you, I get angry. I inappropriately stick my kids in the middle and then I secretly regret my bad behavior. You might not believe me, but I know it’s wrong and I know I need to change. I’m just not sure where to start!

I promise to play nice if you do.
We both need to try harder here. If we simply give in to the temptation to see each other in the worst possible light, things could easily continue on like this for years. And in the meantime, the children are growing older and experiences where OUR conflicts take precedence are piling up, instead of the normal developmental milestones they’re SUPPOSED to be having. Let’s work on minimizing our conflicts and model healthy emotional management skills for the kids to use later on in their own families. Can we at least shake hands on trying to do better?
© 2009 Jennifer Newcomb Marine All Rights Reserved


Thanks Jennifer! Much appreciated.

Penny for your thoughts kids ....

I'd give anything to know now what my stepson's will feel and think about our family life when they look back, 20 years from now. Do they know just how much we love them? Will they be angry about anything? Will the appreciate everything we do for them? Will they ever have any concept of it? Everything we do as parents, is essentially to ensure that our family life is happy, secure, rich and builds a solid foundation for the kids to grow from. In the end, all of the ex-related hassles, all of the mediation, all of it is all a measure in one way or another to make sure we're all providing for the kids.

As a bio-parent, it's natural. You self-sacrifice and don't think twice about it. The unnatural part of being a step-parent is that all of your hard work and resources are going to benefit offspring that aren't yours. It makes no biological sense. I tend to lean a bit too heavily on biology and evolution sometimes, but it really does explain virtually all of the challenges intrinsic to being a step-parent. Being a step-parent requires us to rise above our biology. To be more giving, more self-less. To sacrifice, knowing that one day, there's a big chance that kid will never remember the night you cleaned up their barf. Or the night you read the extra chapters to them even though you were dead tired. Or that you were the only one that clipped their toe and finger nails. Or that you were the one who taught them how to curl their tongues. I know that somewhere, cumulatively it all contributes to what great kids they are, and hopefully what great adults they will be one day.

On the other hand, what I do get out of it is the love and respect of my husband, who I know loves me a little more everytime I'm selfless with his boys. I get a happy and secure marriage, that do and will bring me untold amounts of joy, long after the kids have left home. 13 years and counting. Can I get a whoop, whoop?! Just kidding. No, I'm not. Haha, just kidding. And what we get together is also the deep satisfaction of knowing we are modeling exactly the type of relationship we can only hope they find for themselves one day. I think sometimes, in all of the noise around "staying together for the kids" crap, how in world are kids supposed to know what happy looks like if they can't see it at home?

So, step/mentor/volunteer mommies/daddies - when you're feeling brutal on one of the bad days - take a step back and try to remember the bigger picture. Being a step-parent is a huge undertaking, but one that is much bigger than yourself. It's leadership. It's legacy. It's showing the young people of the world that there are things like hope, inspiration, dreaming and love that still make the world go 'round.

G'night!

Blindness

What it is and where it stops nobody knows
You gave me a life I never chose
I wanna leave but the world won't let me go
Wanna leave but the world won't let me go

-lyrics from Blindness, by Metric

I'm always struck by the paradoxes that exist in stepfamily life. I love the richness of my life. I love how dynamic my relationship is with my husband. The depth of our bond is so far beyond We Met, We Fell in Love, We started a Family/Got Married. It's so much more complicated. The complications can be exhausting. Emotionally and physically. I doubt Metric was writing about being a stepmother, but they might as well have been. I want to leave, but the world won't let me go. You gave me a life I never chose. Gawd, it's brilliant. There's a live clip at the bottom of this post for your listening pleasure.

When I'm away from home travelling, especially if I'm in a kid friendly place, like Orlando, I miss the boys so much. I imagine how excited they'd be to be on a trip together like that. And then there's nights like tonight, when the s'kid I struggle with makes me want to scream. My husband says he gets under my skin because we're so much alike, which I was willing to believe at one point. But tonight, my back is up. It's no one's fault, it's just one of those nights, when for me, all of the normal kids stuff is too much. The not listening, the fussy eating, the not cleaning up, the no-one respecting bedtime rituals and routines. Normal kid stuff on any other night. And then the kids having homework that is so time intensive that it requires parental involvement and the internet for 2 hours. I'm slowly becoming quite anti-homework. I never thought I'd say that, but what these kids have to do at such a young age is unfortunate. So much for being a kid.

I haven't been blogging much lately but I've been reading all of your blogs a lot more, commenting and right now I'm just waiting for insipration. And enjoying my Metric. Click here for Blindness by Metric.

H1N1, my new job and new insights

Hi everybody, I know it's been a while since I've been posting regularly. I've been super busy with a new job, that although its been a pretty significant change in my work and home life, its kept my mind off my husband's ex.

So in addition to the usual thoughts and challenges that we all share, my career has definitely been at the forefront of my thoughts. I've taken an internal marketing position that has me working not only solid 8:30 - 5 shifts, plus commuting time, I've also got a wack of more travel, local and international. As cool as that is, I miss my little guy terribly, wonder if my ambition will damage him permanently and am hoping he doesn't forget who I am. Okay, that's a little dramatic, but it does weigh on me. I'm lucky that my husband has a job that allows him to do all the kid related drop off and pick up - otherwise, this wouldn't really be an option for me.

Which brings me to my latest point of contention. After reading La Belle Mere's latest post on being child-free (I hear you sister), I'm cranky about how my stepfamily status limits my career. We can't move. I can't go global. Obviously because of the shared-custody arrangement. Not only does my paycheque support this ridiculous woman (the ex), but there's only so far I can go. Now, would I move my family for several years if a global promotion was in the picture? I can see myself in a cafe, along the river in Basel Switzerland, for sure. But whether I'd really go or not isn't the point. It's that is just one more bloody decision that's been made in my life, for me, but not by me.


On the positive side, this new job has been good for my family in a few ways. Mostly - I'm too busy to be irritated by what'shername. I haven't seen her face in ages. The kids never talk about her, and I'm never around when/if they call her. It's terrific. I'm too busy to see her, or think too much about her. I think part of my problem before was that I had entirely too much free time in my mind! I came from a sales position in a large geographical territory, so all those hours of driving gave me lots of time to think about everything that irritated me in life.

The one thing I do however, is when I am travelling and in my hotel room at night, is read all of your terrific blogs. As much as I'm definitely moving into a different phase of stepfamily life (we're heading into year 4) I can appreciate how much we've ironed out now, by remembering that I've felt everything that all of you newer stepmom's have felt. It gets better. I feel like we've moved mountains. But time really does heal.

But one thing that does not seem to change is that I do not understand, nor do I want to understand, the boys biomom. For example, the do-we, or do-we-not, vaccinate the kids against H1N1 thing. Bejesus woman, a 13 year old, healthy hockey playing kid died on Monday in the city between us. What's the hesitation? We're offering to get the kids vaccinated for H1N1, and for seasonal flu, and she's hemming and hawing. Since, not only does she not have a medical degree, nor a college/university degree, I'm having a little trouble understanding where her confusion about whether or not to trust a gaggle of infectious disease specialists, who have more education than she can fathom, is coming from. My husband and I just look at each other and shake our heads. There's no words for that kind of frustration. It's not that there isn't a place for alternative medicine, or differing options, but when kids are dying within 30 Km of our homes, WAKE UP. Make that decision about yourself, but not on behalf of your child, who trusts you to take care of them.


Anyway, that's me for tonight.

Making your marriage work, my 2 cents for Wednesday

Another terrific summary from the post Not So Brady: 4 Rules for Staying Together When You Remarry with Kids. I've re posted most of it below. Really, so much of making a stepfamily work is all about the marriage. The further my husband and I journey together on this path, the more and more I believe this. And furthermore, its about finding ways to make it easier for both of us. It has it's challenges both ways. As much as I have days when I feel that its an impossible journey, I look at my son, and I know that every night, I get to tuck him in and he goes to sleep in our house. My husband doesn't have that peace with his 2 older sons. Half the time, his boys are sleeping somewhere else. Experiencing another part of their life somewhere else. And when I imagine for one split second what that must feel like, I become convinced that stepmothering is a breeze compared to what it must feel like for him.



This is the excerpt from the blog post;



How do you make it work?


Here are four tips from Wednesday Martin, Ph.D., author of "Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do."


1. Form an airtight, solid relationship and show it to your kids.
Martin suggests doing this in small, simple ways like holding hands or telling them about one of your couple rituals, like where you go for breakfast on Saturday mornings. Having an airtight marriage means acting like a team, especially when it comes to conflicts about discipline and manners.


2. Have some childless time with each other.
Acting as a team and conveying a solid relationship to your kids is easier if you take time to nurture it, says Martin. She urges full-time stepmothers to take a childless vacation each year, to carve out a few days in the year where you can just be a couple. Date nights work, as does making your bedroom a childfree zone.


3. Learn how to fight.
Fighting doesn't doom a relationship, says Martin. Fighting the wrong way does. She writes, "According to marital experts, it's not fighting itself or even the frequency of fighting that leads to marital instability. It's the way people fight. Some fighting styles can destroy a marriage, while others can actually strengthen it."


Some pointers:
Cushion a hard request between two loving acknowledgements ("I know it's difficult to deal with the tension between your kids and me. But I would just really like them to say hello to me when I walk in a room; Thank you for being so considerate of my feelings.");
Put off an argument until a better time;
Know when to walk away from a fight;
Avoid the "four horsemen" of fights: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling;
Break the tension with humor whenever possible.


4. Open up.
Ultimately, what binds a couple together more than anything, argues Martin, is opening up and being honest with each other, to risk rejection and fess up to your partner about why your feelings are hurt and what is so difficult in the union of families. She writes: "For women with stepchildren, that may mean swallowing your pride and making yourself vulnerable just when you feel most misunderstood and betrayed. But it is also likely to open the door to greater emotional closeness and a partnership that beats the odds."

I couldn't agree more with all 4 points, and for me, the greatest gains have come from opening up, being less guarded and truly trusting each other. The airtight relationship follows that, which the boys take great comfort in. My husband is a champion at healthy fighting. We often disagree about specific issues, but he likes to disagree in the most loving manner I've ever witnessed. Its a bummer when you feel entitled to your anger, but it's really taught me a lot about what loving behaviour truly is.

Thanks Wednesday!

Tell Oprah

Hi Ladies -

click this link to be forwarded to Wednesday Martin's blog for a push to highlight Stepmothers through a Tell Oprah campaign. Click HERE for the link.



I edited my letter to ask for a Canadian perspective as well.

My view on Separation Agreements

I have never quite understood the legal part of the whole"Separation Agreement/Parenting Plan" thing.

A plan set out a head of time to reduce conflict? check.

A plan that clearly lays out who is where, for how long and how much money moves around? check.

A plan that deals with contingencies, holidays, that sort of thing? check.

But the plan only works when both parents stick with it. And there's apparently no recourse, at least not in Ontario, if someone changes their mind. It's not enforceable. Who has ever heard of a legal contract that isn't enforceable? (Well the marriage 'contract' could be one of them, my inside voice says. There's severe consequences at least though for breaking that one). In theory a separation agreement is a fantastic idea. But in practice and in our experience, it seems like a wasted effort and a waste of money.

My stepkids mom and my husband had a separation agreement that said they had to live within 40 kilometers of each other while the kids were young. That was the working agreement for over 2 years and legally signed off on in March of last year ('08). In June, she decided she was going to move 60 kilometers away and needed our permission to break the agreement. As I blogged about while it was happening, we were adamantly against moving the kids away from us, from their school, from their grandparents, from their extended family and from their little brother. Her boyfriend could have moved in with her. And they were dating the entire 3 years that the first agreement was in all stages of development, why did she sign off on it when she was only going to change it?

The answer to this dilemma? She was going to do whatever she wanted anyway, so we needed to compromise said the lawyers. What the hell was the point of the agreement in the first place? Excuse me, can we get a refund on all the goddamned money we paid to hammer out the agreement the first time? What a waste of resources. Her response to my husband whenever he calls her on not putting the interests of the kids first is that he left their marriage, therefore he has to live with this now. He doesn't have any interest in responding to such a nonsensical and immature comment, but jeez, I'd like to have a go at it.

She's basically using the kids against him, as a bargaining tool, probably the worst thing any mother can do. I'm sure lots of mom's in intact marriages do this as well (and likely not intentionally). The you-made-your-bed-now-lie-in-it attitude conveniently takes all of the focus off of her part in the failed marriage and effectively ends all dialogue. This is co-parenting? This is we each parent however the hell we want to in our two separate homes and we don't give a crap about how things are going in the other house. On the one hand it makes sense, because they couldn't manage to figure out how to save the marriage in the first place, so well done communication now would be strange. But for the stepparent in this scenario, its so bloody frustrating! It makes sense to say, since we couldn't hack it in the same house, we have to live in the same city for the sake of our kids, so they can go to school and see us both during the week for significant periods of time. So their lives can continue on as uninterrupted as possible. Because once you have kids, isn't it all about them? And once you get divorced with kids, isn't part of it that you are so unhappy in your marriage that you risk becoming an unhappy and crappy parent? Divorce, ironically, is also an effort to save your children's future happiness - they have to see their parents happy to be happy. To know that they don't have to be condemmned to a loveless marriage. How are they supposed to know what to look for in a spouse if all they saw was mediocrity at best, growing up?

So now the kids are being shuttled across 3 highways, 60 kilometers both ways, 2-3 times a week. Awesome. Needless to say, everytime we get in the car now, they want to know how long we'll be in the car for, how they don't like long rides. The new amended agreement has been in the works since this spring and has yet to be finalized. Yet we've moved through the summer months without incident. Do we even need to finalize it? What for? Money keeps on flowing from our house to hers. The kids are on their new schedule. I say we tank the agreement all together and just wait until the next inevitable change. We'll at least save on legal fees.

But of course, I don't get a say - I'm just the stepmom. I just get to live with it.

Crankily yours,