I make it worse by allowing his baggage to consume me and literally drain the energy out of me....that I have no energy left to put forth anything good towards our relationship.....wow, I just had that revelation reading this blog Stick. Thank you.

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“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”

Stick - I look at your picture on here - you are absolutely beautiful. Getting to know you on here, reading your blogs and the advice you've given, makes you gorgeous inside and out. I love your positive attitude about things even when you are feeling low.

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Love me or hate me, I'm still gonna shine!!!

Stick, your threads are always so thought provoking.

I react similarly in instances where my first reaction is based on my own internal feelings. However, I don't react outwardly until I have had time to determine my own motives and distinguish them from my feelings. It is only then that we can put our own baggage aside and do the right thing even if it doesn't feel right at the time.

I have bled this over in my life to other relationships besides my skids. I always "put the shoe on the other foot." It has definitely saved me from doing things that would undoubtedly hurt people I care about. I have taught this to my husband and now he does it back to me...lol...

I wonder if age and experiences have a lot to do with our clarity now. I can't say I've always been this way. In fact, I was just as impetuious as some are here at one time, but that was when I was younger and new to the stepmom thing.

Look within and make the changes you need to make... thanks for taking the time to get this out Stick.

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else." ~Judy Garland

Stick, I have realized that perception is everything. Changing how you look at things can change your life, especially since you cannot control the actions of others. And I am a control freak. So this was an extremely hard lesson to learn.
I always expected everything to fall into place. For it be all blissful and we all get along and that's great. And when it didn't I just broke down. I bring the baggage from my experience growing up as a stepchild and constantly use it to compare to now. It took a long time for me accept that my son will have a stepfather because I assumed all stepdads were like mine, and I didn't want him to go through that.
I used to let FH's shortcomings consume me. I used to feel like every bad or inconsiderate thing he did meant that he didn't love me, or that I would always be nothing to him or whatever. Then I woke up and realized that I wasn't perfect, so how could I expect him to be? Especially considering that many of the things that upset me about him, I did it too! Once I embraced that him and I are very much alike and handle things the same, I understood his reasoning more. I stopped trying to make him into something he wasn't and accepted who he was. And in doing that I have come to enjoy the moments we have now and will have in the future.
Of course I slip up at times. And I revert back to my old way. But I recognize and try to correct it, because I refuse to let my past or his past dictate my future. Period.

Oh...TB...I definately thing age and experience definately is responsible for MY clarity...I was such a self centered, spoiled, selfish person and everything was all about ME and how I felt...it wasn't until I was older that I started to see the big picture...its so not about each and every one of us...LOL...I wish I had gotten that 25 years ago...and Stick...honey...I don't need to see u to know what a beautiful person u are...but I totally understand YUR baggage...I have always said personal experience totally dictates our perspective on things...loved yur blog, as always!!

A mother is not defined by the "b" or the "s" in front of her name, she is defined by how she handles the "mother" part.....

You're absolutely right, especially with you very last sentence. I was thinking the exact same thing to myself this morning

"There are two things over which you have complete dominion, authority, and control over - your mind and your mouth".

Stick, I actually think you may have put your finger on what is one of the hardest things about stepparenting. At least in my case.

From the time I met my then-BF's daughters, until now, the process has been one of having varying reactions to this life I decided to sign up for -- some positive, some VERY negative -- and having to figure out what to make of those reactions and how to incorporate them into my life. I've had to deal with strong feelings of frustration and disgust at the things that my SDs do, or the relationship my DH had with BM, and try to figure out: is this a legitimate reaction? Why am I having it? Is it fair for me to bring it up with DH, or do I need to face that this is MY baggage to deal with and not his or his daughters' fault?

We all know those reactions, logical or not:
- Suddenly feeling disgust at a gesture your SD makes that is SOOOOOO a carbon copy of BM
- Seeing the kids do things that you are convinced you would NEVER allow a child to do if you were their parent
- Having BM call DH day and night with ridiculous requests and expect that he will just drop his life with you to cater to her, the "mother of his children"
- Watching DH cave to BM just to not have to deal with yet another sh*tstorm, when you want him to kick her a**
- Seeing values instilled in your stepkids that you feel strongly are detrimental, immoral, or just plain wrong
- Having very ambivalent feelings (from love to strong dislike) for your husband's children, and not being consoled by the knowledge that even bio parents feel those ways about their kids sometimes
- Watching your skids eat junk day after day and wondering how their parents can be so lax

etc. etc.

Some of us are of the kind of character that makes us tend to question our motives and our baggage and try to stuff it down deep as not being valid. Others of us are more the type to trust our instincts -- maybe not to see our baggage enough for what it is -- and demand that our baggage be accommodated. Most of us are probably somewhere in between.

The frustration of our baggage as stepparents, I think, resides in part in the fact that OUR baggage is thrust in our face all the time, all day long, by the situation we find ourselves in parenting someone else's children and having to accommodate a spouse from a past life. Resentments big and small, reactions to seeing situations that clash with our values and over which we have no control. Being a stepparent, at least a decent one, involves CONSTANTLY having to grapple with and second-guess our baggage. And if we don't have supportive spouses/partners, maybe also having that baggage constantly thrust in our faces by them as well, making us feel even worse for the fact that, frankly, this is a hard gig -- and it would be for anybody.

Even harder, I think, is the fact that it seems like, while we grapple with all these conflicting feelings and are sooo UBER-aware of them all the time, the bioparents seem completely oblivious to their own baggage. BM, in my case, is such a raving loon, and such a mass of petty grievances, past resentments, and vindictiveness -- and yet, because she is Mommy, she gets to hide it all under the Cloak of the Sacred Birthing Vessel. She's a Mother, so in her mind, every emotion she has is because she is only Thinking Of The Children. (Yeah, right.)

Yet, because we are stepparents, it seems that every ambivalent emotion we have, it's because we are Evil Stepparents Out to Hurt the Children/Replace their Mother/Brainwash Daddy, etc. etc.

Yet another frustration to add to the list of baggage: the fact that so often, everyone else in this constellation gets to pretend that they have NO baggage -- and all of them walk around like they're in the story The Emperor's New Clothes.

Sometimes, being a step feels like you're the only one who sees the emperor's naked. And trying to bring it up can get you banished from the kingdom.

BB

You are not second best, you are not second class. Do not ever let anyone make you feel that way. - 2BLoved

Stick-

I think this is true of every difficult situation we find ourselves in. There are always reason we wound up there and they aren't entirely to blame on someone else. We all have free will.

I know that one of the feelings I struggle with in my relationship with SD is resentment. Not because of her or anything my DH has made me do but because life didn't follow the plan I had in my head and I have a hard time accepting that and letting that go.

My first husband died when my BD was an infant. Instead of being consumed by my new baby and getting to relax and enjoy those formative years with her, I was grieving, angry and working my butt off to keep her daycare and pay the mortgage. I really felt like I had missed out.

When DH and I got married and I finally had a partner to share these "life stressors" with, I looked forward to being able to relax and really focus on BD. But life changed again when SD came to live with us and her BM took off. I know none of this is her fault or DH's fault and I do remind myself of this frequently. I have a really hard time letting this go. This is certainly MY baggage.

Thanks for the great blog.

C_G

BB that was a great post! Im new to this position and already see what is in store. You all are so helpful in genuine advise and it is so great to be able to read here and know there are others that are in the same boat. Thanks for that post BB! And all of you guys rock. Im feeling rather high road today, but Im sure I will let lose and you lucky people will get to hear it. lol

Stick - firstly thank you for sharing your story with us, you have been through so much yet are so self aware of not letting it affect everything in your life - truly inspirational.

Reading through here made me think of a previous job, which involved going into a local prison and getting to know fairly well a small group of men who were all serving life sentances for murder. After I got over my initial fears of going in I started to get to know these guys a bit, and eventually I got to the point where the reason for them being there wasn't the biggest issue on my mind. One of them opened up to me one day & told me some of the details about his life - he got into drugs in his teens & then stealing to pay for them, one night, as he put it, a robbery got out of hand and he took a life. He has spent the whole of his twenties in prison, and may be granted parole when he's about 40. He has spent his time in prison wisely, got off drugs, got some qualifications, and most importantly taken the full responsibility of what he did - he doesn't blame the drugs, or the mates he was hanging around with, although he appreciates how they contributed to what happened. For me he is a great example of how prison can work as rehabilitation and punishment hand-in-hand - he will spend around 20 years in prison as punishment, but has used this time to look inward and although he will never forget what he did or stop feeling guilty he wants to do something that will contribute to society - his goal when he is released is to work with young offenders, especially those mixed up with drugs, and he hopes that he can help at least one of them avoid making the mistakes he did.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that admitting your own guilt for whatever your issue is always difficult, and I think most of us will try and blame others for this as we don't want to think that we're at fault. As steps it is easy to blame the skids or BM for everything (sometimes DH too) and perhaps because we feel more helpless in that we don't have authority over some aspects of our lives it can push us towards thinking with don't have authority in any areas.

I've noticed the most common advice on here is to sit down & talk with your DH, yet it is something I struggle to do with my OH for some reason - I bottle things up until I get angry and then explode. It's not healthy, and I need to figure this out somehow. Writing on here does definitely help me as a venting place, but I can always find an excuse to discuss these things with OH - one of us has had a busy day at work or is going out later, I don't want to ruin the one day a week it's just us two etc etc.

Sorry to ramble on, this turned our longer than I expected!