Why being a SM is difficult for me

I wouldn't necessarily say that I am a perfectionist, but I do have my stuff together.

I go through life generally trying to do well. I have worked hard in my career and love my job. I work so hard to be a good mom and I believe that shows through my children. They are far from perfect but overall are good kids. (I wouldn't trade them) I work hard to have a nice home, some money in the bank and a little bit left over for fun. I take care of my responsibilities.

Being a step mom is so difficult because I have no control. I don't consider myself a control freak, but I do consider myself someone who takes a strategic and logical approach to everything from planning a budget to loading the dishwasher. I don't like making more work for myself and like to get unpleasant things off of my plate so I have time for the things I enjoy.

As a SM, I just feel like I'm drowning all of the time. I don't have any control. I watch everything revolving around my skids handled in a path of most resistance way by both DH and BM. I watch my skids struggle with things they shouldn't have to struggle with. I see a lot of things that I would handle differently. In the beginning I would try to step in but we all know how that turns out so I don't do this anymore. When DH asks for advice I usually just shrug and say "what do you think?" I hear my DH talk about me and he always compliments how I am a good mom and how I "don't take shit" from my kids... but then I watch him take shit all of the time. When I have broached this subject I get the typical "I only see them xyz..." "It's BMs fault they are lazy" etc. etc. When I put my foot down with my own kids DH will step in and do the same with his but if I don't lead it then it doesn't happen. As my kids are getting older I have to do this less so I watch my kids take the foundation that I have built for them and use it as a stepping stone while I watch my step kids flounder. For example. My kids know to shower and brush their teeth. 9 times out of 10 they do this without being asked. If I do say something like "buddy, it's getting late go hop in the shower" DH will chime in and say something to SDs like "when was the last time you showered, you need a shower too" it's frustrating that he needs so many cues from me or that he doesn't seem to notice his kids not showering for a week. Now that OSD is in high school she has started to do this on her own but I honestly think she was getting made fun of which is so sad. If I were in charge of skids I would have done the same with them as my own kids. My SD14 and SD12 are so immature for their ages.

It is so hard for me because I genuinely do care for my skids. SD14 is a pain in my ass most of the time but I have been around since she was little, I have watched her evolve into this pain in the ass by being enabled by her parents. I try to be there for them when they need to talk and offer advice when warranted but the problem for me is and has always been that I care more than both of their parents.

I am not to my breaking point, more just to a point of indifference. I watch this chaos around me for a week, have a week of normal, have a week of stupid and around and around we go. It just scares me to think about the future. OSD cannot make toast, how is she going to pump gas or God forbid drive?

How do you ladies disengage your mind after disengaging your actions?

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I could have written this

I could have written this exactly! I was horrible at being a step mom because it left me feeling out of control... like showing up to work and no clear job description, and then catching flack for not doing your "job" properly.

Funny thing is.. being a SM really IS like a job! I learned a long time ago to just say no because if I offered to help someone or took liberties to do things that weren't necessarily in my job description, then those duties all of the sudden became part of MY job, while slackers conveniently got rid of work. It's also frustrating as hell when you have 3 employees who work in your office, 1 of whom you are in charge of and the other two who belong to shitty management who isn't even around half the time... yet those 2 employees who aren't even yours, reflect on YOU and cause YOU stress... but you can do nothing about it. I mean really! Who wants to work like that???? Anybody in their right mind would go postal or quit!

This is such a great analogy.

This is such a great analogy. I always used the "it's like being a substitute teacher" it's not your class and you might run it differently but you are just there getting half of the respect and teaching a lesson the way the other teacher wants vs. how you might do it if it were your class.

I love your analogy about the job without a job description. IT IS SO ACCURATE!

I think it often comes down

I think it often comes down to differing values. Your DH aspires to care about what you care about, but he doesn't. One way to look at parenting is to say, some people view parenting as carpentry, others as gardening.

Your DH is the gardening type... but he's ok with being the kind of gardener that just wants to be able to BBQ a few times in the summer and doesn't care what goes on the rest of the time. There could be rats, there could be weeds, there may even be a sprinkler system but he doesn't know about it. And, what he doesn't know, doesn't bother him!

So he doesn't see what you see. At all, at all. (Singing in my head...)

This is so accurate about my

This is so accurate about my dh. He totally has an out of sight out of mind approach to life. I don't think I was blind to this in the beginning, I think somewhere along the way dh just threw in the towel.

The lack of control is the

The lack of control is the number 1 reason why I struggle with "step-momming." I have a hard time when things are unorganized and my entire life feels unorganized (especially around the holidays) when BM is struggling, per usual, to just stick to the schedule and there is always some new issue cropping up. Thank you for sharing.

I feel exactly the same way

I feel exactly the same way too. My life is chaotic with the skids and prior to meeting DH, my life was very organized and calm. Even after having a baby, life is calm when the skids are not around.

I'm also disengaged, but I find it hard to disengage my mind. I always see the stupid stuff that goes on. It's hard to ignore, so even though I'm disengaged, I'm still annoyed about the things that go on around me. I'm also interested to hear how others disengage the mind.

I think this applies to most

I think this applies to most of us, hence why we're all here. My DH is also the ineffectual enabling guilty dad, while BM2 is the narcissistic GUBM. It drives me mad and I haven't learned how to completely shut it off in my head.

No, I don't like SS14 but I also realize that he is a CHILD whose parents are completely inept. I don't know how to NOT take care of a child. My mothering instincts fight with the logic in my brain saying "it's no use, you can't care more than the parents." It boggles my mind and makes me so glad DH and I never planned to have any children together!