Dealing with my 3rd stepdad
Hi everyone! I'm new here and looking for some advice.
I'm 16, the oldest of 6 kids from 5 different dads. My mom had me when she was a teenager and she and my BF split up. I never met him and probably never will. When I was around 5, she met and married my first stepdad and had my half-brother with him. I was really young at the time and SD1 (stepdad #1) treated me like his daughter. They were together two and a half years and broke up. He lost all interest in me and only continued a relationship with my half-brother. Soon after, my mom slept with another guy and had my half-sister with him. He's still very much in the picture. She had my second half-sister with another guy two years after that. That guy is also still around. Then she got pregnant, married SD2, had my half-brother, a year later my half-sister was born and they were the perfect happy little family. But they eventually divorced. He has shared custody with my mom of them.
There was a guy for about a year and they broke up. No kids. Then she met my new stepdad SD3. They've been married 4 months now and he wants me to act like he's my dad. My mom always tells me to give him a chance to be a dad and to learn to accept and love the family I have. She's always acting like I'm a bad person for not being over the moon about her marriage and she's asked me several times why I didn't give him a "welcome to the family" speech at the wedding. The guy isn't a bad guy, I don't think, but I don't see him being here forever. A year would be lucky. I don't want to start liking him that much and then they divorce. I don't want to be overly friendly (I'm polite and do my best to treat him with respect when I see him) and I don't want to spend a lot of time with him. I told them both, repeatedly, if they make it past a year married, I might try to spend more time with him. But even my half-brother said he doesn't think he'll be around much longer. But at least all my half-siblings get a break. I don't.
I guess I don't want to seem like a brat, or like I'm trying to split them up. I'm just being realistic and trying not to get caught up in it like I did when I was younger. But even my mom refers to him as my dad and he's starting to do it, too.
You are a young woman wise
You are a young woman wise and experienced far beyond your years and far beyond what you should have to be for a 16yo.
Welcome, I hope you find this to be a good place to vent, contribute, and pick up some useful advice for others who are living the blended family dream.
My condolences on the unfortunate luck you have being burdened with your serially out of wedlock breeding and serial nuptially focused mother. She sounds like my son's (SS-22) Sperm Idiot. My SS is the eldest of 4 out of wedlock Sperm Idiot spawned half sibs by 3 different baby mamas.
Considering that the best indicator of future performance is past behavior and based on your mother's history of serial out of wedlock breeding practices and serial marriages, you are very wise to maintain a guarded position on your mom's current marriage. There is no need for you to expose yourself unduely to the emotional trauma of becoming close with a Step Dad who very likely will be history in a a few years if not a few months. You have two years until you can start to make your own life and distance yourself from the Greek tragedy that your mother has made out of her own life.
My son remains close with his next yougest half sib (half sister by baby mama #2), stays in contact with the youngest two (biracial half brothers by baby mama #3)but is not particularly close to them, and for the most part has written off the the rest of the shallow and polluted end of his gene pool. He has little to no contact with his SPerm Idiot or the toxic Sperm Grandhag and Sperm Granpa. The most recent contact my son has had with his Sperm Idiot is when spawn #3 was arrested for a gun violation (he was 15) and my son jumped a plane to fly to Sperm Land to jerk a knot in the kid's tail and put his Sperm Idiot against the wall by his throat with the message "If my sister or brothers get in trouble again for your goal of being a Crip or a Blood I will come back here and rip your head off." He gave a similar message to the thug half brother. My son's Sperm Idiot is a Opie Cunningham looking white guy who has dreamed of being a Gangster and Gangster Rapper since he was in his early 20's. The idiot looser is 46 now and still looks like he fell off the the Mayberry Opie script from the Andy Griffith show with no intellectual capability to understand that to be in a black criminal gang ..... you have to be black. He is trying to living his gangster dream through his two youngest biracial sons. Poor kids.
You cannot fix your mom and exposing yourself to any more of her relationship drama and baggage than necessary is not a good idea. Which you obviously already know. Focus on yout studies for the next two years, go to college, be a success, make an amazing life for yourself, and do what you can to minimize the impact that your mother's poor choices will have on your life.
Take care of yourself young lady.
I'm probably going to be in
I'm probably going to be in the minority... but I don't see why you can't give him a chance to have a relationship with you. I know you think he's not going to last with your mom, and you're probably right, and soon he'll be out of here, but remember, you're almost a full grown adult, which means who you have a relationship with will soon no longer be dictated by your mom. I think when you realize that you and your mom are separate entities, and that you are going to be an adult real soon, giving people a chance to be your friend, even if you know it's short lived, isn't a bad idea. You might get a life-long mentor/friend, even if he and your mom aren't together anymore.
I look at it this way--if a relationship COULD be good, I'll give it a shot. It may last a month, a year, a week, a day, but I would like, when I meet this person on the street years from now, that the memory of our time together was good. Many of my classmates I know I won't see again after we graduate, that doesn't mean during the time we are in class together, that we can't be close.
I'm 26 this year, and it was only really in the last three years that I realized and began forming relationships with friends of my parents independently of my parents. It's a weird transition, but one we all go through. Some of the people have drifted apart from my parents due to location, but still stayed close with me.
Just a thought. You don't have to if you don't want to, but if someone is genuinely trying to love you as family, you might owe it to yourself to give them a chance--as you get older, the world gets scarier and more difficult to deal with, I know I appreciate knowing there are people who have my back if I ever fall on hard times, but I'm someone who thinks you can never have too many friends, no matter how brief your time together may be.
I call CREW.
I call CREW.