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SKs family?

melis070179's picture

I was wondering how many of you actually think of your stepkids as your family? I know some of you have your SKs a lot more than I do (mine lives 14 hrs away) and maybe thats why I feel the disconnect, but I honestly do NOT think of my SS as my family. I just can't seem to get the feeling! Is this common?

Comments

FuBaR's picture

I consider my FSS's family. I would walk through fire for those boys. As far as my fsd thats a different story shes like her mother monkey see monkey do..But those boys are MY boys I love them with all I am.

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Sir Winston Churchill..

The Principlist's picture

I consider mine to be family. Mine live with me and truthfully I am more family than their own bio-family is on either side. Both DH and BMs family live a distance away from us. DH family is spread out in TN and Chicago. BMs family is in Iowa. The only bio-family that they have near is DH and a cousin (dad's age although he has kids, but live about 30 mins away from us). On BMs side it is BM, an aunt and their step-Gpa. THey have an uncle that lives about 4 hrs away and has kids. No one makes an effort to spend time with the kids outside of holidays and bdays or to celebrate report cards on BMs side. DHs side sends cards and money and do the occasional phone calls, but that is it. So, it leaves my family the Steppers as the only real family that is here for them. They buy gifts for any and all occasions, give cards and money, we do family dinners with the extended family pretty regularly and the kids are made to feel welcomed and included. So, yes they are family to me.

I think you feel that way because of the distance and that you have had no real significant period to bond with SS. That is actually quite normal. Even if he lived closer, that relationship would take some time to develop. When you factor in the distance the time is just not there. It is understandable and besides some things are just out of your control when it comes to skids when you are NCP.

Step Mother's Motto this week is:

You don't have to LOVE me, you don't even have to LIKE me... But you will RESPECT me.

StepG's picture

Our house is so quite and different when SS is not there. On the week the week btw our current Wed. visiation we feel so lost not seeing him. We are trying to change that but, Yes SS is my family he is my son. I understand how you would feel disconnected being so far away and not getting to see them.

lil_teapot's picture

you do not know these skids. your H made them, and knows them, and has a blood tie to them so of course he loves them. you are a complete stranger pretty much who has to learn to care about them. with them living so far away, i don't know how you could be expected to love them like if they lived with you. you should do what's in your heart...if they live so far away, you can care about them as best you can but don't feel bad that you don't feel bonded to them...you haven't been given the opportunity to bond with them.
Go easy on yourself, it's not your fault.

melis070179's picture

Well actually, my husband didn't "make" him, there are no blood ties. We found out a few months ago via a DNA test that he's not actually his son. Which we both already suspected, I suspected that from the first time I laid eyes on him. That may factor into it too. I view him as his ex-wife's kid, not my husbands. And he actually did used to live in my house, the first 8 months I dated my husband he had custody. But he didn't live with me for long before my husband sent him back to his mothers. Its definitely hard to deal with when I do see him, I wish I could feel differently!

lil_teapot's picture

I mean, if he's really young, it seems kinda weird for your H to act like a surrogate father to a child that's not his...and have to drag you along for the ride. But if the kid is older and knows your H as his father, it probably would be horrible for the mother to tell him the truth about his dad. Maybe your H feels sorry for the kid and is going along with the dad role because he's a nice guy? That kinda sounds like my H...he'd probably do something like that because he's a nice guy (and sometimes a ball-less wimp).

melis070179's picture

Yeah he's 11 years old, we didn't find out for sure he wasn't his until he was 10 years old. My husband didn't suspect he wasn't the dad until he was about 2 years old & had already bonded with him. So of course he feels like his "dad", but I never thought of him as my husband's son (I just had that gut feeling because they're so entirely opposite) & once it was confirmed, it made that feeling of disconnect even stronger. But I'm glad we know the truth, even though its not a good truth, it is the reality. Now I just have to deal with my husband having a bond to a child that I probably will never feel...

Chel Bell's picture

my skids will always be family to me. Even though we are far apart right now, they are still apart of my life. I hang their pictures on the wall of this house that they have never been in, with the pictures of my bio kids, and their father and I. There are alot of memories in those pictures, and the new ones that my MIL sent to us, went up the day they got here. I look at that wall of pictures and think, WOW, what a big family we have, and I love seeing their smiles all together. I look at my little boy and see parts of all of his brothers and sisters, in him. No matter how far away, or the things they do/say to make me crazy, or how much time goes by,or whatever happens, they are part of my family."~waiting on the world to change~"

melis070179's picture

Thats one thing I don't get, to see my husband or my son in SS, because there is no blood relation. He looks exactly like his mother, and I have a hard time seeing him any other way. I don't get to see ANY features relating to my husband or my child with my husband. When I look at the family picture with me, my husband, my son from a previous marriage & my son with my husband...and then there's SS in the back, and he looks so out of place to me...doesn't physically look like any of us...in fact he looks like he's in the wrong family. Maybe I only see that because I can't see him as family.

Rags's picture

My SS is an only child in our home. He is my son and has been since he was 15mos old.

Best regards,

Cdngirl's picture

I can understand where you are coming from. My husband legally has 3 children. The 2 oldest he adopted when he married his ex. Then they had one together. The oldest boy I have met once and we have been together for over 4 years, he is now 19yrs old. The oldest girl I was around for the first couple of years and then she stopped coming for visits when she became a teenager, she is 15 years old. I haven't seen or spoken to her in almost a year. So, no I don't consider either of these two my family.
As for his biological child she is my family, she now lives with us full time and we are both extememly happy. Even when we got her EOW I still considered her family, we have a very close relationship and since I don't have any children of my own and probably never will, she is the closest thing I have to a daughter.
I look at it this way, with the older two I am their father's wife and they are their father's children. I don't fit into their life and they don't play any major part of mine.

melis070179's picture

But the 2 adopted kids know he isn't their birth father, right? My SS doesn't know my husband isn't his father. Does your husband still have contact with the older 2? Since you don't see them I was wondering if they all the sudden stopped visiting their father?

Colorado Girl's picture

And probably not the same as some others. My skids, my husband, and my own children are all my family. Sure I feel a different love for my biokids than I do the skids but in the same sense I love them all just as much as I possibly can.

Here is why I struggle. My oldest son is not the biological child of my ex. My ex is however the man he calls dad and has since the word could be spoken. He loves BS12 just as much as the son I did have with him. Divorce should never sever the bond of a man and his child only the bond between a husband and wife.

That being said I would really, really struggle if a woman came along and encouraged my exhusband to severe that bond merely because he didn't take part in his conception. It is not fair to either of them.

I think if your SS wasn't such a handful, you wouldn't feel the distant feeling. Your inability to bond has little to nothing to do with the fact he did not really "father" this child...he is still his "dad". I think your resentment is more towards a BM who has now been proven to be pretty much a troll of a person.

Children are gifts not burdens, he didn't contribute to his DNA's origination and he can't change that fact. Is it possible to forgive the sins of the mother and try to embrace him?

"For every ailment under the sun....There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it." ~ W.W. Bartley

melis070179's picture

Does your son know your ex is not his dad? Does your ex pay child support for your oldest son, have to maintain a life issurance policy for him, does your have inheritance rights to your ex-H's estate if he died? These are things that irritate me because he's financially responsible for a kid he did not father, that we barely see, and have to deal with his ex-wife because of....and all because she lied & gets away with it on top of that. Thats probably where my resentment comes from. I of course do not blame the child, none of it is his fault...but the resntment also makes it hard to bond with him.

Colorado Girl's picture

and he supports him to the fullest extent.

I had the same sort of resentment as you. DH paid out 60% of his disposable income to children he was only allowed to see 6 days a month.

I had the EXACT same feeling sometimes, I couldn't even look at the girls in the face because they were in essence the core root of the problem. ALL the animosity and frustration was the money. You're mad at the lie not the fact. If she would have told hubby when the baby was born, would you still be mad if he chose to stay and father the boy?

You're mad at her.

I was so mad at BM for the things she put my family thru that I would have dreams (day and nighttime) of beating her face in like Edward Norton did to Jared Leto in the movie Fight Club. She raped us financially and emotionally to the point of me wanting to abandon my marriage. I was like that for the first two years and then....

I let it all go.

I forgave her for being who she is. I accepted her as a constant in my life and decided I wouldn't let her neverending need for vengeance and control contaminate my marriage. I quit letting the money be the driving force and focused on disengaging enough that her drama didn't directly affect me anymore. Now I only endure the aftershocks of her blowups when my husband can't help but let me in on the joke of how she runs her life.

He's not the dad. Biologically but pyscholgically he is as much his dad as my skids are to my husband. Would your ultimate happiness come from your husband writing off the two of them forever? You'd get to keep all that money but you would very much have a devastated man on your hands. I guarantee it. So you have to move forward and find a real solution, not want a life that will never exist. Your husband is who he is BECAUSE he is a father and you have to love him because of that fact, not in spite of it...

"For every ailment under the sun....There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it." ~ W.W. Bartley

Brutally honest's picture

I maybe the only one who will say it, and I'm being brutally honest but I don't consider DH's daughter (15) part of my family. I define my family as me, DH, and the dog. I have "adopted" aunts and uncles I'd consider "family" before SD15. SD 15 for several years now has bought into the manipulation game taught by BM. SD15 hasn't come for EOW visit in nearly a year, won't return calls or emails. Didn't call on father's day. Won't respond to DH's parents (grandparents) unless birthday or christmas is involved. Lies about just about everything. She's old enough now I consider her responsible for her own actions. I don't have "family" that treat me and those I love this way.

NCMilGal's picture

Melis, like you, we live 15 hours away from BM and SD. There's NO way we could ever get custody if we even wanted to, (BM, while a hysterically emotional manipulative b***ch, is not unfit) and we only see SD during holidays and summers *if* DH isn't deployed. I've spent a grand total of 10 weeks with her in three years. She doesn't look much like her father, although she used to, and all either of us see when we look at her is her mother. No bond here.

Maybe it's easier for me, because DH understands me totally. I'm very reserved emotionally; don't make friends easily and am fairly distant with my own family. He loves his daughter, but doesn't really feel like he knows her anymore. He certainly doesn't expect me to be insta-mom; he expects me to set a good example for her and (very importantly) expects her to respect me as an adult in our house. It makes visitation tolerable.

I used to feel VERY guilty (and still do, sometimes) but... She's not my kid. I treat her well because it's the decent thing to do. I'm not going to have kids of my own, ever, so I think it's because I'm really not a maternal person, not because of anything she does or doesn't do.

Ascoolasiam's picture

I love all of my kids my bio and my future stepkids which are really my bonus kids. Wink I wish I saw both FSKs more but currently it's just every other weekend. That is supposed to change in the future because FSS wants to live with us full time.

Lulu's picture

I definately think of them as family. I always have from day one. When I married my husband, I married his kids. Although I had not given much thought to how hard my future was going to be as a stepmom, I kept on going. Unfortunately, my family does not treat them the same way they do my bio children. It bothers me that they dont but I dont say anything. There are extreme circumstances as I am sure there are with many of you. I just feel that the kids are innocent bystanders to their parents' very screwed up lives. I hate to read so many blogs and comments on how the stepchild is disliked. I am sure they are giving you reasons to dislike them. I guess I am lucky that my steps were small enough for me to get my bluff in on them. Divorce and children are such a complicated mess.

SerendipitySM's picture

Hell to the NO!! Too much has happened recently for me to view them as my family. Perhaps that will change over time...

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. - George Carlin

stuckinthemiddle's picture

But I have only been in their lives for less than four years. I met my Fskids when they were 2 1/2 and 5, so they were still really young. I think I struggle with the idea of the kids being our family sometimes because we do not get to share all important events or holidays with them because of the schedule with BM. We are just learning to accept this as a part of our life and value the time alone we have together. We talk about the kids a lot when they are not home and I take care of them like I would if I had children of my own. We are getting married soon and the kids are a part of the wedding too. They are really excited to be a part of the wedding and to gain a stepmom.