pesky thoughts won't go away
I'm trying so hard to count my blessings, for they are plentiful. I'm especially close with my (3) children. We have been through a lot together. Abuse from their father just against me and my OD, but the younger two witnessed it. They were teenagers then. I divorced. I raised them. They are estranged now and that was >10 yrs ago. They are extremely hard-working, family oriented, superb human beings. Of course I'm biased *yahoo* I'm their proud mama!!
I met my DH right after divorce and married {4} yrs later. Some of you may have seen my only other post in Step GKs ab my ungrateful [8] adult SKs. My [13] SGKs adore me as I do them. Their parents have the animosity against me and [1] SDIL and SS are not speaking with me since holiday misconceptions and/or demands ab "fairness" bt our blended family. I'm well aware that I should disengage. It still hurts though. I'm submissive, so is my husband, but his side is everything but. I'm not good with conflict.
My son and future DIL were supposed to come into town, however, we just rec'd a text that she has the stomach flu and can't come from [4] hrs away. I'm so bummed.
I get it that I'm literally having situational depression. I wish I could just focus on the next time and how fortunate I am to have them. Why does this flair up even more intense anger in me at the other side of the blended family. Their complaint is that I/we engage more in my side. I just want to scream that not only do they have no right to demand what and how I move along in life w/ my own children, but how wrong they are. Why does my mind even go to them? Forget them and the way they treat me I tell myself.
I care about my SGKs. I care ab how this is changing my DHs engagement with his SKs whom he loves; just to keep up appearances to his immature own [who happen to be more than a decade older than mine]. Perfect example is a bridal shower coming up and planned way in advance for which we need to travel. SGs birthday is that week. I've already conceded that if a birthday party happens at the same time, I'd understand that he stay behind to attend. I'm angry that everything is so unrealistic.
Birthdays are annual. Bridal showers only happen once.
Stop coddling the StepBully children.
I get the challenges of dealing with bullies when you are not an assertive person, or as you called it, you are submissive. The issue is, if you are submissive to a bully, they never stop bullying.
I was that kid growing up. The submissive, nonassertive pleaser. Easy going, got along with everyone. Except the bullies. Fighting and conflict in any form scared the crap out of me. Until I came to the realization that bullies are out to hurt people and their targets are going to be in pain, whether physical, emotional, etc, so the bully might as well hurt as much or worse than their target.
Bullies targeted me for a number of years in my tweens and teens. Until I had enough. It took making it clear that bullying me would result in a trip in an ambulance for reconstructive surgery to get the message across that I was not to be bullied. The first incident of instant overwhelming aggression and debilitating violence upon the bully, I was in 8th grade. After that I attended 2 new middle schools and 2 HSs. At each of those new schools as the new guy the bullies would step up to establish the pecking order. They did not like the outcome. It only takes once to put a bully in their place. One time and everyone in the group knows clearly what the boundaries are and what the consequences are for violating those boundaries. However, that once has to be so overwhelmingly unpleasant for the bully who makes the mistake of bullying you... and DH that the bully will never make the mistake of perpetrating their crap ever again.
Even as an adult I struggle with work bullies, boss bullies, etc.... Though I have mastered the "Don't fuck with me" face and position over the years. A primary part of my profession is as an agent of change in entrenched suboptimally performing organizations that run large production assets. There are always those who do not care much for it when I show up. There is a process that quickly establishes the way it is going to be in the performance improvement journey and sets the practices that each and every person in the organization will follow based on their role. Those who engage and participate thrive, their performance improves and continually optimizes very quickly. Those who fight it, play the pocket veto, and give you the grin fuck don't fare well. Interestingly, it is not infrequent that a Sr. leader who was supportive of the effort or even was an exec sponsor, bales out at the point where locking in the new culture is happening. Those organizations ultimately crash and burn because the members of the organization see that Sr. leadership is not all in on the change and in fairly short order everything goes back to the way it was before. DH is likely the weak link in all of this. If the two of you spine up, set your 13-SKidults straight, and enforce the new norm it can have incredible results. If DH backs off, or if you back off ,the crap will return with a vengeance.
One of the companies I consulted with on these efforts for a decade made $Billions with the improvements we developed, implemented, and continually optimized. Then they had a Sr. Exec change and chose to retrench to their historic processes and practices. They no longer exist at the level they once did. The company has in large part been broken up, or absorbed by formerly much smaller competitors. It is truly sad. The leaders who worked together to deliver the incredible improvements are all in contact and we get together periodically. There is invariably a sad toast to what we did and to what was formerly a globally dominant competitor in its industry. It still exists as a shadow of what it once was.
Time to go full scorched earth on your DH's kids and let them know that they are full of shit, what reality is on balance between them and your own children, and do it in such an ass baring way that they will not make the mistake of trying their shit ever again.
It can end basically two ways. They pull their heads out of their asses and start behaving respectfully and reasonably. Or, they double down on their toxic bullying bullshit. If they take the GSkids and run, that is a form of the second outcome.
Either outcome frees you and DH to live your best lives together and to focus on the flavor of SKids who are a positive in your lives. Which is also the best revenge on the bullies who double down on toxic while taking their sadly cursed crotch products and running.
We each owe ourselves to live well. You and DH need to not allow each other to forget that. I suggest that together you attend the shower and make it clear if the B-day whiner whines, that sometimes big people/actual adults have to make decisions that others will not like and that the intent is to not miss another birthday. Of course future activities can get overcome by events and the fragile toxic Skid spawn will likely have to deal with disappointment upon occasion. Everyone does. It is a critical life lesson and a something that viable adults have to learn. So, facilitate their learning.
IMHO of course.
Take care of you.
Our version of this in our blended family journey has not been with Kids or SKids. It was my SS-32's SpermClan. Primarily the SpermGrandHag. She was hell bent on taking SS away from my DW when SS was at toddler. It gook a full frontal zero tolerance scorched earth court battle to end that. She chose the stay toxic approach after that. Which ultimately cost her and the SpermClan any consideratio from or relationship with my son. Yes, MY son. I raised him starting when he was 2yo and he asked me to adopt him when he was 22yo. The toxicity continually perpetrated by the SpermClan led by SpermGrandHag kept us front, center, and smacking them in the face with a rolled up copy of the CO any and every time they stepped out of line. Our primary learning in all of this was that the side with the firmest commitment to their outcome wins. For the sake of the SKids, GSkids, etc, etc, etc... that has to be the quality side.
You and DH are the quality side in this shit show. Never forget that. Gird your loins, grow a spine, and tolerate nothing less than your SKids behaving as reasonable adults. Nothing less. Ever.
It is not easy, it is not pleasant when it has to be done, but it does deliver the best outcome for the two of you, the SKidults, and the GSKids.
It was a long brutal battle with just one SKid. I have no doubt that with 13 it will require a level of commitment to your own best lives well lived that I cannot even imagine. But, IMHO it has to be done.
Sincere regards,
Rags
It's interesting that your
It's interesting that your step grands adore you when their parents show animosity toward you. Often, the parents will pass that animosity down to their kids, expecting the kids to "get on board."
It's normal to feel depressed when there is so much family chaos. How can you and DH sort this out? What needs to change? More importantly, what needs to be said? We need to take care of ourselves, too! It means speaking up for ourselves, as they say, "even if your voice shakes."
Some of the sgks go on lake
Some of the sgks go on lake trips w/ us w/o their parents. The best bonding time ever.
I have a ton more energy than my DH so I'm the one always on the floor playing with them. We use our imagination in play whereas when I'm busy cooking or such, they are usually on their iPads.
I hang with the gks more than the adult SKs. It's not all of them that are rude to my face. It's my SD and SDIL. They all rally around those two though.
The circling the wagons in defense of the toxic SD & SDIL
The circling the wagons in defense of the toxic SD & SDIL is intriguing.
I'm guessing that is due to the toxic SD and SDIL having intimidating influence over the rest.
My IL clan tried this early in my zero tolerance for their shit years though it had an inherent weakness in that they had a revolving system where someone would be in what I call the "shitbird seat". The primary instigators would give the shitbird seat occupant the grin hug in public with the eye rolling, snarky comments, side eye glares, under the breath comments, and would attempt to build inertia of isolation and humiliation against the target of the moment with the rest of the family. When the shitbird of the moment was not present, it was game on and they would be shredded first by the instigator and then increasingly by everyone else.
Then I became an outlaw when I married the eldest of my MIL and FILs 4 children. Things were great until BIL1 married his bovine bride who is beyond toxi and manipulative. That is when the shitbird sead crap started. Over years it amplified to the point that my DW would come home from visiting her family in tears. That is when I was done and went rip out their throats instantly on all of them when they pulled that crap. Over the next several years a binary existance evolved. The well behaved version when I was present, and the rotating shitbird cycle when I wasn't. It took DW some time to reach rock bottom with them as she never played the shitbird seat games.
DW had caught the then not yet bovine bride to BIL1 lying and manipulating. She brought it up with her parents to try to gain some understanding of the situation since we never lived anywhere near her home town. FIL went at DW after that discussion to never do that again because it upset my MIL who has the most rampant cases of Ostrich Syndrome and The Emporer's New Clothes virus. Being being shitty does not bother her because she ingnores it, anyone pointing out shitty people being shitty breaks her delusions and she gets upset.
Not how I play the field in these situations. The difference is that when I am present no one plays their usual games. When DW visits without me, they ply their toxic shit wholesale.
The last of the un-evolved visits upset my DW so much that she was in tears over it in our hotel the last evening. I finally reached my limit and told her that I was done with her being in tears over her family and not doing anything about it. She gave an odd look, grabbed her phone, called BIL1 (her eldest younger sib) and directly asked BIL one and the bovine bride what their problem was. The fur was flying on that call. They then retrenched, backed out of their usual overt leadership of the shitbird cycle, and repackaged themselves as the victims. Like most who are asshats they have an insane unearned superiority complex. They isolated themselves from the family for a couple of years then called for a family meeting to air grievances. Rather than letting them turn it into expressing how hurt their fee fees were, I asserted that everyone would be at the table, no attacks would happen, no past crap would be discussed, and it would be about reconnecting and on how to move forward as a family without the usual drama. As the Sr. outlaw in my IL clan, and because I would not be present since i was overseas, I appointed myself the facilitator for the meeting and conferenced in on the phone from overseas. I wrote and published an agenda and ground rules. Of course the bovin bride tried to take it down the shiter to drive drama as was her usual prior to DW confronting her and BIL1 a couple of years before.
That family meeting ended up being the point that started some healing and evolution for my IL clan.
Decades later the bovine bride waffles between being the victim, being the instigator of crap, and pouting her way through family gatherings since when we are present no one tolerates her crap.
There was a period where the rest of DW's family would circle the wagon around BIL1's bovine bride which never ceased to baffle me as she was the noxious driver of toxicity who brutalized everyone else. When we made it clear that zero tolerance of her crap pulled her teeth, others in DW's family came to the realization that protecting her just got her close enough to eviscerate them brutally when she cycled from victim to brutal manipulator.
The point of my blather is, nothing changes if noting is done to change these situations. Instigators have to be destroyed continually until they stop instigating.
Meanwhile decades later and back at DW's home town, she enjoys visiting her family far more than was the case during the heyday of the shitbird seat bullshit.
You must understand
We all get PTSD from all of this. In one way or another. Venting is good
definitely!
definitely!
Just a few observations.
Just a few observations.
1. Don't paint every issue with the same brush.. Flu is rampant in the country.. you are fortunate that they are mindful enough of your health to not come if they may be ill. You would not believe the number of friends and family that I know that would not be so considerate. I understand disappointment in cancelled plans.. but don't pile this on your steplife wagon of woe.. it likely is really an illness that is preventing travel.
2. Why doesn't your husband (with you).. plan something pre-emptive regarding the grandchild's birthday? Plan a special brunch.. or lunch.. or trip for icecream during the trip.. with a gift for her (from your DH and you).. "so sorry we can't stay for little suzie's party on Sunday.. our plans have us going home Friday. I would love to take her out for a treat on Wednesday when we are here if that works for you."
approached
I sd "showers are once in a lifetime, birthdays are every year". "I already have so much penance " was the response. DH is in bed pissed w/o a good night
do not recommend blended families
I am a broken family with three adult children at my side. Two of my four step families of my DH are also blended.