Last week I wrote a mega-entry about the last month or so, kind of summarizing for my own mind and organizing my thoughts about what has happened in the last month since I found Step Talk and read Stepmonster. I explained the Big Conversation I had with SO about how it wasn’t so much his daughter that was bothering me, but his guilty/permissive parenting and his putting the whims/manipulations of a 6 year old ahead of our relationship, plus giving our relationship some priority. I thought that he got part of the message, yet part of it he construed as me being jealous of a child, even though that is not what I was getting at. Still, I thought I’d continue to give the relationship a chance, whereas prior to finally getting it out there in the open, I was starting to think it was hopeless.

Well, another decent weekend went by and it has given me more hope. Not only did we have his daughter, but his 14 year old son decided to stay with us, which is rare given his teenage social life. He had a friend sleep over, we wound up getting kind of stuck with the daughter’s friend sleeping over, and both my kids were home…meaning we had 6 kids in the house. Feeling as good as I have been lately about SO’s enlightened attitude, I found it in me to be the hostess with the mostest (rather than disengaged) and cranked out the chicken nuggets, fries, pizza, and ice cream, as well as come up with a bunch of games.

It went well, but what went even better was SO and myself. One of my complaints had been that it was like we had these two separate, parallel lives (his responsibilities and kids/my responsibilities and my kids). Saturday morning before any of kid-a-palooza even started he said he wanted to check in with me about our schedule through the weekend because he wanted us to include each other in decisions, which is one of the things I mentioned in our Big Conversation. I did wind up going to work for awhile (mild disengagement), but afterwards we did some errands together, which doesn’t sound that exciting, but it was huge that we did them TOGETHER. As in alone, together, the two of us. Since my daughter is old enough to babysit, we were able to leave his daughter at home (by his choice, not mine) and both avoid her whining/complaining that is inevitable in the car or store and spend an hour together.

Before we were even in the house after returning from the errands, his daughter came running out to the driveway, crying that my son and his son’s friend had hurt her feelings. Instead of fawning all over her, SO told her to ignore the boys and find something to do away from them. She crawled under the kitchen table and proceeded to cry and pout there. SO ignored her. I went and told my son that she was little and not his sister, so even if she was annoying to him, it wasn’t right to make her feel bad. I told SO I spoke to my son and SO said his daughter needed to get thicker skin. Basically, while he was nice to her and loving to her throughout the weekend, he did not treat her like visiting royalty. It felt like a freakin’ miracle!

Then, partway through the evening SO pulled me into his workshop area to just hang out and listen to music. He said he needed a break from the kids (meaning his daughter since all the other kids were too involved in other stuff to bother with him) and he thanked me for everything I had been doing for the kids that day and night. And then…even though it had been a point of contention in our Big Conversation…he said he wants the two of us to go away for a weekend with no kids. He made it sound like it was his idea, but I am so fine with that. He said he didn’t care if we only went one town over- just that we need some time together. At this point I don’t even care if we get to…I’m just so glad he sees the importance and the need for it.

We talked a little bit more about him making us a priority. He did make a little comment about me not “having a fit” if something important were to come up in the future about his kids. Ouch- is that what he thinks? I reiterated that I wasn’t referring to not letting important things come before us, but not letting his daughter getting her own way about some minor thing come before us. I think he got that, but we’ll see…

So that just leaves me with mild concern that he’s trying to placate me for the wrong reasons, albeit with good intentions. He is pretty desperate for the relationship to not end. I don’t want him to go around thinking he is sacrificing something with his kids just to keep me happy. But I feel pretty good about us right now, so maybe if I just keep these conversations going with him we’ll actually come to understand each other.

Like I said before, writing all this out helps me wrap my mind around what is going on, what I can do differently, and what I should do next. And mainly this time, I want to let other SMs know that maybe in some situations there is some hope…

Meanwhile, we got his daughter an extra night last night (surprise at 9:00pm) because of crazy crap going on at BM’s house- visit from the sheriff type crap. But that’s another story…