When you feel that you don’t have a voice

Several years ago, when my stepson was 18 and living at home, my relationship with him was very strained. The reasons why aren’t important, but needless to say it was a very difficult time. My husband was caught between us – one minute finding his own relationship with his son strained, but the next minute, understandingly, defending his child when I complained about the same behaviours. Things were pretty tough, and I started feeling that I didn’t want to be at home in the warzone that felt like it was trip-wired. We were fighting all the time, and frankly the whole machine, which included another two children at home (plus four cats and two dogs), was likely to implode. Thankfully I wasn’t working at the time so not financially independent, which probably delayed the decision to call it quits.

Despite plenty of affirmative conversations between my husband and his son about moving out, nothing happened. That is until the inevitable happened – a blow up of nuclear proportions between my stepson and me. Unpleasant for all. And so he moved out.

He was not abandoned. He had choices. He could have moved in with his mother, and other family members offered to take him in too. Living in our house was not his only option and he was not sent to live on the streets. His father supported him financially and emotionally. It’s simply that I couldn’t live with him any longer.

One of the things that I found really hard was the feeling of disapproval and judgement that I sensed from some family and friends. I think the impression among some was that I should have been more tolerant of the situation because all children have a right to live in the family home until they choose to leave. But not if the family home has disintegrated! Despite the disapproval, no one in the extended family asked me about my experience or what had led to my stepson moving out. No one asked how I was doing after the extended period of stress. Not a one.

Why? My take is that most people’s default analysis is that stepmothers’ decisions are motivated by the need to exclude the biological children from their father’s lives. How often do you hear people perpetuating the evil stepmother stereotype? My point is that there are always two sides to a story. As a stepmother in this situation, I don’t know what I could have done differently except perhaps to gently raise my feelings about the difficulty of the situation with friends and family instead of staying silent. Perhaps it’s even more important for stepmothers to proactively use their voice – albeit in a careful way – when the default perception is negative.