You sound like a smart lady Kathline --

Please stick around, because as you have noticed, we're out-numbered. Or at least, out-vocalized.

I don't know, maybe I'm one of those angry, resentful people you are talking about!!! However, my immediate reaction to your post is that in my wildest dreams I will never aspire to be the awesome self-proclaimed saint that you are. I bow down and submit to your authority, wisdom and righteousness. It must be really hard to balance that HUGE crown on your fair haloed head. Congratulations, all in all you made one person's day!!!!!

Bad day, Lonepiper?

Welcome and thanks for posting.....and please keep it up!

You appear to be a logical, loving, and fair-minded mother/SM. And it is true that we SMs can definitely use supportive and encouraging input from healthy SMs :))

LOL!! It's that obvious Sweeby??

Actually, you werent one of those I was thinking of, but obviously you saw something in my post that hit home.

You seem to be able to keep your feelings about the ex wife out of your relationship with the stepkids, although you have admitted a few times that it was affecting you negatively when she critisizes you, and your stepkids tell you what she says.

Your stepkids get attention by telling you what she says, and probably by telling her what you say. Kids do that and you cant change it. The less you react to what they say, the less often they will tell you. The payoff wont be there.

If I took to heart everything my skids tell me that their mom says, I would be a very upset person. My skids real mom hates their father and talks bad about him all the time, or so the skids say. I choose not to let that affect my life, and I have helped my husband learn to not let it affect his life. Interestingly, she doesnt talk bad about me. Husband and I do not respond in any way when incorrect, bad things may be said. It serves no purpose, except to stir bad feelings.

I think she makes some huge mistakes, but she isnt me , and its not my right to tell her what I think she is doing wrong. They are her kids. Kids are smarter than we give them credit for. They are perfectly able to deal with different lifestyles and rules in two different households. What kids hate is the way parents try to force them to choose to love one of them and not the other, and parents who do that tend to have the weaker relationship with the children as adults. If the real mom really is an idiot, the kids will see it for themselves someday, and react in whatever fashion makes it comfortable for them. Same thing if the idiot is the father, or one of the step parents. It all sorts out in the end.

The only thing you can do is be a duck and let it all slide off. It doesnt really matter if she hates you. it doesnt matter if she thinks you are evil incarnate and horrible. All that matters is what YOU think about yourself and whether or not y our stepkids are comfortable and happy with you as you are. Her opinion doesnt matter unless you let it bother you, and if you do, after a while , the anger and resentment that you feel over it WILL spill over to other people, and cause problems with your marriage , your family, and your self esteem.

What someone else who doesnt live in your house feels about you is relatively unimportant unless you make it important. As for me, I give other people's opinions of me all the consideration they deserve... :)

I tend to defend the "perceived" underdog. I know there are a few who are at the end of their ropes, who just need a sympathetic shoulder to rest on. They may be hurt, confused, angry or shaken, everything I have been at certain times in my life. I felt like you were attempting to rub their noses in their current, perhaps unpleasant, situations. Unforunately, in my attempt to protect, I inadvertently attacked. Okay, okay, so it wasn't inadvertent!! Sweeby hit it right on the head! I was wrong and I apologize for my intentional sarcasm.

LOl, will it help if I admit that back before I learned to let it go, there were many many times I wanted to rip the real mom a new one, and wouldnt have felt badly if she had stepped in front of a bus?

I think everyone here feels they are the underdog. Before i got divorced, it seemed to me that any of my divorced friends got the raw side of the deal. I thought it was just becuase my friends were nice people. Now i dont know whatI think.

No kidding kkny.

Every situation has two sides and there usually is no real underdog, only different problems and different points of view.

I am sure my ex husband feels that he got shafted in the divorce. I certainly feel that I did.

Every story you hear, is one side of a bigger picture, coloured by the perception of the person who is telling it. If there is anything I have learned in life, its that we all tend to see things in the best possible light for ourselves, and the worst possible light for other people, particularly people that we feel have wronged us.

Thats not to say that we dont have real valid grievances. People DO hurt us. They DO wrong us. And sometimes one person has a much greater share of the blame for a situation than the other.

It helps to be objective and not take it all at face value. If you talk to my husbands friends, they would have one interpretation of our divorce. If you talk to my friends, it would be a different one.

In reality, both of us made huge mistakes and didnt handle things the way we should have.

just ramblin.......

It does help!! Here's my confession... I used to wish I was driving the bus when it hit her!!! Ahhh, reminiscing about the good ole days always brings a smile to my face!! LOL!!

Thank you for being gracious and understanding.

I think you have a wise and constructive attitude, and it can't be easy to keep it up. Ditto to you, Sweeby, notwicked, and many others. I am really impressed by your maturity in what I know is a difficult situation. I don't recall who is a SM, who is a BM, and who is both or neither, by the way.

I only know I notice that the people who are unhappy and bitter are not the BMs or the SMs in general at all -- they are the ones who see only or primarily their own point of view. Me, me, me, I, I, I -- what *I* am entitled to, who disrespected ME, what this situation is like for ME.

Certainly everyone needs to vent from time to time, and a forum like this is an excellent place to do it without fallout in the family. I'm not talking about that -- I am talking about the people who play out their me-me-me resentments with their real families.

The OP hit it right on the head with this observation:
"If I just wanted to run down the real mom, I could fill several pages, and I am sure she could fill several pages in return. How would that in any way make my marriage better, my children both birth and step more secure, and how would it solve anything? I think some of you need to just grow up and stop putting yourself first."

Raising children is tough. Being a kid is tough. Divorce is tough. Remarriage is tough. Put them all together, and it's easy to see that it is IMPOSSIBLE to meet everyone's needs all the time. It's impossible even without divorce and remarriage, by the way -- every marriage and every parent-child relationship has its struggles. And divorce and remarriage are tough on kids, even in the best of circumstances; I think it is really unfair to forget that and think only of whether they are giving all the adults the respect that they deserve. Unless you live all alone, you will always have to compromise -- or you will always feel victimized. Like the poster who didn't talk to her stepdaughter for years because she and her husband were seated in the second row at his daughter's wedding, along with his family, and the bride's mom and her family were in the first row -- oh, and she didn't get a corsage. I mean, come ON! I'm not saying she shouldn't have felt hurt, even though many people might not; she may be very sensitive or something. But to punish everyone like that, for years, over something so silly and small? I think that takes narcissism to whole new levels. (And she wonders why her stepdaughter doesn't like or respect her! Sheesh, would you?)

The happy people I see around me are the ones who have learned to forget themselves for awhile; to think about other people's needs and desires, and to let them come first most of the time; to let little slights and disappointments go and not read insult and malice into everything. It's hard, it takes experience and confidence, and I know I have a VERY long way to go to be as serene as I hope to be someday. But people like the posters on this string give me hope, with the good example they set. Thank you all for that.

"Here's my confession... I used to wish I was driving the bus when it hit her!!!"
You can't be driving the bus when I'M driving the bus, lonepiper!! :-)

"It doesn't really matter if she hates you. It doesn't matter if she thinks you are evil incarnate and horrible. All that matters is what YOU think about yourself and whether or not y our stepkids are comfortable and happy with you as you are. Her opinion doesn't matter unless you let it bother you, and if you do, after a while , the anger and resentment that you feel over it WILL spill over to other people, and cause problems with your marriage , your family, and your self esteem."
Kathline, you've hit my nail on the head as this is something I've truly struggled with. I have tried for years as the wife of the CP and the "primary motherer" (for lack of a better description) to have some form of a relationship with my SD's mom as I thought it would be best for SD if we were all unified in raising her. For every attempt I made to include her or involve her she met me with ugly words and hostility. I tried harder. She seemed to be warming toward the idea and even preferred communicating with me over her ex, but then it all went downhill again. I kept trying, thinking there was something I could do to help SD and mom's troubled relationship, help us all get along, make us one big Brady Bunch family. I would make myself sick over the things she said to my SD about her, me, dad, etc.

It wasn't until pretty recently that what Kathline (and my DH, many times!) said really hit home. I couldn't change her. I couldn't change how she treated my SD, me, or anyone else. I could only change how I let it effect me. This doesn't mean I'm all over it, but I am learning to let it roll off. I think this is helped by the fact that my SD, now 12, is seeing in her mother what we have seen for a long time - a selfish, self absorbed, unhappy woman who will take down whomever she needs to bring herself up. I now have to worry a bit less about how SD will react, as she seems to be handling herself pretty well. I just have to live without the Brady Bunch theme song.

Good post, Kathline. Well said.

In the Brady Bunch, as I recall, there were no stepparents. And it was TV. Both Dad and Mom's first wife/husband had died. I think that those families may have their own problems too, but they are different. So very few people here are going to be Brady Bunch families.

Well actually .... in the brady bunch the dad was a widower and mom was divorced with an absent parent....(he came back in one episode) and as soon as they got married each parent became mom and dad they did not refer to each other at steps.

The parents also slept in separate beds the first season.

They also had a maid so Carol wasn't put in that position. Both parents handed out discipline didn't matter whose kids they were .... They showed a united front.

They had fake grass, one bathroom no toilet.

Do you want me to go on? Ok

All the kids went on the honeymoon they were with Alice but they missed their parents so Alice brought them on the honeymoon .... Tiger the dog disappeared so did fluffy the cat. They both went on the honeymoon too.

Greg gave up his room so the girls could have a room. With out complaint... until he was older and moved into the attic and of course the time spent in Dad's office.

Bobby got upset about not being the youngest anymore .... cindy got upset she was still the baby.

Do you really want me to go on?

I hate tv now... could care less if it ever went on again.... :-) but as a kid TV was my best friend.

Sorry .... full of useless info ... :)

Sherwood Schwartz, the series' creator, has given numerous interviews in which he has said that Mike was originally created as a widower and that Carol was supposed to be divorced. However, when ABC refused to allow Carol to be described as divorced Schwartz said he made all references to her previous marriage deliberately vague. Schwartz also has said that he always considered Carol divorced. Despite Schwartz's intentions, the series was described to the public as the marriage of a widow and widower. Consider this excerpt from the 1969 "Fall Preview" issue of TV Guide:
This season's widows-and-widowers epidemic reaches an inevitable climax in The Brady Bunch. Widow (Florence Henderson) marries widower (Robert Reed, late of The Defenders), and they live happily -- if frenetically -- ever after.

Good grief! The Brady thing was an attempt at humor as they were the first blended family that came to mind!! It was not intended to be a debate - can a girl not make a joke around here??

Thanks a lot...now I have the theme song from the Brady Bunch stuck in my head. Its your fault if I go to the grocery store today and sing to myself in the aisles.

Guessing the episode with bobby ... feeling like his "mom" was going to end up beig a "wicked stepmother" and "evil stepsisters". After he watched a movie or read a book ... not sure which one.

I still intended it to be a joke :) ... come on ... 9 people and no toilet ......

Eight is enough widower, stepmother was a widow too.

Andy griffith .. ?? widower?? but he did date. But Opie had his aunt to take of him.

Step by Step ... no clue what happens with their spouses. But they came home vacation married.

Yours mine and ours (one of my favorite movies)

Drake and Josh (nickelodeon)
Life with derek (nickelodeon)
Life with Ryan (MTV)

On bonanza didn't all three brothers have different mom's?

Maude her hubby wasn't daughters father ... can't remember his name but I know she called him by name.

this will drive me nutz all day thinking of shows with steps widows or widowers single parents ...

thanks :) Keeps my mind of other dumb things ... I'll be back again with a list I am sure I can come up with somemore.

Oh ... Like with the kardashians ...bruce jenner step dad ... your mine and ours situation although most of the kids are older and they extremely wealthy can't relate to them.

At least Reba's divorced...
Who else?

Oh, good cow, now you have me doing it.

My Three Sons -- widower
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir -- widow
One Day at at Time -- divorcee (that was sort of the point)
The Courtship of Eddie's Father -- widower (I think)
What was Julia? I think widowed.

I think I remember hearing that originally the character Mary Richards on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was supposed to have been divorced, but they changed her to never-married when they decided that people would be too freaked out at the idea of Rob and Laura Petrie, from "The Dick Van Dyke Show," having gotten a divorce!

It seemed like the main character, especially the "princesses," in almost every Disney cartoon movie that came out while my kids were growing up had a father but not a mother: Belle, Ariel, Jasmine, Pocahontas. No explanation. But then again, there was also no explanation for why the middle-aged characters usually had British accents and the young ones sound all-American.

But has to interact with TOW on a daily basis.... eeks ...

And when teenage daughter becomes difficult to deal with she goes to live with dad and step mom ...

Two and half men..... divorced dad weekend custody.

Most I could remember were widowers or dead beat dads.

Alice was a widow. Flo had many flings no kids.

Grace under fire was divorced bad hubby .... welfare to gainfully employed. Without any help from deadbeat dad.

Capt Stubbings daughter was from an affair if I remember right.

One day at a time ... divorced .. not sure if ex was even mentioned.

The Hogan's mom (valerie harper) was killed off and dad gave up his job with the airlines.

the show with Rerun... sister didi.. brother roger Mom was a divorcee with a dead beat dad.

Life with eddie?? (bill bixby) single dad ... raising son alone ... widower I am guessing 70's didn't deal much with divorce.

Suite life of zack and cody ... dad's gone too. Shows up plays disney dad and gone again.

reba divorced got OW pregnant while separated... teenage pregnancy.

all about us ... show started they were seperated he was dating later divorced and married the GF.

New adventures old christine ... new perky second wife same name .... (never watched) but that was the impression I got from the title

Partridge family .... divorced or widowed?

Kate and ally ... 2 divorced mom's struggling to get along co-habitating.

Punky brewster ... adoptive family

Silver spoons ... I believe widower ... or ex would have had some cash.

Different strokes ... adoptive family

Gimme a break ... widower with a maid.

Full house ... widower ... uncle and friend help care for the kids.

The nanny .... widower?