Dear Stepfamilies

Thank you so much for sending us such heartfelt letters over the years. A lot of pain and isolation can come with stepfamily life and it’s important that you know you’re not alone. As the founders of this site, Erin and me have benefited tremendously from reading both the letters and comments. Sadly, it’s time for both of us to move on to our next projects. We will keep the site up with the current letters, but we will not be posting any new ones. And we are not allowing comments any more, either. If you’ve just found this site, read through them all. We hope you find what you need.

We hope that you and your families find a way to peace. Best of luck to you all.

Best wishes,

Jacque and Erin

Dear Bitter Ex Wife, Thorn in My Side,

This letter represents an important part of a letting-go ritual that I have initiated to heal/move on from your unhealthy, unproductive habits and insincere, abusive demeanor arising from your ongoing enmeshment with your first husband, and from a vicious triangle that was the by-product of poor boundaries between you, him, and the “formerly-gullible” new wife…me.   Tomorrow I am heading into a frightening gauntlet of tests and surgeries, several states away, to try to prolong and/or save my life.  I write this to make it clear where I stand, now and forever, while letting go of any resentments toward you for never having a chance to embrace the fullness of life freely with my husband, largely as a result of your spinelessness, dishonesty, and lies.  I wish you the very best in contending with the insecurities that caused you to treat me so despicably.  I leave you to your life, wherever it shall bring you; after this letter, I walk on in peace, wherever fate may lead.

Although you may freely choose to deny the truth, though you may deflect and throw painful realities about this blended family failure into some trash can, inside the dark, subconscious crevices of your black-and-white-thinking frame, this letter shall remain, beyond my passing, a testament, a footprint of my visibility in a realm of non-fiction, as well as a tribute to my honesty and inner strength.  I remain a viable and radiant woman worthy of respect, and therefore shed the role of “Patsy” in your unrelenting, warped, limited worldview, a universe in which family is defined by “blood relatives,” which you alone seem to have been able to control and manipulate cunningly for years, via a myopic, controlling, and matriarchal perspective.  I no longer permit you to malign the reputation of anyone I care about, for it is the unsavory actions that YOU chose which alone led to the demise of your marriage.  I will no longer be the butt of years of lies, slander, gossip, fiction-making, either in your church, in the community, or through the catalyst of my husband and your wonderful sons, who I have always loved deeply, unconditionally, and as if they were my own blood, without any expectation or recognition that I have ever existed in their lives at all.  In spite of malice, I have given love invisibly, as a catalyst, one who would never be considered by you as worthy of existing as a mother, never mind as one who has helped tirelessly, behind the scenes, to mitigate damage left by your behavior.  Case in point:  About a year ago, your son was brave enough to invite me to an event that was important to him, for the first time, knowing that doing so would incur your wrath, hatred, and rejection of his father from participating in things that are healthy for him.  You responded by blaming his father, citing that he “forced” your son to invite me.  At the age of 22, certainly sons are capable of making healthy decisions for themselves.  In addition, your unprofessional demeanor with another woman, discussing problems with second wives in front of an entire IEP team, was unconscionably unprofessional, embarrassing, and oogy.

As a wife, I WILL never again tolerate remaining in the role you’ve manufactured for me of invisibility, allowing myself to be twisted by your words into a fiction of “other woman” through catty gossip to your church circle so that you can deliberately use lies to deflect people from seeing your long-term hidden truth, which is this:

YOU chose to end your marriage in 2004 by cheating on your husband, physically/emotionally or BOTH, which is the reason he is no longer with you.  Even as you confessed to him that the only reason for your separation after over 20 years of marriage was to fulfill your desire for intimacy with another man (his own best friend), a false pretense became the ONLY excuse that you would use to dump your loving husband, without any warning or explanation two ½ years before I met him.  Even as he felt hurt and confused, it took him nearly a year to find the courage to move out of his house with you; he is the most kind, loving, loyal human you never realized you had, but who you have dismissed callously away in the detritus of your fear of love.

It is most painful to him, since you never apologized nor realized how kind and unassuming he was, that he now has to protect cautiously within, all those gifts he used to give so openly to you.  As a result of your clever manipulative machinations, I may never have the grace of experiencing from him (or any man, ever, for that matter), ALL the beautiful things he offered to you from his loyal, devoted essence that you ignored for over twenty years.  I never earned that.  You alone squashed his essence, his creativity, and his spirit, to the degree that I have worked, like a dog, every day, to breathe life and love back into him.  In short, you traumatized him emotionally so his chances to trust another woman would be ruined. He was so enmeshed with the idea of what he’d given to you so innocently, he couldn’t handle the pain of actually seeing that what you were doing to him was deliberately emotionally controlling and dismissive for years.  Instead, he chose to see you as merely needy, depressed, and deserving of placating, mostly because he feared for the safety of his sons.    His purity in love kept him from seeing your insincerity, manipulative and emotionally abusive nature, and you used his best qualities to cheat on him, to manipulate him, and lastly, to demoralize him for having the courage to walk on.  You never said you believed that he loved you, but you never saw that his spirit and his love were purer than you’d ever earned from him.  That’s why he was so excited to share with you that he’d met someone as like-minded to him as me!  You threw that back down his throat, too.

You’ve called him blind on so many occasions that now he thinks he cannot see.  Today, he begins the long process of mourning, while also blossoming into the essence I once saw immediately, through the same evolutionary grace that brought him to me on May 7, 2006- he was akin to a Phoenix, brave enough to transcend the ashes of your warped worldview and unrealistic expectations of everyone.  Only now, after letting the dysfunctional relationship go, is he truly free to rediscover all the squelched down parts in all the lost dark recesses of his years with you.   Just remember:  No one has the right to mourn the loss of a thing tossed away.

Even as you announced at the end of marriage that you wanted to have (or continue without guilt) a secret affair back in 2004, even more than you wanted to work at the goal of intimacy with your husband, you also wanted to ensure that you could “use” and “keep” your innocent husband tied to your apron strings, on the way out, as you simultaneously kicked his soul callously to the curb.

One wonders:   How can anyone manage to do this?  Some would say that anyone who could do this “must” be extraordinarily intelligent; however, the definition of intelligence REQUIRES that one possess the nature to follow the Golden Rule.  In terms of the goal of using an affair to win your marriage back, your choices demonstrate ample evidence that you are truly devoid of intelligence, sincerity and integrity.  Well, I give you this:  you are savvy, snakelike, sneaky, and obsequious.  You convinced him, with veiled threats, to stay in your house in 2004, by holding his authentic love for your sons up as bait, for several months after your surprise attack- the revelation of your indiscretion.  Years before I met him, you maintained power over his right to see his kids while also ensuring his services as cleaning man, father and chauffeur, working at home full-time.  He remained at your beck and call for as long as he could tolerate this insanity, and/or finally give up on the idea of ever getting the likes of you back.  Even as he has always brought in full-time pay, has always been successful, brilliant, and more educated than you, you’ve treated him as if he were a lousy housewife, as if the amazing work he did never counted.  Even as you’ve always only worked part-time, for full-time pay, all you ever did was complain about what a rotten, lousy deal of a job you had.  You resented my musicianship, my creativity, capacity to transcend, and my fearlessness to use my skills to share with the world.  You used the mere threat of going into a severe depression every time he asked you if it was time to leave you or tell the boys the truth; this was a conscious ploy that you used to keep his truth about the separation to his sons at bay,  while keeping your lover and husband solely under your control and “in check.”  And while he worked, he also raised and cared for the kids; he cleaned your dishes, clothing, created beautiful rock gardens, wiped your windows and fixtures, while honoring your unreasonable post-separation edict that your sons were not to be told about the separation, for nearly eight months, all to uphold your fake family facade as a show for the “neither-open-nor-spiritual” community you once both shared.

In 2005, You and he agreed in writing that it was time to move on (romantically and otherwise), and so this sounded effortless for you (because you already had rejected him- behind his back!)   But when HE moved on with his life later, you changed the rules of the game, insisting that you, he, and your sons (and, of course your boyfriend, depending on whether or not he was “on the in” or “on the out” that particular week) remain the only family to whom he was to ever stay loyal.  You convinced him that to remain in a contrived role as part of an “intact” family (as if you could always pretend to stay married forever, without the sex, leaving the next poor woman dupe with all the carnal duties but no space for belonging or emotional connection), was the only “healthy” choice for your sons as they burgeoned into adulthood.  You refused to allow anyone “in” that you did not deem “appropriate,” according to your world view.  If he decided to reject your limited definition of family, you would merrily say that he was welcome to come to any holiday gathering, but that only HE would ever be welcome, forever and ever, Amen.  Dumping him from your family was, as you would say in the end, “his loss,” even as you treated him as if he were a leper when he chose to spend holidays with me, punishing him cruelly for the “error” of loving “someone” like me, a once successful, talented and sincere person of deep openness, wisdom, purity and integrity.  Rejecting him was your loss, to your community, to him, to my chances for love, and to all of our beautiful children.

Two and a half years after you started an affair with my husband’s friend to justify separation (without working on any of the issues in the marriage), I entered (completely clueless as to the enmeshment), into this warped picture.  As your affair was expertly hidden prior to my arrival, and as your husband was so loving and kind to everyone, you took liberties with others’ rights by turning rabid, pointing the blame finger at me, blabbing to everyone you knew, including your ex, “as if” I were some kind of dangerous interloper, and then by bringing your boyfriend imperceptibly into the visible world, lamely making it appear falsely as if I came into the picture before your long-term boyfriend did!  This was all insane.  When I met your ex, I was free, single, and ready for a real relationship.  Aside from the enmeshment, he seemed eager to move on, and as part of the goal of creating a healthy, blended family, to introduce me to you.  In the meantime, he was too frightened of your taking away contact with his sons to seize the courage to stand up to you when you rejected me, to call you on your cheating ways or to set any boundaries; he ALWAYS chose to put his needs second to yours, third to his boys, and fourth to my own, which of course you reveled in, thinking that his purpose was to give you hope that he’d come back to you.  He chose to remain a friend to your boyfriend, following each and every mandate of your lofty personage, served at your beck and call, whenever you needed him to drop everything and help you, or to accompany you to events, dinners, vacations and holidays.  So, for three years, you lived the life of Marie Antoinette, along with enjoyment of the contrived courtship of TWO men doting on you, one a full-time lover, the other a full-time father and best friend, all the while openly deceiving your family and community, and turning me and my beautiful daughter into a totally raunchy and wretched fiction. When I came into the picture frame, (after a year of your insisting that he “hide” me, and keep from being seen in public with him and you), you deliberately turned the church community against me by making up lies and gossip (I have independent confirmation on this).  You alienated and betrayed the friendship of your divorced husband by convincing your family, the one to which he used to belong, to be angry with him for some silly, contrived “wrongdoing” (for example, his daring to bring a book to one of your past boring family parties in which he was deliberately ignored – unless he was doing something to help out).  Even as you acted abysmally, after you finally deigned to meet me one night, at his house, he stood by your supposed “veracity” (which, by the way, I never saw any evidence of in 5 ½ years), and remained steadfast in the goal of blending our families, for the boys’ sake.  For two years, I was friendly to your family, even as they snubbed me for no reason.  I purchased gifts and cards for you; I helped your boys stay out of the fray of the enmeshment (to my own peril); I invited your friendship.  I worked diligently to respond kindly and to fire-stop your curt, nasty emails, no matter how many lies and meanness defined those letters. We hid the meanness you wrote from the boys; frankly, the more desperate you got to have your old “foursome” back, the more you put the kids in the middle, which was unconscionably unfair!  You already knew how some of your words might hurt, as you always intended them to maim, but I never let you know that fact.  At night, I cried, sitting alone in our new home, while he attended your obligatory family meetings to micromanage the sons, and to events at which your boyfriend and he were invited to carouse and break bread with your family, while I was left alone- this went on right up to the year of our marriage.  Over time, I could not swallow the unfairness, and became upset with my fiance, as he didn’t know how to set boundaries yet, and therefore could not protect me from your vindictiveness.  Yet, as moral human beings, he and I turned the other cheek; we let the lies zoom over our heads.  Gradually, however, I reached my last straw when you made up a lie that forced me to have to write to the pastor; I, and then my husband, dropped all connections with the church.  Competing with a rabid queen is not in my nature, particularly when dealing with spirituality, or in this community’s case, “so-called” spirituality.  Besides, as I am a musician, your refusal to allow me into “YOUR” choir (which you do not direct) was the tipping point; it was nauseating to sit and watch you sing every week, while I was told that I couldn’t join the most joyful aspect of church because you’d feel “mortified,” so I just gave up.  I’ve found more spirituality in books than in people, so I guess that was my very last attempt at joining any kind of community.

People’s cattiness can ruin the most sacred things, but it cannot sully truths.   Your main purpose in life is to fictionalize others while working to instigate trauma inside the mind as a means of power over, because I think you fear love; however, this behavior has become intractable.  Your gossip may be far reaching, but the four walls in which we reside are lined with love.

Yet I am no longer willing to remain invisible, as I am a respected member of my own home, and as wife to my new husband, no longer capable of waving goodbye with a fake smile and a bottle of wine spent alone, for every evening he used to run over to your house into the wee hours, or to the church, for small and large family dinners, weekly “family” meetings (notice how I was NEVER invited, nor considered “family”), chauffeur routines, random events, holidays, school meetings, picking up your cat barf on the floor, house sales, random cleaning events, including keeping all things sparkly perfect, (including those all-important condiment bottles), concerts, IEPs, random emails filled with bitterness and longing for what you called the “foursome.”  I will no longer invest in the false imagining that we will somehow become a happy family, even as I feel utterly confident that I have already tried more to befriend you than anyone would, and therefore, can now freely walk on without your hatred, your insinuations, and your covetous and manipulative nature; this will be better, in the long run, for all of us.

I’m weary, waiting for my husband to assimilate the years of trauma caused by you; he is scared of what repercussions may come, (should he stand up to your lies, slander and devious maliciousness in your letters and calls to him), to set some kind of boundary and limit on what you can do to continue to ruin my reputation, freedom, peace, my right to enjoy the second half of my life, and my capacity to build a community of my own with my man, who also happens to be the same person that has given every ounce of strength to raise his sons, with only complaints and lies from you in return for his undying love.

No one has the right to mourn the loss of a thing tossed away.

For awhile, I fell for the “stupid pet girlfriend trick” that led me into a trap:   that goal, insisted upon by you, was that I earn my way into becoming part of your resentful family, rather than for us to invite you to earn your way into our family.  Enmeshment kept me from being part of my right to belong to a a family since 2006.  When I finally did start to feel at home, and when he finally started feeling actually married to me, one year after our wedding, you decided to choose our first anniversary to send your latest round of poison pen letters, demand that he sit and listen to pages of your bitterness by phone, as he’d already told you if you abused us in writing again he would delete all the emails.  The last person I would EVER ask in this or any parallel universe to join my circle today would be you, not because you are an ex, but because you have been so blatantly and deliberately slanderous, insincere to me, and even more so to him. This has made courtship, marriage and newlywed life like walking through an unrelenting gauntlet of sharpened knives aimed at our backs.  I know you will smirk at reading this, thinking secretly to yourself that it brings you comfort to hear that our marriage has suffered because of your lies, but I also know that underneath that smirk lies a very sad, vulnerable person whose mask is a twisted, cracked identity.  Even as I feel deep sadness for the vulnerable person inside you, I can only forgive you if I have a safe space in which to speak the truth just once, while also keeping any contact with you to a bare minimum, for the sanity and health of our fragile, precious marriage.

One of the things that I am struggling to let go of today is why he let you do this to himself as well as to me and our new relationship.  Why did he choose to let you get away with emotional murder, during our entire time in courtship and dating, for so very long, without setting any boundaries? These facts sit heavily in my heart, as I face a likely terminal health prognosis.  All I have left in the ruins of a life lived with integrity is the right to speak, and to set the facts straight.  Sometimes, as Mom once wisely said, “It takes a long time for the dead bodies to float to the surface,” meaning that sometimes it takes a long time for the truth to emerge.  My only solace lies in that he and I honor family as it is meant to be, a growing, freely expanding entity.  For him to return to the same family that rejected his love because of your lies, should I die in the next year, would be a waste of his precious life.

Don’t hold your breath, even as I know that you do, as you’ve said so in plaintive letters to him.  I’ve done nothing to earn your rejection, so I know that eventually the truth of your life lived in contrivance and artifice will end up revealing itself to the world, along with your affair, your fake demeanor, and your blatant stupidity for never appreciating his value in your life. Your wooden nickel shall someday be revealed. God give me strength, for I must forgive what is unforgivable, endure what is untenable, all without the grace of a chance at a happy, healthy, evenly balanced marriage.   But yes, there is yet faith, but the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting.   I shall wait, as long as it takes. God give him strength to avoid you like the plague, and should I die, for me to have let go of your venom.  My life is precious, too.

As WH Auden said, “O wear your tribulation like a rose.”  That you will never understand.

Sincerely,

The Rose

Dear Teenage Stepdaughter – Boxing Day 2011

We have had an up and down relationship over the years.  You moved in with us and your step/half siblings when you were 11.  It was rough here and there but mostly we got along.  You finally had a mother figure you could trust emotionally and physically.  Then you became a teenager and started spending more time with your mother.  She worked on souring your relationship with your father and promoting disharmony with me.  When you were 14 you wanted to move back in with your mum.  We let you do so against our better judgement.  Now at 15, almost 16, you hate me and are ambivalent towards your father.  We weren’t sure you were going to come to Christmas Day here with us this year but you did.  We let you know that you could stay over too if you liked and to decide on the day.  I was apprehensive in the morning wondering how it was going to be.  Christmas with 6 kids is stressful enough without the moody, bitchy, ungrateful teenager you are at the moment.  I am writing this letter to tell you THANK YOU!  You were wonderful, it felt like old times.  I could see that you were having a good day and we so enjoyed the time that we all got to spend together as a family.  I know we probably won’t see you again for a while, even though you only live 5 minutes down the road.  We have told you our door is always open whenever you wish to come and visit/stay over.  I hope we do start to see each other more and am now feeling quietly confident, after yesterday, that with time we will get back on track again.  It’s a start my sweetheart.  You didn’t hate me yesterday so maybe it will become a permanent feeling?  I’m crossing all my fingers and toes that it does as I love you so much, you are more than my stepdaughter to me, you ARE my daughter.

Love from your Stepmother xxx

To Boyfriend

Honey,

I need to tell you this and let me say beforehand I’m so sorry for the things I put you through, our fights, my gripes, my complaints, my insecurities and jealous behavior- all of it.   The timing of when our relationship began has so much to do with it- I believe – but you don’t deserve to put up with it.  I know it’s exhausting for you, I know it makes you doubt our relationship and causes you to be unhappy, and I don’t want that for you.

Last night I couldn’t sleep, the night before I couldn’t sleep – this happens all the time on an on again/off again basis.  Last night was harder than most, I actually started crying in bed while you were asleep because the thoughts won’t go away.  It’s not just at night- it’s every day and a good percentage of the day at that.  Actually, when I don’t have these thoughts, it somewhat surprises me because they are so ever present in my life.  The thoughts consume me, many days and nights they overtake every bit of space I have in my brain, and I can’t think of anything else.  Last night I cried because I don’t understand why, and I cried because of how much I hate it and how pathetic it is to let someone else, someone’s past overtake me.  All I want to do is be happy, and think about our life together and how to enjoy and improve upon this, but I can’t.

I have heard from others that this is normal, and you can get past it.  Once we get married, once we have our own children the things that bother me so much about your past, will not bother me anymore.  Sometimes I think it’s me not having enough self confidence, me not being a strong enough person to look past this.  I feel helpless and trapped.  I have 7 stepmother books, I have spent more hours than I would like to admit scouring the internet looking for a solution from other women who have been in my shoes, I’ve read countless articles, befriended women that I don’t even know hoping that one of them might have the magic answer.  At night when I can’t sleep I even started praying – begging God to give me peace and take these thoughts away- but so far, God hasn’t granted my prayer.

I love you, there is no question of this, but not a day goes by that I don’t wish things were different.  Many times I feel like I’m forcing myself to accept something that I just can’t accept.  I try to figure out exactly what I am so upset by, but there is no way to pinpoint one item besides making a general statement of- your past.

Are things really that bad for me given the circumstances?  No.  I have found during my extensive research that so many women have it so much worse than me.  If this is so, then why am I having so many problems?  Why can’t I be happy?

So, what’s the answer?  Leave the person I love and the two little boys I have worked so hard to build a relationship with?  Leave the boys to wonder what happened to me and wonder why I’m not there teaching them to tie their shoes, make them breakfast, and give them hugs and kisses at night?  No, I’m not ready to do this so I will continue to my search to find a solution.

I’m not ready to give you this letter, and I may never give this to you but wish you could understand, even a little, the depth of my pain.  Thank you for trying, thank you for changing so much about yourself to accommodate my needs and desires, thank you for letting me be in your children’s life.

I love you

Dear BM

I wish I could help you. I wish I could heal your pain. I wish I could make you understand the boundaries we have had to put up are not about you as a person, but protections for us based on your past actions.

You don’t see it, I know. You are unable to look at your past words and actions and acknowledge that they have led us to where we are today.  You can see that you have done wrong, but do not see the logical consequences those wrongs have had on my emotions and relationship, and why it is now necessary that we protect ourselves from you even in this small way

You mean to be kind, I think, but you are a manipulator. You are selfish. You cannot separate your child’s needs from your desires.  These are part of your character and I am learning to accept them. I have flaws, too. I am stubborn to a fault.  I am possessive. I will argue for the sake of arguing.  I hate to be wrong.

And even with both of our flaws, things have gotten better – immensely better between us.  I am impressed. You impressed me.  And you have earned back a small amount of the respect you had lost over the past few years.  I am glad you have chosen to be more present in your child’s life. I am thrilled you have begun to help him with school work, and that, while you do not encourage his relationship with me, you no longer bluntly discourage it.  And my husband and I DO appreciate the gesture you are attempting to make by getting us a gift.  I am sorry, so so sorry, that we cannot accept it at this point in time.  Too many of your gifts have been manipulations or underhanded.  Too many of your holiday focuses have been on the first family that never existed, to the exclusion of me and my relations.

As the Trojans would have said if they had survived. We’re sorry. You may be genuine but we have seen too many horses.  We will admire your generosity from afar.

I wish I could ease your emotions in this, and let you know how much we appreciate the changes you have been making.  But I know that nothing we say will even be heard, let alone believed, in your present state.  So I will stay silent.

But I am hurting, watching you. I am hurting knowing that this boundary has destroyed some of the connections we have made over the past several months.  I take responsibility for that and stand by my decision, but I am not stoic at all.  And I empathize with your anger at being excluded, even though we cannot change our decision because our family, which you are not a part of, does come first and we believe we are protecting it.

But I hope.

I hope you are strong enough to continue past the pain and someday try again.  I have done so in the past and I know it is possible. And I hope that in the future our boundaries can be lessened, and that the reminders when they are crossed become less and less painful for us both.  I hope that we will rebuild at some point and continue moving forward.

I have lost that hope in the past, but truly, we have come further than I ever thought possible.  And while I will accept the responsibility if we never get back to what we had a month ago, I believe that someday you will overcome your hurt. And I believe that someday I will overcome my fear.  We are both strong women.  We do not have to like each other or agree to work together.

And we have already proven that once, so I know anything is possible.

I wish you a Merry Christmas.  Truly, from the bottom of my heart. And I am sorry for your pain.

Love,
SM

Dear (Soon to be Ex) Husband (EH) and my (EX) Best Friend (ho bag)

Let me start off my addressing the two of you separatly.

First off, EH…  For 8 years I have stood by you thru everything.  Through your divorce with your ex-wife, through everyone being “too busy” to deal with SS. I was there when you lost your job and were unemployed for a year. I stuck by you thru your temper, and your insane demands.  You started seeing Ho Bag… of all people… MY BEST FRIEND. She stood up with me at OUR WEDDING. And don’t say it just happened, and it wasn’t intentional.  Out of anyone you could have gone with, you went with her.  There was a reason I stopped inviting her around, but no you went and found her. Then you expect me to come running back to you, because you are a changed man.  Well I don’t beleive one damn word of it.  You slept with her in a drunken, pain pill fueled stupor less than 3 weeks ago.  And you expect me to believe you have changed in that small period of time? And the therapist backed up my feelings when he said that 50% of addicts “relapse” after they get what they lost back.  Well sorry, but those odds aren’t good enough for me to reimerse myself in the shit pit that is your life. I hope you enjoy her, and I am glad she is so affectionate, and pulled together and looks so great all the time.  But that is easy to do when at 27 you still live with your Mommy, have no bills, no house, no kid to take care of, and you work a bullshit job that is usually reserved for 15 year olds.

Now for Ho-Bag…. You were my BEST FRIEND since 9th grade.  We went off to college together. When they thought your Mom was going to die, I dropped everything, missed my college finals and drove you home in the middle of the night so you could see her. You were in my wedding.  So how do you justify sleeping with my husband? And it isn’t like you just slept with him… you guys dated and went out in public… all the while he came home and kissed me every night. Have you no self-respect? And of all people, I would think you know how it feels to be cheated on after what your ex-fiance did to you, but then you turn around and do it to me? Did you ever once think about his son? You supposedly love my husband so much, but you are destroying the only family his son has known for the past 8 years.

And to the both of you… You deserve each other.  Go out and drink and party and have fun.  I am done standing by through thick and thin, and I am done forgiving people who go too far, treat me like shit, and then expect forgiveness.  And in the end, the one who suffers is SS.  Because he doesn’t know why things aren’t working out, he just wants his stepmom to come back… except I can’t tell a 12 year old that I can’t come back, because Daddy is too busy screwing Miss B.  And now his world will be shattered again, and he will have to move again, and start over in a new school with new friends.

Well I hope it was worth it to the both of you. I hope that all the partying and drinking were well worth the damage done.

Without love,

Soon-to-be-Ex-Wife #2

Dear Bio Mom

I don’t like you as a person and you suck as a mother. I really believe that the ONLY reason that you won’t give them to their father is because I am here. It kills you that they have a relationship with me, especially a good one. I am the one they come to for everything. You are the drunk who can’t function without a beer or two for the ride home after work,or the beer at 9 am just because you are on vacation. I am not the one borrowing money from my child to pick up a six pack. I am not the one going to my mother’s while she is not home to see what she’s got in the fridge to drink.  I am not the one who has moved the same boyfriend in six times now even after I promised the children he was gone for good, especially when I had to call the cops on him.  I am not the one who has moved six times in six and a half years.  I am not the one who get child support every two weeks but never has money to buy them clothes.  I am not the one is okay with the fact that the youngest has just spent the entire weekend glued to the tv.  I am not the one whose daughter rolls her eyes at while trying to talk to her. I am not the one who has not taken the children to a doctor or dentist appointment in 6 1/2 years. I am not the one who can’t remember to give them medicine when it is time or even get it filled for that matter. I am not the one who tried to have the youngest diagnosed with ADHD just because she was a handfull. Heck, you don’t even keep them in the right size pants, shirts or underwear.  Can you tell me what size they even wear?  I doubt it.

I am, however, the one that takes them to church, buys their clothes and shoes, helps with homework, helps with projects, shows up to school functions (sober), remembers due dates for fundraisers, stays home from work when they are sick, takes them to the doctor, gets their medicine filled and makes sure they take it all.  I am the one that contacts their teachers when their is a question or a problem and makes sure they have lunch money.  I am the one that knows which one does not eat red apples but loves the green ones because they are sour tasting.
So why would they not want to be around me?  I take care of them.  At our house they are not just here because it is our time with them.  They are here because we want them here and love them.  It should embarass you that another one is picking up your slack.  It would me.  Yeah, you gave birth to them, but I am more a mother to them than you are.  One day they may even tell you that.  And you will only have yourself to blame.

Sincerely,
The One

Dear Stepmother

I try to love you, I honestly do. You make my dad ecstatic, you are an amazing cook, you are a talented craftswoman, and you have a fabulous sense of humor. I like more things about you then I dislike, honestly.

Yet you get angry. Correction, you get passive aggressive. You mutter under your breath about how I can be useless, you blatantly insult me. I am not stupid! I can hear, just as you can see me shake my head. You get jealous of the fact that I am close to my grandmother. I am sorry, but in my entire life, she is the only member of my family who hasn’t hurt me. Of course I am close to her. Yet I stopped talking to her to make you feel better. I am not close to many people. I only really talk to my best friend, grandmother, and father. Yet I don’t talk to my father about how you make me feel because he is your husband and I would rather you and him have each other and lose me then watch a marriage fall apart because of me. When I talk to my best friend on the phone you get mad because you say you can hear me through the floorboards as I insult you. As I vent. Tell me stepmother, how the hell am I supposed to live without talking to anyone because it upsets you?

I know what you will say. Hell its what you said to me yesterday, driving me to work, “You suck at communicating and you treat your father and I like we are your slaves.” Right before work. I didn’t cry in the car but I was bawling the break room. An eight and half hour work shift and all I could think about was what you said. I sang to myself and my coworkers who barely know me noticed that something was off.

I cleaned before work. Did you see? I swept, mopped, vaccummed, dusted, clean the windows, and did a load of dishes before I left. I am not trying to pull a Cinderella here. But I wonder if you see what I do. I also work and go to school. I don’t spend my money, I put it in savings. I try to do laundry weekly, but most of the time I have to wait a week and half because it takes you forever to get laundry done.

So I don’t communicate in our house. I am liberal democrat in a house with staunch republicans. I like foreign films and you guys cannot stand them. I misheard you the other day, as I was getting sick and working non-stop, but you get offended without considering the situation. You are in the perfect place.

You can insult me and I won’t say anything. You can cry and I won’t call you out. I don’t communicate because talking does me no good. Even friendly conversation you don’t say anything. “How was your day?” “How was the party?” I ask these questions all of the time. I am begging for the day when I get asked these questions in return. I get blamed for not communicating. You never ask questions. You hate that excuse. You call it evil. Remember when your brother moved and never told you? You got mad because you felt like he just should have told you, but I am guessing that you never asked what was going on in his life.

You call me all the names, selfish, poison, evil. I will never refer to you those ways. I know you. Faults and all and I get angry. You love your nieces, but cannot stand me. I am the bad one. A straight-A student who is in college and has a great job. Who saved your marriage. Who helps around the house. Who babysits. “Three chores.” You scathingly say when I forget one, yet you forget the dishes, the help. I do more then my chores. I am evil. I destroy your family.

You cannot talk to me without sounding like I committed a crime. You don’t inquire, you accuse. You wonder why I jump, because you feel that it is unwarranted. I feel that I do not warrant being accused of helping out. How horrid.

Something is wrong about us. I care for you, I really do. You say to fake being nice but I don’t want to. I really care. When you came out with you having cancer I cried so much. At work, and my best friends house. I could not stop crying. I care for you! I love you! I just don’t want to be accused.

You can vent all you want yet I say nothing. I cry when I write this because I know this is the communication you want but I am to afraid to give. You will tell me “What more can I do!” For starters you can stop acting like I attack you and then you accuse me. You have support. Go online, there is so much help for you. There is nothing for me. Stepchildren are evil to the internet. I guess you were right.

So I will continue to love you. I just won’t say anything. Its not worth the ridicule and accusations. I will clean, work, and study. I don’t know what our real issue is. I honestly don’t. Some say that you are jealous of me and compete with me. I have no clue though.

All I can do is get used to the new norm.

Your Step-Daughter.

To my sons

I want to admit to so many mistakes I have made in the past with you two. I want to say first and foremost, I do love you both with all my heart. I know I haven’t always put you and your needs ahead of my own. I see now the results of my mistakes when I was younger and selfish. Your dad and I married when I was 16 and he was 19. He was and still is a very good Christian man. You know he is a good father to you. Our marriage didn’t work because I didn’t want it to. I wasn’t satisfied with my life. I didn’t know what it was that I was looking for, but at the age of 22, I left your father. We agreed on joint custody of you. You were 5 years and 5 months old at the time. I decided to go out and live my teenage years that I never had since I got married at 16. I married another man, that although he was good to you both, was not your father. I compared him to your father for 2 years and he never could be the man your father was, and this led to our divorce. I put my job, not a career, but a job, ahead of your needs. I still took care of both of you and always made sure I had you on my days and never interfered with your dad on his visitation days. But I still know now that I did not put you and your needs first. I know I rushed into a third marriage with yet another man that  was not good enough for you boys or me. I became stuck in an abusive relationship with him, and I regret that you boys had to see me not only abused, but to see your mom become such a low self esteemed person. I was so  deep into depression over this third failed marriage, but I just did not want to give up. I wanted to be a stable mom for you. I regret that you were witness to the physical and mental abuse that went on from him. I thank God he had sense enough to never put his hands or lash out at you boys. I finally wised up and divorced again, realizing that a third divorce was better than the alternative. I began to pull myself out of the low place in life I had allowed myself to be in. I began to have better self esteem, I was smiling again, I was happy. But I always had you two. I reconnected with a life long friend from school, and fell in love again. This time, he was a great guy. He had 3 kids of his own, but you two were always looking for the positive in my situation. You absolutely loved having 3 step brothers. I married this man, and we became the brady bunch, except all boys. He helped me to become a better person, helped me to see I deserved to be happy. He put me through nursing school and helped support you two while I was in school. I know that we have had our bad days, but with that many kids under the age of 14, that is to be expected. I am thankful your father never decided to take me back to court and take you away from me, even when I wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on. He is truly relieved and happy that I have after 10 years since divorcing him, “found myself”. I have a stable life now. You boys know where my home is, you don’t worry if I will get tired of this one too and divorce him. You know this is finally your mom being a mom and a wife.

I say all this to say I know that karma is a bad thing, and I have my share of bad coming back to me. I just don’t know how long I will have to suffer. I know I have made terrible mistakes as your mother, and I am paying for them dearly now. You two slowly have spent more and more time with your dad over the years. I tried to not be mad and “make” you spend equal time with me like you used to. I understand you are boys, growing into young men and need your father’s influence. You are now 12 and 17. You are both very good kids, well behaved, respectable, make good grades, are kind and generous to others, know right from wrong. You know I was wrong to put my needs and wants ahead of yours when you were younger. But I have spent the last 5 years trying my best to make up for my past mistakes with you. I know I can not make up for lost time, only make the best of today. However, I miss you so much! I come to your ball games, your band concerts and make sure you have whatever you ask for, although you are such good kids you rarely ask for anything from me or your dad. I miss how only 2 years ago, during the summer and anytime school was out, you always spend every day with me and every night with your dad. Somehow, in this last 2 years, when I have most likely been over compensating for my past mistakes, I seem to be losing you. It breaks my heart that you kids stood by my and always wanted to be with me when I was being a bad mom, but now that I realized my mistakes and am making sure I don’t make them again, that now you are pulling away from me more and more. I miss my babies! I don’t know what else to do, I’ve asked both of you if there is a reason you don’t want to be at my house anymore and you both deny any problems with being over here, just that you prefer to be at your dads.

I know this is just what goes around comes around, but it is killing me for you to pull further and further away from me. Your dad and I have talked and he assures me that he knows of no reason you wouldn’t want to be over here. Like this morning on my way home from work, you are home at your dads while he is at work. It is  Thanksgiving week off from school. You would rather stay at your dads house alone, while he works, than come spend time with me at my house. I call every day you are not in school to offer to come get you  and stay with me until your dad gets off work. You haven’t spent a night at my house in almost a year now. I only see you on Saturday mornings while your dad works from 7am-12 noon. I know you enjoy time with him, but you spend every single day and night with him! When do you forgive me and let me be mom again? Or do you? I know I did a lot of selfish things, but I was always there. I always have provided for everything needed. I always take you places. You don’t even want to go with me to visit you grandmother in another state. You haven’t seen her since last Christmas when she came here to see us. I know you love your dad and you are loyal to him, but he has told you countless times to come with me on vacations, camping, visiting relatives, ect. But you choose not to. The only reason I ever hear is “I just think I’ll stay at Daddy’s” or “I really don’t want to go, but I will if you just WANT me to.” You aren’t spoiled brats, you aren’t disrespectful to me, you just don’t want to spend time with me. I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t want to just let you two go  and leave it to you to decide to see me, that is why I call all the time trying to get you to come over. I mean for craps sakes, we are exactly 4 miles from my driveway to your dads! It isn’t a distance thing. I just don’t know what else to do. I love you boys more than you will ever know. I know that by me taking care of all your financial needs isn’t going to make up for me not being the best mom I could be when you were younger, but I want to spend time with my children! I love you! I miss you! It does hurt that the only time you ever call me is to tell me something you want me to buy for you. But I never complain but I am just so thankful you called me. My husband now thinks I should just let you go and let you decide, but until you decide he thinks I should “cut you off”. No more guitars, laptops, video games, etc. He points out to me I only hear from you on my paydays, which you remember quite well. He has become bitter towards you two because he sees the hurt it causes me to not spend time with you. He says you are at 12 and 17, old enough to know what you are doing. He says you aren’t the angels I think you are, because I miss you so much. My husband now is a good man, a good husband to me and a good father to his children. He never connected with you boys because he didn’t want to cause any problems with your dad. He knew you already had a loving and supportive dad and didn’t want another. He loves you on a step dad level, but it makes him more bitter as time goes by that you refuse to spend time with me. He doesn’t like to see me upset or hurting and most especially when it is by my children and he has no say so to make you do any different. I know I spend more time with his kids than I do you, but believe me, it wasn’t my choice. If it were up to me, you would live with me 24/7, but I could never ask your dad to give up time with you that he deserves. After all, he isn’t the one that divorced me. He has never put his needs about yours. He still, 10 years, actually wow, 11 1/2 years later still doesn’t date because as he says, you are his number one priortity and that you are only kids once and he can live when you are grown. I am sorry I could not be more like him in that manner. I am glad I have finally married a good man that loves me and does his best to help me be a better mom to you than I used to be.  But he also loves me enough to be mad at you for punishing me for so long. I just want my kids back. Why did you have to wait until I got my self together and become a better person to pay me back for my bad parenting? It has been over 6 years now that I have gotten myself together. I have been trying to make up for 5 years of being a selfish mom for the past 6 years. How much longer will you punish me?

To the Woman Who Loves the word “Mommy”

First, you get pregnant after a month of dating. Then, when he graciously marries you and gives you everything he possibly can, you cheat on him, not once, but with three different men? Have you met your ex?! Is he the same man I’m dating now?! If he is, you were and are out of your mind. You had this amazing, beautiful son together. He was faithful to you, loved you, cared for you, and dealt with you! You had this pretty little picture in your head, of being married and having a baby and this perfect little life together. The reality is, you didn’t have what it takes to make it work. You care more about yourself than your own son. To me, that is sickening. He kicked you out… the smartest thing he had done in over 3 years. Before the divorce even went through, you were engaged again. Will you ever learn?! It would be humorous to me, to watch the things you come up with and the way you live your pathetic life, IF it didn’t involve this amazing 5 year old I know. And then… you left. You burned too many bridges here… it didn’t work out with your new flavor of the week. You didn’t have a good job, a place to live, or any friends. I wonder why. You had the audacity to say if you hadn’t had left, you and your son would’ve ended up homeless and you couldn’t do that to him! WRONG sweetie… his Daddy is here. HE would’ve never been homeless. HE always has a place here, where he belongs. You left because YOU wanted to. YOU cheated. YOU messed up. YOU spent all your money on petty things. YOU took your son from boyfriend’s house to boyfriend’s house and had him sleep on the floor. YOU left… because you didn’t feel like playing “mommy” anymore.

How could you? How could you go like that, with no plan on returning? How could you lie, again and again, about your many “reasons”? Have you met your son?! He’s amazing. He lights up my world in a way I never thought possible. He is so smart and funny and amazing. How could you not care?! How is it that you are satisfied with only speaking to him once a week, if that? Meanwhile, he asks questions. I don’t know how to answer them! I don’t know how to tell him that his “Mommy” didn’t care enough about him to figure out any way to live with him. I can’t tell him that. He adores you. He needs you. You’re his MOTHER! Which, you like to throw in my face whenever possible. You think that really hurts me?! HA! I laugh at it. I laugh at you! Stop wasting your energy on trying to get it through to me that you’re the real mother. I already know that. Why don’t you prove it to who really matters here? Your son.

“Mommy”… you sure do love that word. The thing is, “Mommy” is the title for the caring and love in which I am providing for your son. I get him ready for school, pack his lunch, make sure he has a jacket, help him with his homework, take him to the park, look under the bed for monsters, give him hugs when he’s sad, teach him new songs, take him on trips, and more. When he talks about his family, he mentions MY name first, even before Daddy. I have turned my entire life around for your son. I would do anything for that child. What have you done? What can you honestly say that you’ve done for him, and not for yourself?

I really wish you could see this letter. The thing is, it wouldn’t make a difference. You’ll always figure out a way to be the victim. I hope your son never figures out what kind of person you are. He’s better off not knowing.