Losing contact with a step parent...

[ColinFuckingRobinson]

....When your parent separates from them. What were your experiences?

I have covid and am feeling quite unwell, so I'll be going to bed once I've posted this and I'll check the thread in the morning and respond to any posters that may reply.

My partner and I are going through a rough patch. We've drifted apart and it now feels like we have little in common. I'm not at the stage of deciding to split up, far from it, but I do like to consider all possible future scenarios as that's how my mind works.

DP has been in my teenage DC's lives for 8 years. He is kind, fun, patient, and genuinely enjoys their company. They adore him. We live together and are definitely a family unit. The DC also spend 50% of their time with their dad and step mum, which are also positive relationships.

If we were to separate he would have to move 300 miles away back to his parents in Scotland as he wouldn't be able to afford to live in our area alone.

I've done a topic search and nearly all advice on MN is for the former step parent to cut contact in order to move on from the broken relationship and carve out a new life for themselves. I can't find any posts from people who were once step children themselves who had to endure the trauma of losing a positive close relationship.

If you were once a step child in this scenario how did you feel? Have you carried that hurt with you into adulthood, or did you process it and move forward relatively unscathed? I was a step child myself, but my step parent was a horrible person and I chose to go NC, so I can't place myself in the shoes of my DC in this particular scenario.

Poor thing, covid rules really threw a spanner in the works, didn't they? I'm glad you've been able to maintain a relationship with her.

I've been googling too and drawing massive blanks. The MN threads on the step parent board all say "just cut contact, you need to walk away and live your own life". There are a few threads with multiple posts that all say the same thing. The belief seems to be that children won't notice the disappearance of a very prominent figure in their lives!
I found one article written by an Australian therapist who treats children who have had a step parent disappear, and it describes the hurt and confusion that the children have been left with. That is literally the only thing of that nature that Google could provide.

This is lovely to read

This is also heartwarming. I know that if my EXH and his wife ever split up she would work really hard to maintain a relationship with our DC. I'm really happy she is in their lives.

On the contrary, the only information I've been able to find on MN is about the step parents and what is best for them moving forward.

In our case there are no half siblings, which makes it simpler, I suppose. Being obviously treated differently by your ex must have been horribly confusing for your DD at the time. I'm glad she's seen it for what it is and no longer cares.

DP has a very active role in my DC's lives. They were 5 and 8 when he came into it.

I'm not unhappy, not visibly. Just bored and discontent. My hope is that couples therapy, which DP is very keen on, will help us work at reconnecting and empathising with each other more. I'm being pragmatic though, and despite my hopes I'm also aware that therapy could lead to the realisation that we're too different in our values and outlook and therefore not compatible. We like each other. I'm just losing respect for him as he drifts through life with complacency.

One of my family members is a step-dad. He was in a relationship with the mother from when the child was 1.5-9. Biological dad was never around. When they split he took on the ‘divorced dad’ role, visits EOW etc. They did live close though which is a major difference with you.
Child is now 20 and step dad is 100% going to be ‘dad’ for the rest of his life. This is definitely driven by dad though. He could easily have drifted out of the picture.

I missed my step brother for years. We were the same age and grew up together. When we were 15 my step dad just sent him away one day back to his mum's with no explanation. It was heartbreaking.

I really disagree with this, step children are allowed to have a relationship with an ex-step parent, even if their parent disapproves.

amonf those I know, one man has (15-20 years later) a positive nephew/uncle type relationship with his step sons.

Another two still see them via the kids being of a similar age.

Obviousy there are those who have no relationship some happily, some with sadness.

There is no single outcome here.

I would say so. I'm almost 40 now, so it was a long time ago. He was essentially a stand in dad. He took me to places, spent time with me one on one, days out, board games, took me to football matches with him, taught me to cook, introduced me to many cultural things. He didn't have children himself, but was a primary teacher so good with kids. He was only 26 to my mums 35 when they met. His influence was great tbh, and to this day many of the things in my life are because of his direct influence.
He really hurt my mum and stole her money though, so it was hard to equate the person who had such significant influence on me to the person who also stole 30k and ran off. I was also in the rebelling teenage phase and got pregnant as a result of the chaos he left behind because I didn't want to be home with my mum and cope with her grief of another divorce. I was pregnant a month after he ran away.

Mum's partner lived with us from me being about 8 to 13. DSis was born when I was 9.

The relationship between DM and her partner wasn't great, but maybe as I didn't always get to see my dad I loved having him around. They were on-off over that five year period, I remember the first time they broke up I was crying in my bed with the thought of not having him around anymore. He came in and we had a chat about it, he said he'd always be my friend and we could keep in touch.

Maybe I became more desensitised to it, or switched off a bit by the end because it didn't have the same effect on me when they finally did end it years later. He did still see DSis so it was a bit weird to go from being part of that family to not, DSis seeing her grandparents on that side but me and DB wouldn't anymore, but I think by that time I had other stuff going on anyway.

How it affected me long term I don't know, keeping my MH in good shape can be hard but he was one aspect of what was a difficult childhood. DSis is NC with him now anyway which I think is a shame but I guess that tells it's own story.

I'm unscathed. Step dad had been in my life since I was 5, mum divorced him when I was 17. Only contact we had after that was if I bumped into him down the pub. My dad was still a big part of my life though, so I never saw step dad as a proper father figure, it may have affected me more if I did.

"I missed my step brother for years. We were the same age and grew up together. When we were 15 my step dad just sent him away one day back to his mum's with no explanation. It was heartbreaking."

This is awful, OP. Did your mum discuss it with you? Do you have any contact with your step brother now?

Of course you should worry how it's going to affect the kids!!! Unfortunately my mum didn't, she just considered herself and how SHE felt and I'm still upset about it now. My stepdad came into my life when I was a teenager and not in a good place. He was lovely, more caring than my mum, I grew up, got married, (he gave me away) and then I had a daughter and he was fabulous with her, sang her songs and generally doted on her. We moved overseas when she was 3 years old so didn't see them often, but she still loved him whenever we got over to see them.

Then mum and stepdad broke up. He was having an affair. Well, it was more complicated than that, but that's the main point. We were banned from contacting him because it would hurt mum too much. She did the whole "If you love me you won't speak to him EVER again!!!!!!" It was heart wrenching. He was an old fashioned man so wasn't on email and it was before WhatsApp etc. I know what he did was wrong, I don't condone what he did for a moment, but without going into it all, it wasn't as clear cut as it might seem.

He was nothing but kind, supportive and loving to me. As an adult I should have been able to see him as I would have done if he had been my own dad. My daughter should have been able to have a relationship with her grandad. But mum would have had a fit and emotionally blackmailed me, so I didn't. I regret it to this day. We were so close and I resent my mum and her selfishness. I also blame myself, I should have stood up to her. But she was my mum... He got dementia, went downhill really fast and died just a few years later, mum was giddy with delight he'd had such a miserable end to his life which made me so angry and I wish we had been able to sit down together one last time and to be able to say goodbye.

What a shit! Can't believe some people have the capacity to fuck over someone they once lived to that degree!

It's similar here in that my DC have a very healthy and positive relationship with their dad who they spend 50% of their tome with, so my dp isn't a "stand in" dad by any means. It would definitely be more complicated if he was.

In my early 30's I eventually found out from my DSIS that it was my "D"M who ordered step dad to send DSB away! They never thought to tell us, explain why, look after our emotional needs. He was just gone one day. I had very sporadic contact with him for a couple of years, but he was so filled with the pain of the rejection that he cut contact with all of us eventually. According do my DB, who saw him 5 years ago by chance (we're in our 40's now) he's still bitter and resentful.

DM did similar to me and my siblings when she and DF divorced. We were made to feel disloyal if we ever went to see him, or expressed a desire to. I was only 8 when they split up, so it was easy for her to condition us into believing she was perfectly reasonable in her demands and behaviour. It's very difficult to acknowledge to ourselves that our parents sometimes did things that were selfish and harmful, so I understand how difficult it was for you to push back against her.

My friend is a stepdad, separated from his wife early last year. The kids were tween/early teens when they separated, he’d been in their lives 10+ years, don’t think either child remembered a time before him. After the split, mum moved almost 4 hours away to be closer to family.

He tries to keep in contact with the children, but the distance, along with the fact that they don’t ‘have’ to see him, really takes its toll. He texts frequently, but they’re teenagers, sometimes he gets a ‘proper’ reply, sometimes a couple of words, and sometimes nothing at all. This is normal for teens, but combined with the distance means it’s virtually impossible for him to ‘keep up’ with their lives. He has visited a few times, but the kids have priorities and commitments of their own. It’s not the same as staying with a nonresident parent. They can’t chat over a quick breakfast before one goes to his mates, or catch up at 9pm when he gets back home because stepdad’s in his hotel room, and the kids want to be at their house. Gaming together works as a way to casually chat, but the teens are prone to changing their mind last (as is natural), and the eldest is currently on tech ban for bad behaviour.

He adores the boys, but the effort he has to put in to have an even bare minimum relationship takes a tremendous toll on his mental health.

My dad had a long-term partner (though never married - not sure I ever called her my 'step-mum' but she essentially was). When they split up, I didn't see her anymore and I didn't feel particularly sad about it, though I hoped she was doing well and felt bad for her as it was a difficult split (he wasn't a very nice man). I was probably 16/17 at the time.

In my late 20s, I looked her up on social media and we reconnected. My dad had died when I was 18 and I'm actually NC with my mum (for unrelated reasons). She is lovely and though we haven't seen each other since I was a teenager (in my 40s now), we have kept in touch since and she's been a lovely source of information about my dad, who I didn't really know all that well (as he was such a difficult character). She has send me childhood photos that I didn't even know existed of me and him. I have more of a relationship with her as an adult obviously than with either of my parents.

I think it's very individual. I certainly wasn't hurt by her not keeping in touch and I assume she felt it was for the best, but I wouldn't have thought it was weird or painful if she had either. The difference is though that we never lived together (I never had overnights with my dad even). I think it would be lovely to maintain that relationship, if they are close, and I would hope that any decent person would want to do that for a child they raised and cared for. But it's all very dependent on the adult and child involved.

My ex's wife left him to move in with another man when his child was 3. There was 50-50 residency after a vicious court case.

At the age of 9 child said no longer wanted to live with mum due to stepdad's behaviour and alleged had been hit and shouted at. Did not want to see stepdad.

In court, the stepdad argued he had a parenting relationship and should have rights to see child. Judge was very clear he did not.

Just posting to show that kids don't always feel how you think they feel. Mum and stepdad had lived together for 6 years and clearly felt there was more of a bond than there was between stepdad and child.

(We broke up during court case so I don't know final outcome)