Being honest, would you be bothered about not seeing your SCs again if you and your partner split tomorrow?

[FlippidyFlop]

Would you? I see this on here a lot when step children are being discussed 'you might not see them again if you and DH split tomorrow'

I just don't think I would personally. I get on perfectly well with them but it's just not something that would bother me if me and DH ever split.

I just want to add i by no means try to be an extra parent to my step children, I take care of them when they are here but If they are explaining who I am to someone they don't call me their dads girlfriend or their step mum they call me their friend which I think is lovely, @SBTLove I suppose it is but I only had my son this year and I still loved them before that

OhCaptain

That's true, I guess. Maybe some of the people on this thread tell their step kids they love them and will always be there for them (even if it's not true)

@Milkshake7489 You really don’t know what it’s like for any of the DSC involved. Or what the wider dynamics actually are.

I certainly would not try to ‘parent’ my DSC. I don’t attend parents’ evenings or things like that. Their parents do that and have no need or desire for me to have an input into that whatsoever. My role would be, for example, to look after whatever needed looking after so DH could attend. Nothing more.

Children really don’t need everyone in their life to adore them. They need people to be kind and warm and fair. I can do that. I can make sure they have a nice time and make nice meals. But I am not their parent and never will be.

DH might try to expect me to love his children, but: 1. He doesn’t love my children (and that fine); 2. His parenting choices produce behaviour that’s hard to love and he doesn’t want to do anything different (or allow me any control over how they behave in my house). So I feel no obligation other than to stay in my assigned lane and treat the DSC like I would the children of visiting friends.

My DS has a stepmother. He really likes her, but I don’t think he loves her. I doubt she loves him. She takes much the same approach as me as far as I can tell and it does DS absolutely no harm at all. He knows he’s loved by his father and is welcomed by his stepmother. In fact, he probably likes her much more than he would if she tried to the another parent to him.

It’s easy to be all emotive about these things. But it’s unfair to assume that anything other than deciding you are a fully committed extra parent who feels just like their actual parents is damaging to a child or anything to be sad about.

@Milkshake7489

OhCaptain

That's true, I guess. Maybe some of the people on this thread tell their step kids they love them and will always be there for them (even if it's not true)

You are assuming that the stepchildren want to hear that from ‘you’re-not-my-Mother’.

@Milkshake7489

OhCaptain

That's true, I guess. Maybe some of the people on this thread tell their step kids they love them and will always be there for them (even if it's not true)

The love doesn’t have to be untrue. You can feel love on a sliding scale and not all lives are forever.

In terms of being there forever - that can change for any relationship and for any reason. Death, illness etc. so I don’t know that that’s something that’s ever set in stone really.

I would be heartbroken for the kids to never see their siblings again, I'd always invite them to their little sisters' birthday parties etc. I'd be sad to literally never see them again and I'd always wonder about them I think. I love them and care about them and mostly enjoy their company. But its not even in a similar ballpark to how I'd feel if I never saw my nieces again - I would fight hell to stay in their lives and I dont have that level of feeling towards my step kids at all.

@StarUtopia

Wow, I"m quite shocked. How can you have children in your life and then be so throwaway about them?

Would you also not see your dog/cat again if you split up with your husband?

Wow. Just wow.

I'm not a step parent, but no, I don't think I would miss step children if I had them. I'm a childminder and I don't miss the children I have looked after when they eventually leave 🤷‍♀️

I've never told my SC I love them nor have they ever told me they love me. Now if they did say it, I would of course say it back because I think it would be unkind not to in that situation.

We have had the odd little cuddle now and then when they've initiated it but I've always tried to be very led by what they seem to want from me. And so far that has been just a friend, not a mother.

I'm not a step parent, but no, I don't think I would miss step children if I had them. I'm a childminder and I don't miss the children I have looked after when they eventually leave 🤷‍♀️

I bet your home is a lovely, welcoming, safe space for the children you mind. And they are very happy in your care too.

Honestly, if my DSC grow up to reflect on this house as a place where dad loved them and MaWang was a nice person who did everything she could to ensure they could enjoy spending time being loved by their dad, that’s pretty good.

No. Definitely not. She actively despises me. Her and her mum. After the 2 incidents that have happened this year I would happily never see her again.

Stepmums can't win, usually on threads on here they get told to back off, not be over involved, stop trying to parent and to keep in the background during contact time as dsc want time with dad not their stepmum etc...

But on the other hand they are obviously supposed to love the dsc like their own and miss them when they are not around

Im a step mum, DSS is 12 and I have known him 7 years. We have a good relationship, in fact yesterday we spent day together as DH had to go into work. We had a fun day, I've also planned a Halloween ghost walk with him next week because DH can't go the night it is on and his mum has other small DC. Would I miss him if I split up with DH? A bit maybe but it would not ruin my life or leave a huge void.

My DH passed away 3 years ago. I haven't seen my SD since the funeral. She is 22 now though and lives some 300 miles away.

I'd be devastated, it would probably be harder to get over than splitting with my partner. My family would too, my DSC are part of my family and theirs.

I would really hate to lose touch with them so in the unlikely event that we split up I'd definitely keep in touch with them if they wanted to.

I don’t have step kids but can definitely imagine this - in the same way I could feel super close or not at all to a niece/nephew or my siblings in law, or equally really not be very interested or bothered if I rarely or never saw them again, it depends on so many things.

Few comments

1. to the poster who has never been a SParent. Not even engaging with you, you have absolutely zero insight on these situations.
2. to the posters who have been the SC and their own experiences, a few comments. Firstly, I don’t live with my DP despite being in a long term relationship. And that is because their mother is (simply put) horrific. So knowing that she will always interfere/ manipulate with any attempts I make to bond. I have refused to have any discussions about living together as I have no wish to force myself on children who don’t want to spend long periods of time with me. Equally I don’t want to spend time with children who can be manipulated to come into my home and bring their dysfunction with them.

When I do see the children, I am warm, welcoming, consistent and fair. And engage with them the same way I would any child coming into my home. They are well cared for and safe.

I don’t attend (nor Do I plan to attend) school plays etc. As many other posters have said, that’s what their parents are for. Not my place.

In summary, there are many of these scenarios where it is actually detrimental (to both the SM and the children) for relationships to be ‘forced.’
And it’s why (I think) so many posters are on here at the end of their tethers. So, my relationship is (and always will be) strictly boundaried. If it grows organically as the children get older, so be it. I doubt this will ever happen however as their mother will not allow it.

3. not even mentioned on here (and a key factor as to why some SM’s feel this way) are the NRP fathers. Who hardly see their children and as such treat every time they see their children as ‘special’. I can understand why, but again that is a dysfunctional dynamic to try and navigate. Because more times than not, the NRP projects this ‘special’ onto the people around him (family and partner) and expects the partner to view this time as equally ‘special’. (I still roll my eyes at the thread where a partner asked his partner to not do on her weekly visit to see her own mother because HIS children were coming). This sort of entitlement (please pivot your world around my children) is actually the breeding ground for Deep resentment as it causes huge relationship imbalance. Especially if the man consistently pivots time, energy and attention (comes alive) when his children visit and then merely ‘exists’ at any other time. The partner sees how her partner can behave for his children and yet rarely sees this attention lavished on her (or the resident children for that matter).

If parents want other people to love their children. Then both of them have to work at it and accept it. Otherwise this is the reality for (I imagine) a lot of step parents families. M

My kids' sm is a lovely woman & is very good to them but I honestly don't think she'd keep up with them if she and my ex split. Aside from anything else I don't think she'd have the time! My kids nrp time would be spent with their dad who I would fully expect to organise contact so that my kids could see their half siblings regularly. I don't think it would be sm's role to facilitate this but rather my ex's. That being said if the kids, especially my dd, wanted to see her independently & she was happy with that I'd encourage it. Though as a mum of two young children & hypothetically spilt from ex, I'd say she'd rather spend her non child time doing something for herself! She's very very good to my kids but I & they know that her feelings towards her own are very different - as they should be.
I had no interest in keeping up contact with exdp's kids but that was entirely different & not just because exdp & I had no shared children. Like pp's their dm actively discouraged any developing relationships between us & I had to disengage in order to stay sane.
While I miss exdp dreadfully my life is so much easier without having to deal with his kids.
I do think if you've raised a sc all the above is moot & it's a very different scenario.

Not a sm, but I did work as a nanny for years having sole charge of children for more hours than their parents did, one family I worked for from when the second child was born until he started school I was there 7am-7pm five days a week. We had some lovely times, they were great children.
Then I left and didn't look back, I didn't dread leaving or long for seeing them after.

I always feel more sorry for the dc who have over invested sm's, it must be horrible to be everybody's project and sometimes to feel like your own Mother is being judged on her parenting in some cases. Don't even get me started on the 'birth mother' talk.

No, I couldn’t care less. Covid has been utterly horrible, but I’ve hardly seen his children so that’s been the silver lining.

You see quite often in blended families which have broken up, the dad only stays in touch with his biological children and not the step children that the mother believed he 'adored'.

I split with my ex at the end of last year, and me personally I wasn’t bothered about whether I saw dsc again. I was just happy about getting away from stepparenting.
As it is, we keep in touch and former dsc sometimes comes for tea. I do this for my children’s sake as my ex doesn’t have any of his children at his, so it’s the only way they get to see each other.
But if dsc went to live at the other side of the world and contact became non existent, it really wouldn’t make me sad.

@SBTLove

Raise them? try telling their mother that🤣 It’s pretty rare that there’s this happy blended, everyone is pals scenario. Step parents are routinely informed they have no place to discipline or make rules so no you don’t raise them, they visit your house occasionally.

Dss lived with us, he didn't "visit occasionally".

(Ex)dp worked away a lot so I was often on my own with dss. He stayed with his mum now and then.

You can drop the stereotypes.

I split up with my ex 3 years ago. I'd been with him over 20 years, since his kids were toddlers. I was more worried about them than I was about our own kids when we split up! Worried they wouldn't want to see me ever again and would blame me etc.

They haven't. I don't have much contact with my stepson as he has autism and has always been a bit distant, but I am in regular contact with my stepdaughter. We haven't met this year because they live 300 miles away and coronavirus has put paid to any of that, but hopefully they'll visit over Christmas.

I couldn't imagine not seeing them ever again.

@VanGoghsDog
My comment was in response to a non step parent, calm down 🙄

@TeachesOfPeaches

You see quite often in blended families which have broken up, the dad only stays in touch with his biological children and not the step children that the mother believed he 'adored'.

Good point.