The most ridiculous/hilarious/ludicrous thing you've read here?

[AbigTurtlesTail]

I'll go first...

An OP being told she shouldn't have a phone background picture of only her children because it may make her stepchildren feel excluded

@namechangnancy And for some odd reason no one on the thread seems to be interested in talking about the parents’ responsibilities when they expect other people to live with their children.

Few of the responses seem to be interested in the fact that two parents have a child who behaves appallingly. The parents (and posters) don’t want a SM to be allowed to do anything about this but no one seems interested in what responsibility the parents bear for making life tolerable for someone they expect to live with the child. Even when the person being abused (it is abuse, even if the child is young enough not to know better, the parents are abusing the SM by accepting her being treated dreadfully) is the one who is providing the house.

We chose this so we have to accept anything and everything we don’t like about the relationship without any right to try and find solutions. Or simply walk away because it’s that easy logistically let alone emotionally.

It’s funny how DSC are allowed to behave as appallingly as the parents deem fit because of the trauma of having a broken home (which the parents caused but somehow the stepparent is held equally culpable), yet these same posters will happily advocate that an OP who shares DC with their partner should just leave thus subjecting their own DC to the same traumatic fate, because apparently that’s preferable to DP saying no to his ex occasionally 🙄

Yep - it's never the parents fault for splitting up in the first place (often acrimoniously); it's the step-parents fault for having the audacity to exist a few years later and question why things aren't quite right.

Yep. I also hate the assumption that if someone is a "psycho ex" that can't possibly be true and your DH is just telling you that and she's obviously lovely bla bla.

Not in my bloody case let me tell you. And when you say "actually I've seen it with my own eyes"

It's all well your DH LEFT HER AND HER KIDS WHAT DO YOU EXPECT

As if it's okay to be a horrible bitch to someone else if your husband left like... Right.

Honestly now I think everything I read on this board is 70% absolutely batshit. I can’t believe the views people have , the excuses they tripe for all shitty behaviour.

EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS THE SM FAULT. The end.

I am loving this thread, very refreshing.

Not on here but IRL, I used to take my then 2 year old DSD to a toddler group. I got chatting to a mum on the first couple of sessions and DSD got on well with her daughter. It was just small talk so family dynamics didn’t really come up.

On the third session, she’d commented on how different mine and DSD hair is so I’d said “oh, I’m step mum that’s why”. She just awkwardly scooted off and never spoke to me again. Dickhead.

You know this thread is a blessed relief to read.

Meanwhile, on another thread, you have some posters arguing that a woman who works full time should be prepared to take 2 hours out of her working day every other week to collect and look after ger SC on the weeks that he is with his mum.

Ahahahahahaah. I haven't seen that one. Batshittery.

A poster ages ago lambasted me because DSCs will drop us a text and tell us they want to come over for dinner rather than just showing up. When I explained that we eat quite differently when they are here so we need to make sure we have food in for them I was told that I should just buy it anyway on the off chance they want to come. When I bought up food waste they said we should always eat what DSCs like rather than what we prefer because them texting us to give a heads up means that we don't welcome them.

WTF!! Some people are just bizarre!

I also remember a poster during covid being offended by the fact that DSDs didn't go between houses when either of the households had covid because "you'd have no choice if they lived there full time".

Even though they don't live here full time so there was no need to spread covid for the sake of maintaining contact.

I was practically accused of kidnap on here when I mentioned that (then), teenage DSD opted to stay with me (she'd been living with me and her dad full-time from the age of 5), when me and her dad divorced. If DSD didn't want to go with her dad I should have taken her to her mum's or some other family member....yeah good idea those posters, let's disrupt a child's life even more than it already had been.

Another thing I have found really annoying is the idea that you are always the "other woman".

I'm not the other woman. I'm a woman who met a divorced man. I'm also divorced, and that doesn't make him the "other man" either 😂

I just think how sexist it is, as if you are somehow worth less, and how ridiculous it sounds the other way round.

I get that in some cases the poster is talking about cheating and that's different and not acceptable, but it often gets thrown at step parents too.

An aspect of the SM experience I don't think we've touched on is the assumption that, if you're e.g. at home with your own child, adding more to the mix is a neutral act. So a new mum on maternity leave - she's at hone anway, so why can't she mind the SCs too? Heaven help.the women who.openly state they want one-on-one with their chidren, the exclusionary witches!

Or ( as on the other thread currently running) the OP explains that her mum already picks up her child from school and has an afternoon with them few days a week; DH wants to know why Grandma can't pick the SC up too. Grandma wants quality time with her grandchild, but DH doesn't seem to see that.

As if the number of children and the special mother-child (and grandmother-child bond) bond doesn't exist, or the SM's quality of life doesn't matter.

The thing that bugs me the most is opinions from those who aren't a step-mum and so have clearly never been in a similar situation!

The classic "I was a step-child so therefore I know what it's like".

Yes but I was child and that doesn't make me an expert on being a Mum 😂

I was both and I can tell you being a step child did not give me any insight into be a step parent because the circumstances are wildly wildly different!

I think a lot of ex wives comment as well regularly saying "I'd do this" but I actually don't think anyone has a clue what they'd do until they're in the situation. Imagining it and being in it are worlds apart.

Exactly. I was/am both too and sometimes I look back and cringe at myself at how I was towards my step-mum.

We have a good relationship though, even now I'm early 30's and couldn't imagine my life now without her, my step-brothers or step-daughter.

This forum is full of genuine people looking for honest advice, but it tends to turn into a massive bitch fest towards SM's and I'm now so weary of ever starting a thread on here.

Ooooooooo another covid one... where the SM OP was looking after stepkids every day (even on mums time) during covid and got a barrage of abuse from the mum because she took the children for a walk (which you were perfectly allowed to do). OP had said if you're not happy with the care I'm providing I think it's best you find an alternative and she was told off by posters here for "threatening the mother with withdrawal of childcare" as if she were simply the mothers nanny and "she's their mother, if she doesn't want them going out then you shouldn't!" Nevermind the fact OP was doing this entirely for free during her own time, she should do it exactly how the mother wanted of course 🤣 people are fucking NUTS.

Almost as if people are individuals 😉

Covid was a perfect example of how stepmums live in a parallel universe. Over on the main boards you were wrong for waving your little toe outside your front door, there was a post that deemed milk not important enough to leave the house for and you could use powdered custard in your cup of tea instead (barf)
Meanwhile over in stepmother land, you must take your stepchildren while they are posting positive with covid even if you are vulnerable/in contact with vulnerable people/have a newborn because it’s “stepchildren’s house too”

It’s not even that.

It’s actually that you simply don’t have the full context so you actually don’t understand what’s going on.

I’m a stepchild. I can now look back at my teenage years and recognise that I really didn’t understand the dynamic at all. Looking back, I actually admire my SM for holding her boundaries and not taking on the responsibilities my dad failed so miserably with. When I was 14, I really did have a totally skewed view of the situation.

Yes. I had that shit.

It - and his general approach to things like that - was a very big contributor to STBXH becoming exH.

Although there was a moment, about a week after we got married, where he said ‘well you’re their stepmother now so that means you have to look after them for me’ where I realised that I’d made a really horrible mistake and that he actually did believe I’d signed up to being nanny/housekeeper/general scapegoat.

I think the argument was about the fact his ex had decided that she was going to drop the SC off mid-afternoon (because that was more convenient to her) and he was still working. So he’d decided that it was my job to just be childcare for them both without any consultation. I was on maternity leave - but still covering my half of the bills etc. if I’d posted on MN about if I have no doubt that I’d be told that he was right and I was evil.

@ClutchingOurBananas I'd have told you to leave.