urbanstepmom.com

He really does, I’m not kidding. I do believe that unless you really deeply, madly love this guy, the urban step mom cannot find happiness in her situation. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to royally piss you off.  He is, get used to it. 

I used to have these expectations of him that he was going to be my main support system in this crazy stepmadness. That we were going to talk it out, way into the night, examine it, analyze it, figure it all out, maybe shed some tears. Well as it turns out, he’s not much of a talker, nor a listener for that matter and definitely not a crier. Nor does he have much tolerance for what he refers to as negativity or complaining. I consider it expressing, but that’s just me. 

Anyway, he does many things that drive me crazy like not consult me, not include me, make major life decisions without talking to me. Sometimes I feel like the cook and cleaner not the wife and partner. Sometimes I feel like I am here to support him and he is not supporting me. Sometimes I feel like I have turned myself into a pretzel to help him in his life and he has not budged to help me. These are just a few of my complaints about my husband.

One of my tricks to make myself feel better is from the very beginning of our relationship I started a little notebook about him. I went out and bought a really beautiful leather bound book with a leather tie-thingie around it. I bought a rainbow’s selection of colored pens and I started documenting. I documented sweet, incredible things he would say to me. I wrote down things he did for me and things I loved about him. I’m not sure why I did this so early on in our relationship, never having done it before in my life. Nor do I know why I chose colored felt pens and a child-like essence  to scroll the love notes. In any event, the book is a chronicle of the beauty that is my husband and I refer to it whenever he is driving me crazy to remind myself why I am with him and what drew me to him in the first place. 

We all need a book like this. We need to remind ourselves why we are here in this place. We also need to continue to add to it.  We need to write down the adoring things he says to us, lest we forget in a fit of rage when he forgets to take the garbage out for the third week in a row. The other day, he said to me, “you take my breath away when you walk in the door after work” . This blew me away considering he never seems to look up when I walk in the door. So I wrote that one down. One time we were golfing and we came across a very beautiful, still pond and he said to me, “I feel that stillness and peace when I am around you”. I almost started laughing because I thought he must be joking. Thankfully, I did not burst into laughter because it was one of the purist things he has ever said to me. It is something I would forget when he doesn’t do the dishes when he said he would, if I didn’t write it down.

It is just a little trick, and we all need them because as far as I can tell, they all drive us nuts at some points in our lives and we need reminders as to why we chose this man and this life from time to time. Even now as I write this I feel warm and loving towards him. See, it works.

In the middle of one of our heated discussions early on in our relationship, my husband said, “the kids should be your priority”. This was an “ah ha” moment for me because this was the place where we saw things differently on a very fundamental level. Of course, as the father of these beautiful twin boys, his priority is them, for me, not as the mother of these beautiful twin boys, my priority was him. And  there in lies not only the difference, but a real challenge in this scenario: his priority is  them, and my priority is him.

Then again, “priority” is a funny, debatable word. Although I fully understood the weight of responsibility the children were, I also knew that if we were not a united front, a firmly grounded partnership in this dynamic, we would not survive as a couple. And to that end, it was my priority to make sure we were united, solid and having fun as a couple, so that we could be excellent parents and guardians to these beautiful twin boys.

You tend to lead a double life if you are an urban step mom. You have your life with your man and his kids, and then you have your life with your man alone when they go to their mother’s house. When you have the kids is when you need to be united and solid to face all the various issues of dealing with kids, ex and everybody else. When you don’t have the kids you need to have fun, adventures, laughs, shared hobbies, and non-kid-oriented conversations. 

It is no easy feat to be the mature partnership and then be the fun, adoring couple. A trick I have learned from my wise step mom friends is become a planner. Make sure you plan time alone with your man so you are not just passed out on the couch together when the kids aren’t there. Plan weekends away, plan a big vacation every few years. Find something you like to do together, like golf for us, and go do it. Have friends over without their kids for dinner parties, go out for fun nights just the two of you. It is very important to create experiences for the two of you that are fun and memorable that are yours alone. This creates the fun, loving friendship aspect of the relationship.

On the home front when you have the kids, it is very important to operate as a partnership and to have an understanding of the rules of the game. Communication has to be one of the key ingredients of creating a united front, but not easy when your man is stretched emotionally and physically with managing the kids, the ex and his own life. A lot of urban step moms complain that things are  great when the kids aren’t around, but they get ignored when they are around. You have to adjust your expectations. You will be ignored to a certain degree when the kids are with you, especially in the beginning. If you look at it from your man’s perspective, he is probably in survival mode, just trying to keep it all together. He is trying to make sure the kids feel loved and get enough attention and aren’t too emotionally bruised from the break up of their family. It also feels more like being ignored to you who doesn’t have the experience of having kids versus a biological mum who is more used to the nuances of the attention that kids demand. 

The communication aspect is not easy. The man simply cannot let you know everything that is going on with the kids and the ex. There is probably too much going on and although he may intend to keep you in the loop, he may sometimes fail. If you can adjust your expectations about this, be flexible about time, and he can attempt to keep you abreast of the schedule, changes in plans and important information, that is probably as good as it is going to get. You have to learn to communicate your feelings in a positive way, even about negative things. It used to drive me crazy that the schedule would change at the last minute and “the kids are on their way over” and I haven’t been consulted. Communicating these feelings of frustration is best not done in the moment. It is happening, the kids are coming over unexpectedly and you have to deal with it. But later, at a quieter, less volatile time, sit down with him and discuss some boundaries.

Boundaries are very important for the urban step mom. Without them, she feels walked all over, ignored, out of control (she hates this), and unappreciated. It has taken five years for me to feel like I have any control over my home life, and still, I am not always in the loop with sudden changes in schedule or news worthy events with the kids. My husband is an excel spreadsheet expert, which is the template for our lives. It is color coded to coordinate all of our comings and goings. This may seem somewhat over the top, but when he emails this to me on a weekly basis, I can at least get a snap shot into what is happening in the current week and feel as though I know who I am making dinner for tonight.

You have to be somewhat selfless in this role, which does not come naturally for most urban step moms who are used to having things go their way. When my husband used to say, “it isn’t all about you”, he was right. One tip that has made a lot of women successful in this role is to see herself as her man’s support system. At first this sounded way too Laura Schlessinger-esk for me, but the truth is, it is the reality. You have chosen a man who needs a strong partner emotionally. He is under a huge amount of pressure and stress trying to manage the kids and his life and he needs someone he can count on to be reasonable, rational, compassionate and understanding. It is actually an excellent lesson for the urban step mom, to support her man, and infinitely rewarding.

So strap in ladies, this is not any kind of a relationship that you are used to. You are not the centre of his universe. But with a crash course in effective communication, adjusting expectations, setting boundaries, being selfless and having fun, this can definitely be the richest and deepest relationship you will ever have with a man.