MorningMia's Blog
Mental disengagement & SS
Five steps forward; two steps back. How quickly things change. We've been on the right path for a while now, and the last 6 months have been particularly good.
SS and I got along when he was a teenager. He had his issues, but he wasn't going along with the PAS program the way his sister was, and he'd apologize when his behavior occasionally slipped into the "us vs. them" BM rule. He had even told me at one point that he felt his sister's behavior was extremely unhealthy. We know he had some issues with his mother.
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Effed up step families and the treatment of animals
Posts like Natalie's burn me up. I know it's not just step families--I think it's dysfunctional families, which so many of these families are. And I see a trend regarding animals.
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Finally cutting off altogether from the skids (sorry this is long--I'll put Cliffs Notes in bold)
I've decided that I need to finally erase these people from my life. It has been a long road. (Talk about PTSD.) A main reason our marriage survived is because DH’s toxic ingrates have always lived in another state. Still, like many of us here, I have tolerated behavior from these dysfunctional primates that I would never have tolerated from anyone else. I’m done. No, they haven’t “done” anything to me recently. It’s that I’ve finally acknowledged in the truest level of my being how incredibly damaged, toxic, and crazy these people are.
HCBM’s Mother’s Day alone
Although BM is and always has been the driver behind the skids' god-awful behavior, the skids are well into adulthood, so I haven't given BM much thought over the past several years. In fact, when I learned a few years ago that she had been doing well financially, I thought, good--she should be ok in retirement. I noted her attempts at "buying" more "love" and devotion (kind of sealing the deal) from the now-grown skids, but, well, it didn't surprise me, so it was just another thing.
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Disengagement: A fluid place
The first five years of our marriage involved such horrible attacks and turmoil that it almost did us in--multiple times. When we shut out BM from our lives by the end of Year Two, one of her last desperate calls was, *"We all need to get along [really?!? that's what this is called?] for future weddings, holidays, and grandchildren." By the end of Year Five, skid behavior was so god-awful, I shut the door on them. DH and I decided he would see his kids in some place other than our home unless they apologized and changed their behavior. SS apologized. SD cried and screamed.
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I still have to remind myself not to make kind gestures. Only in step-world!
What world is this? My god. For the survival of my marriage and my own mental health and peace, I put some strong boundaries in place two years in. Because the skids were still somewhat young, we had faith that they would one day "see the light." I kept trying with them. Kept getting smacked down, kept getting my feelings hurt. 5 years in, I threw my hands in the air.
The story(ies) of vacations--or "Don't have fun without me"
Recent phone calls from adult SD to DH during a vacation of ours reminded me of the ongoing "Look at me" behavior of her mother from years past.
Long after DH and I got together, he told me the story of when he and a GF went away for a short beach vacation, the last weekend of which fell on Father's Day. DH did not tell BM or the skids he was going away (apparently, he knew better). He knew he'd be home that Sunday afternoon and would talk with his kids then (they lived in another state). DH knew while on vacation to turn off his cell phone (hmm).