This past weekend I made my first attempts at being more "disengaged". Honestly at the time I didn't really know when I made the choice to step back from the step parenting role, I had begun to do this thing called "disengaging". I'm kinda new to this world and the lingo, can you tell? Can you tell me--from those of you especially that have traveled down this road a little longer than me (been a year)--has it worked out for the best, are you glad that you decided to adopt this mindset? Have you felt it has rescued or preserved your sanity, kept your relationship with your significant other healthier, reduced conflict with the BM,etc?
I'm sure this has already been talked about on blogs, too. If you know of another conversation, point me in that direction.
It was hard to keep my mouth shut sometimes this weekend. My hubby doesn't have a set schedule with the BM, just a usual schedule that changes a lot. We have ss10 Friday after school to Sunday evening. BM doesn't work on Saturdays and will sometimes tell her son if she has no other plans that he is welcome to go over to her house on Saturday if he wants and his dad says it is o.k. Several times he's asked my hubby on Saturday afternoon if he can go to his mom's for a while (she works on Sundays so we'd have to get him back again Sat. night or Sun morn). It makes for an awkward situation and it makes my hubby seem like such a bad guy for saying "no you cannot go over there, we already have plans for the evening". He son gets upset and becomes a brat the rest of the evening, usually making our plans less enjoyable. I get so frustrated because I feel that is something the parents should be negotiating, the son shouldn't be put into the middle of it. An absolutely set schedule would be great but a step in the right direction would be for the BM to contact my hubby and schedule Saturday time with her son and not have the son ask his dad out of the blue. I kept my lips zipped about it all when it happened this weekend (instead of my usual ranting to my hubby that I hate how BM puts him in these situations)--just one of several things I kept my mouth shut about. It wasn't easy to do, I hope it is all worth it, even when it means I have to leave the room because I feel myself wanting to spill my opinion....