Stepfamilies and Social media

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Social media is the bane of step-life. It seems our SOs, in laws and their ex's always are doing something that portrays life in some way other than reality. I just need to vent about it for a second, feel free to share how it annoys you too. I know the solution is to block people or stay off of it but dammit I have friends and family that live far away that I want to stay in touch with.

DH does not post pictures of me or of our six-month-old daughter. His excuse is that he is just not active on social media. If you take a look at his accounts it's as if everything stops when he met me about 5 years ago. There are tons of pictures of SD. He has scrubbed his profile of BM though. BM has done the same, she left no trace of DH and leaves us completely alone on social media. At least she is doing this right!

My in laws post lots of pictures of SD and her cousins. My DD and I are very absent. My DD and I are the only ones in DH's family that are a different race (BM was the same) so I wonder if that's it? Or maybe they scrubbed their profiles of his ex and decided to save the trouble by never posting anything of his current wife? That would explain my exclusion but not my DD's. It's not that they don't take pictures of her or all of us, they just never post them and instead choose pictures with everyone else. More than once I have been asked to take a picture of the rest of his family (pre-DD) and that one got posted. They have even waited for me to leave to go buy food for everyone and took a picture while I was gone and then post it where I could see it. My DH has heard about this exclusionary behavior but I don't think he ever talked to his family about it.

When I gave birth they all showed up (before I was ready) and took tons of pictures of them holding the baby. I was still out of it and asked them to send the pictures to me. They were texting them to each other in the same room but never sent me one. Never posted any but it was so important to come visit the day I gave birth to get those pictures. My DH heard about that as well and I think after that he finally pushed for better boundaries with family visits!!

Hurtful

So sorry to hear of this hurtful treatment.of you and your little girl. This was before the Internet , but my XDH and I adopted older Native American children. I was part Native American. It was very deflating when we gave my XDH's parents photos of our children, and they refused to put them up on the walls with their other Grandkids. I asked XDH's father where they were and he said he put them in an album. My XDH's parents would have Birthday parties for the 'white' grandkids and would go all out with the presents, cake, you name it, but gave our kids a couple of dollars in an envelope.

Kind of funny but when a picture was taken of my XHD's family I didn't place it on our mantle with pictures of my family. XDH's father asked where their family picture was and I replied, "In an album."

The sad thing about all of this is that it has absolutely nothing to do with you. It is about small-minded people. It is good your DH is practicing boundaries with his family. My advice is to 'unfollow' people who treat you disrespectfully. You can do this for a 30 day period, then see if things improve.

I'm so sorry your kids faced

I'm so sorry your kids faced a similar situation with their grandparents, how extra hurtful it is to do that to adopted kids who are old enough to see the different treatment. They must be learning over and over again that the world is an unfair place.

MY DH never posts pics of me

MY DH never posts pics of me on social media. I think he has maaaaaybe posted two pictures of the two of us since we started dating four years ago. He uses the "I don't ever get on my account" but prior to us getting together there are TONS of pictures of DH, BM and the SS's and almost daily posts about their oh so wonderful happy life. He still hasn't deleted pics of BM and says it's too time consuming and he is never active on their anyway. And I don't realy care except that I think it's probably weird that the 450 friends and family he has on there see that crap if they go to his page and not one damn mention of his new life. Anyway, vent over LOL

Well that's just rude of him

Well that's just rude of him not to take the pics down.

I would be very upset by this

The "time consuming" excuse comes along all too often. Yet the majority of people can find the time to do things if they really want to. It's one thing to leave up old photos of BM, but to not post anything about you, what's up with that? Why is your DH suddenly not active on social media now? You're right, it is weird that other people view his page and see the former family, like it still exists. I would probably ask your DH if he has no use now for his page and is never active then it may be time to delete the entire thing. If it's sooo difficult to remove old photos (it's not, I did mine all one evening) and he doesn't want to use it anymore it would be much easier just to delete it, right?!!

Yes, it is very hurtful. All

Yes, it is very hurtful. All of the above happened to me.

My now ex husband refused to ‘update his social media’ so it didn’t alienate his grown up children.

ex mil and sil would exclude our bio children pictures from their social media accounts, and they would not put photos up in the house. Some of this stemmed from she couldn’t cope with not having a girl. I have 2 girls with my now ex husband. She refused to acknowledge the second one existed at all.

This created all manner of problems, as I could not let her buy my older daughter a present when she would be ignoring my younger one (who is now only one and a half, so my one and a half year old couldn’t have done something wrong).

i didn’t much care how they treated me, but I wasn’t going to let them ‘involve’ my children.

i stopped speaking to them.

ex MIL is the perfect woman on social media, but these people are not kind.

The sister of the father of my boys has been lovely to me recently, even offering to babysit the girls who are not biologically related to her. The relationship with her brother ended 18 years ago. I haven’t taken her up on the offer, but she has more kindness in her little finger than the ‘girls’ family.

My husband isn’t crazy about social media

but furing say new years and religious holidays when everyone is posting pics with family we may do one together but since he found out his exwife has ex-cowrkers at hubby’s workplace acting as spies for hwr reporting everything about us like when i’m pregnant or give birth etc just basically any gossip, hubby has refused to post any outings with us online.

His family has a whatsapp group to exchange pics at family events, we are never excluded whatsoever but we keep this to ourselves. Hubby has more pics of me and our 2 kids together because skids of their own choosing chose to aloenate themselves from hubby

My husband isn’t crazy about social media

I'm not a social media expert

I'm not a social media expert but - isn't there usually a way to not see what they post unless you go looking for it? I know there is on Facebook.

Tag your husband

What if you post photo's of your family on your facebook and tag your husband in it. This way the photo will be visible on his timeline too.

oh I do this all the time.

Most of this serves as

Most of this serves as further justification as to why you should never marry (or get involved with) a man with children from a previous relationship. Maybe that should be a new forum topic page? Labeled: Look Before you Leap. Meaning, advice for women thinking of becoming step-parents via marriage (or move in).

I used to get really upset

I used to get really upset about this. I don’t think I’ve ever been mentioned on DH’s fb page, he’s mentioned LO once and that’s it. I have no idea if he used to post a lot about BM, his page was scrubbed before we met so if he did I’ve never seen it (thank god. Gag)

I used to post about DH every so often, I’m not a huge social media person as it is & post less & less as time goes on, but I decided instead of continuing to be upset about his lack of posting about me, I’d remove every reference to DH from my page. Honestly, it was the most cathartic thing ever. I hardly ever post, but I refuse to post about him again. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

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Stepfamilies and Social media