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Stepparenting literature

Onemorewickedwitch's picture

Submitted by Onemorewickedwitch on Wed, 01/22/2020 - 2:03pm

Hello! I'm new here.

I have been actively stepparenting for the last 2 years. My skids were only 2 and 4 when I came into their lives and although I think I got pretty lucky in that regard, I did not realize what I was getting myself into and the first year was especially rouuuughhhhh. It got better but jeez it's not an easy road: full of loneliness, frustrations, doubts, anger... 

I'm pretty isolated. I'm always on the road for my job, I moved away from my family and friends and really did not have anybody to confide in. Lately, I thought I was going craycrayyy and started to question my relationship with my SO all together... then I stumble on a couple of books: Stepmonster and The single girl's guide to marrying a man, his kids, and his ex-wife. It really gave me some kind of perspective on the whole stepmother thing. I also found this website!, which I'm super excited about lol.

I'm curious to know if you have other books to recommend. I like books plus it gives me a reason to step away and have some alone time when the skids are driving me nuts lol.

And after reading a lot of the post here, I can see there is often a big disconnect between the stepmom and her DH (doesn't seem to be as true for a stepdad and his DW, I might be completely wrong tho lol). Has anyone made their SO, the birth parent, read those books about stepparenting? Did it help understanding each other better?

 

Comments

GoingWicked's picture

Submitted by GoingWicked on Wed, 01/22/2020 - 6:14pm

I think DH understands my POV, he is just not a great parent, in general, so he's not as on top of his daughter's behavior as I would be.  Plus she's mentally ill or personality disordered, not sure what you would call it, so she's just not going to be a nice, caring, respectful person anyway.  So I think boundaies in marriage helped me, which pretty much states that him, her and their problems are not my problem.  The books I've read basically say the same thing.  The stepfamily issues are not your burden.  The spouse, kids, and even society are probably going to try to make it your problem (and if they don't, you're lucky).

BethAnne's picture

Submitted by BethAnne on Wed, 01/22/2020 - 8:51pm

I am not great at reading books these days (I often want to but never get round to it).

What I do though is I sometimes discuss stuff I read on here with my husband so we have conversations about other people's situations and that can help us to discuss our different points of view on a "neutral" topic while gaining some understanding of how each other think. This isn't so much a tactic as I just like discussing stuff with him. 

I think that the answer for this is to know your husband. Is he likely to be interested in reading a whole book that he hasn't chosen for himself? Or will just say he will read it and never get round to it (so you grow resentful) or will he read it but see it as you giving him "homework" to do (so he grows resentful). If you think he will read it and be genuanly interested in it and want to see things from another perspective then go for it. If not, then perhaps think of other tactics to introduce some concepts into your conversations to discuss.

Onemorewickedwitch's picture

Submitted by Onemorewickedwitch on Thu, 01/23/2020 - 2:29pm

Actually I was mostly asking for me. There is no way I can make my SO read an entire book unless it's about football.... lol maybe I could ask him to read a paragraph here and there but that's it.

I was just curious to know if someone tried that approach with their SO, especially with books that have such very specific targeted readers.