If you go to the internet looking for professional advice on how to deal with stepmom life, some of what you’ll read will include:
Speaking only if you can do it with kindness, offering constructive and objective feedback.
Putting the stepkids first and keeping in mind what will make them thrive.
Encouraging a healthy co-parenting relationship between your spouse and the other co-parent.
Avoiding disciplining or exercising control over your stepkids.
If you are a stepmom, you might’ve heard some version of this advice from your therapist, friends, in-laws, your partner, and even divorce lawyers and mediators.
Though they probably had good intentions and thought they were helpful, you are right to sense that they are far from understanding the stepmom experience and the complicated family dynamic that comes with it.
The advice above, intentionally or not, suggests a hierarchy that puts the biological parents, and the kids, at the top of the pyramid.
The combination of in-laws and supportive professionals who want to maintain the preexisting structure, rules and relationships might lead you to become a resentful, angry and confused wife and stepmother.
Stepfamilies come in many shapes and sizes, but the stepmom experience often feels like an uphill, very lonely battle.
As a stepmom, your experience of family life is dramatically different than that of your partner and the stepkids. You are an outsider to predetermined ways of running the house, from what’s on the grocery list to how you spend a family night.
They have their games, jokes, negotiation style and cleaning habits. They have a shared history. So where does it leave you?
It can seem impossible to assert yourself, claim your place at the top of the pyramid, and say, “Enough.”
The constant feeling of being at the mercy of other people’s decisions (instead of part of them), navigating being a partial sideshow parent and partial roommate, combined with the pretty negative reputation that comes with the title, sure don’t help.
The internet also offers honest and relatable accounts of other stepmoms. Including how the stress and anxiety that come from your own children, can be multiplied when it comes to living and raising someone else’s children, how you don’t actually “love them as your own,” and how to deal with a high-conflict ex.
There are social media groups, webinars, blogs, podcasts and on-demand coaching sessions, but confidential, consistent, relational and professionally-led services are much harder to come across.
Group Therapy NJ offers a distinct experience of an intimate ongoing support group for stepmoms living in New Jersey.
This group meets virtually for an hour and 15 minutes once a week. In this group, you will get plenty of support and encouragement. You will gain tools to deal with emotions of jealousy, alienation, anger and helplessness. You will be with women who are experiencing the same frequent self-doubt and the urge to walk out on it all. You will practice communication skills to bring you and your partner back on the same team.
You don’t have to continue being so tense when the kids come, when there’s a change to the divorce agreement or when your partner mentions the ex.
You’ve been in fight mode for way too long. If you’re ready to experience real joy and pride in your family, please reach out. I’ll be honored to help you.
Kate Winkler is a Licensed Associate Marriage and Family Therapist (LAMFT) at Group Therapy NJ. She is passionate about learning how individuals establish and maintain connections. She works with individuals, couples and families. In addition to English, Kate speaks Hebrew, Russian and is studying Spanish. Kate lives with her husband, daughter and three stepchildren in Highland Park, New Jersey. To work with her, please email [email protected] or call/text 732.320.3651.
