I look forward to hearing the results of the paternity test - 

You probably know this by now: Be cautious who you talk to about this stuff. Shrug off, ignore questions you might get. "Everything's ok." "I don't know." 
While my closest friends and colleagues know I have SKs, 95% of them only know the bare bones info--"skids don't like me" kind of sums it up and shuts down any conversation. More distant friends & acquaintances don't know I have SKs. 
One reason for this is it's all so negative (for me); another reason is I don't want to hear the advice from amateurs. I got terrible advice early on when all of this started. 

Vent to us! We are here!  

I think most of us stop trying to discuss step issues with people that haven't experienced something similar for themselves. That's why I end up here so often. Most people have no clue. 

That's true about other hard situations in life as well, you have to live it to believe it. I'm sure many people have areas of their life where they know most people just don't get it.

The worst is people that knew SD's when DH and BM were still together. Many of them are either locked in a time-warp and have no idea what our lives are like today or they feel sorry for SD's because BM is crazy and because they are COD. It doesn't matter that now that they are adults they are responsible for their own choices and behaviors, people who knew them as kids often still think of them as kids. 
 

ESMOD wrote:

TBH.. the bottom line is that this is not your personal issue to resolve.  The relationship your husband has with his son is his to manage.. could he, should he be doing more?

ESMOD, I was once told that I was responsible for raising a serial killer. My response was, "I am not responsible for raising anyone. His parents are."

ESMOD wrote:

TBH.. the bottom line is that this is not your personal issue to resolve.  The relationship your husband has with his son is his to manage.. could he, should he be doing more?  That is a question he needs to answer for himself. When people give you advice.. you can remind them that this is not in your personal control.. they can talk to dad about it.

True but I've raised SS16 since infancy. He calls my Mom Grandma and all my siblings aunty and uncle and their kids his cousins. He grew up with my family- more than DH's and BM's for sure. 

So people are having a hard time with me sitting this one out because historically that has not been my position. 

Heck - I used to be that person with useless advice, when I worked with kids in care. For years. On reflection, I realise that I was just parroting stuff that was divorced from reality and pulled directly from the books of some academics that theorised a lot, maybe needed to further their careers coming up with some theoretically sound but practically impossible solutions. As far as I know none of these academics had any of these kids they were theorising about in their care.
I never wanted to have kids of my own, so meeting a widower with primary school aged kids seemed ideal. Little did I know. I then went through a rollercoaster of emotions initially trying to “love these kids as my own” and the disappointment of realising that I was only human and that you can’t have harmony with destructive forces, then trying to gripe to anyone who’d listen, being angry with my SO for making disastrous life choices (breeding with disease, decay and chaos) to disengaging as much as possible and not bothering to waste any of my precious time thinking or talking about the steppos or my SO’s parenting from the place of guilt. The so-called friends who were being judgemental and telling me I should “love them like my own” are no longer my friends. I’ve also realised that the reason they were saying that was because they were those BMs with multiple baby daddies, expecting each one to love (fund) her spawn “like their own”, so not exactly comparable to my situation.

Last edited by BanksiaRose (11/06/2025 6:53 am)

CastleJJ wrote:

I don't post or vent to anyone outside of this group, except two of my friends, both wives of two of DH's friends, who both know BM very lwell, since their husbands knew BM while DH and BM dated in high school and watched that whole relationship explode in real time. They know exactly how BM operates and are never surprised when I share the crazy stories we have experienced, because either they experienced it with BM themselves or they witnessed DH experience it. Hell, BM is obsessed with one of my friend's husbands and has been since high school so she gets to directly see how BM tries to contact him and get his attention (which he shuts down and blocks every time).

I find that nobody understands unless they have lived it and there are many blended families in healthy or civil co-parenting relationships that spout "why can't you just get along?" It's not possible to get along with someone whose sole mission in life is to destroy you/make you miserable, string you along by weaponizing the shared child, and/or financially exploit the situation. You can't coparent, negotiate, or communicate effectively with these types of people. The only way to appear civil is to give the high conflict person everything they want and even then, they still won't be happy and it's toxic for the person trying to cooperate. And unfortunately, when the children are raised by these people, the children end up just like them and feel that they can manipulate, control, and weaponize themselves and their effort, love, etc. to punish whomever they want. If they don't get their way, they run to the side of least resistance. These high conflict co-parenting dynamics are raising incapable, entitled, emotionally damaged adults and typically the safe/healthy parent can't do anything to stop it.

It's all so sad. I have been in SS' life since he was 10 months old and I have struggled with this reality for a very long time. I have had to accept "defeat" over the last several years, which is the hardest thing to do. It's grieving a child who didn't die, but you can't access and grieving who they could have been with better influences. We just have to hope that SS turns out alright and eventually comes to his senses in adulthood and if not, then it is what it is, no matter how bad it sucks. Until then, I will raise my daughters in a way that minimally involves them in this stephell and shield them as best I can, but I know DD3 misses her brother regardless and it breaks my heart. I hate raising my own children in a toxic chaos that another woman has created.

Oh man that is so true. We didn't create this chaos but we're living it.

The kids don't really seem to understand SS16 is gone, they certainly still talk about him as though he's here, just like in his room or something. (Even though DD5 now has it) Or at his Mom's but still coming back "next week".

It sucks. I received confirmation that the paternity test has made it to the lab and they said around 10 days for the results. DH said that if the results come back negative I can decide if I want the kids to keep a relationship or not. He will handle BM and SS16. (As to a relationship or not).

He feels pretty strongly SS16 will be his bio kid and I'm hoping he is too.

Rags wrote:

No

One thing he did that was brilliant was contact her XBF who she screwed over. That XBF gave my colleague a sworn deposition on all kinds of stuff that his XW would not want being paraded around in court.  A year after the XBF gave him the sworn deposition, the XW and her XBF reconciled and ended up marrying.  Every time the XW got nasty, my colleague would walk into court with the XBF's/new DH's deposition ready to present to the Judge and in front of the entire retinue of court watchers in their small town.  The XW would back off instantly.  The new DH would beg my colleague to destroy the deposition.  Nope.  He kept that club ready to bash skulls until his kid aged out from under the CO.   

.

This is what BM's ex's fiance did. BM and The StepDad aren't even divorced yet but The Fiance managed to make friends with a couple of BM's ex's and they gave her affidavits with crazy claims like BM having a "sex dungeon" in her basement where she takes her men during the day while the kids are home, but yells at them if they try to come downstairs and interrupt them. (Puke).

She also managed to secure affidavits from BM's sisters, and one of BM's sisters provided them with a great deal of physical evidence that will make BM's case very hard to plead.

I think the difference is that BM doesn't know about the affidavits or evidence yet, and won't until the pretrial documents get sent next month. Should be interesting to see how all that goes!