Jacquelyn's Space

Unfortunately, I will be writing about my stepson’s mother for a little while longer. I need to clear a few things up. I also intend to finish writing my memoir on the trials of being a stepmother when your stepkid’s mother is a jerk. It is not always the stepchild that is the thorn in a stepmother’s side, many times it is the stepchild’s mother. I would also like to emphasize that stepmother’s get a bad reputation for being evil but perhaps it just shade thrown by insecure bio-moms.

Shade

One of the things that my stepson’s mother apparently told my stepson was that I called CPS on her numerous times. I already detailed one instance where she told my stepson that me and his father called CPS on her, or that CPS “were involved” when they really were not. It was just a ploy by her to manipulate her son.

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https://wordpress.com/post/jashalyn.com/5465

CPS was not involved then, nor were they ever involved. I have never called CPS on my stepson’s mother, nor has my husband ever called CPS on her. Supposedly, she told my stepson that we would go tit for tat, where she would do something shitty and my husband and I would respond with shitty behavior back, some of which was calling CPS on her. We never called CPS on her. Never. She is the one that brought it up, pre-emptively accusing us of wanting to call CPS on her, when she was leaving her son home alone all day long, at the age of 10 years old. That thought had not even crossed our mind. My husband always tried to deal with her in a reasonable manner, talking to her first, trying to hear her side of things. She did not do that in return. As far as going tit for tat with her, that is something we fought hard against. She, again, accused my husband of doing that, citing her bad behavior as a catalyst, stating something like, “Don’t do to me what I have done to you in the past.” She knew she behaved horribly in the past, using her son as a pawn in her game, but didn’t like it when we reacted to her with the same. But we actually never reacted to her behavior the same way. It was never tit for tat because we never tried to use Jordan (stepson) as pawn. We always tried to do what was best for Jordan but while preserving my husband’s parenting time. It may have seemed–a very few times, because my husband is TOO nice–that my husband was going tit for tat when he put his foot down, but it was just an effort to preserve his time with his son. If he had never put his foot down, he would have been phased out of his son’s life. I truly believe that, even more so now, since recent events have shed more light on her shady behavior.

It is hard to write about this without citing past incidents as evidence. Do I have all the energy for that right now? No, I do not. Do I even have the time for that? No, I do not. Trust me though, I have incidents documented. I just have to dig out all those papers and files. I have tried to put all this behind me. It has been over 10 years since my stepson has come of age. I had hoped we were all past this, but his mother must continue with her need to control and be primary parent in her son’s life…with her husband being the second parent, and me and my husband totally phased out. It is like she expected us to disappear. She did her best to make us disappear. She is pissed now that we have not. That Jordan still wants to have a relationship with us, that his wife wants a relationship with us.

It is tough writing about this because it dredges up all the past feelings, not to mention current struggles. I have wanted to disappear from my stepson’s life. I struggled with that, oh I struggled. I got the feeling he didn’t want me in his life and that hurt like hell. I had pulled back because I couldn’t deal with the hurt. I had put a lot of these feelings away, tamped them down, because I didn’t want to feel the hurt and there wasn’t much I could do to forge a relationship with Jordan if he wasn’t interested in having one. I also couldn’t deal with seeing my husband hurt. We both knew that Jordan is a mama’s boy, that his mother was first (and only?) parent in his life, with Chuck being a very distant second. It was hard to swallow because we knew what Jordan’s mother has done to make herself tops in her son’s life. We knew she was manipulative and that she had (somewhat) poisoned Jordan against us. My husband had no idea what to do about it. Neither did I, really, except that I thought if we had a few uncomfortable conversations with Jordan, if I presented my evidence (my writings), then he might come around. How do you do that with your kid when they aren’t really interested? When they don’t really remember the past, when they were a kid, when they don’t want to remember the bad times…we didn’t want to do that, we didn’t want to dredge up the past, the bad times. We didn’t want to have to dump it all on him, cram it down his throat, trash his mother….

It was just hard to stomach coming in a distant second, to very last, if even considered or thought of to that piece of work that Jordan calls mother. That manipulative, controlling, narcissist (psychopath?)….

Anyway,  now she has done it all on her own. She dredged up the past by making her ultimatums and talking shit and throwing a temper tantrum when she couldn’t shut me and my husband out of Jordan and his family’s lives.

And now, the truth is coming out.