What Do You Do When Anger Gets In The Way
Dear Lisa:
I’m in a stepfamily with his, hers and one ours child. I mistakenly told my partner we’re not married but by now are common law in mystate — to have a child with me if I assumed the costs of raising her. She’s now nine. My partner is a wealthy doctor with two other children who are teens. He has some major issues about money. Anyway, what I didn’t expect was that he would not help out with raising our daughter in any way. He never changed a diaper, never put her to bed, never read a book to her and never fed her a meal.
Recently his older daughter went away to college, and all of a sudden he’s very interested in our daughter. He wants to go to her activities, eat dinner with us nearly every night and spend much more time with her without so much as paying for her dinners. As you might imagine, I’m very angry. I don’t want to break up my daughter’s home, but I’m afraid my resentment is bad for her. She’s basically a happy, healthy child who loves her family and is very close to my son, who is eight years older than her. She has always received lots of attention from the people around her (except her father) and is now thrilled to get all this attention from her dad.
I know I got myself into this stupid situation, but I want to end my resentment because my anger is bad for my family. What do you suggest I do?
Resentful and Sad
Dear Resentful and Sad,
Don’t be so hard on yourself. Women in stepfamilies often take on huge burdens in order to make a stepfamily work. They often offer to pay their husbands’ child support and raise their husbands’ kids. Unlike you, many of them aren’t able to talk their husbands into having our kids! You’ll learn that it’s okay to approach your partner and ask him to start over with you.
Dr. Vicki Panaccione, a psychologist and founder of the Better Parenting Institute, says you have a few choices. Since you have been paying all along, you can continue to do that and allow him to be with his child. You can ask him to keep life the way it was, and not spend so much time with his child. However, as she notes, that would not be great for the child. Or you could, as the article above suggests, start over and come up with a new understanding that if he wants to spend time with his daughter, he needs to help share in the expenses.
“This really is a great time to redefine the family constellation with the older ones out of the house. He may realize what he’s been missing, or how empty his life is now that the older ones are gone. They could come together as a nuclear family and raise their child together, which does involve time and financial commitments. Perhaps they should sit down with a counselor and explore what each would like to see happen regarding their family and the parenting of this girl. He has a chance to almost start over again if he wants to,” Panaccione says.
Good luck!
I hope you find ways to begin anew and let go of your resentment.
Lisa
