💕 Love yourself first, stepparents
Quit trying to turn yourself into whoever you think your stepkid’s gonna like.
I'm a fun-loving, mischievous kind of person. I like to mess with people. Teasing is one of my love languages. And I especially like playing with kids, who are the most fun to tease and mess with.
...except my own stepkid when we met, who was apparently kryptonite.
Turns out, if your main way of interacting with kids is by playing and having fun and messing around, and your stepkid is dead set against having fun with you, you hit a big ol' brick wall.
Every time my SD refused to smile when I cracked a joke, I pulled back a little. I'd make a mental note that wasn't the right way to connect with her, and I'd figure out some other way to connect instead. The next time I'd try a milder joke. A gentler approach. Adjust my wording. Change my tone.
Nada.
Again and again and again I'd try to win that kid over. And she kept her wall built so solid and so high, you'd think I was Attila the Hun instead of a reasonably nice, normal lady her dad was dating.
In my attempt to create a version of myself SD would like and approve of, I carved so much of my personality away that I lost myself. I hollowed my personality out till I didn't recognize what was left. I forgot who I used to be.
17 Coping Tips for Managing Overwhelming Stepparenting Emotions
I used to think I was the only stepparent who struggled in this role. Which also made me feel like the worst human ever. But after many years of talking to thousands of stepparents, turns out it's super normal for stepparenting to be way harder than you expected! This list of coping tips for emotional overwhelm includes many of the practices I used myself to get my head above water again. xo
And no wonder, when I felt like I could only exist around SD conditionally — act this way, not that way; don't be so much... well, myself. Maybe if I just Maarit less. You know?
Because I know myself and I know I can be a lot. Yeah I like to have fun, but I can also be intense. I have sharp edges. I'm fierce about whatever sparks my passion, including love and loyalty and family. I'm a wildly protective mama bear, but I’m also a tough love mama bear; I play and roar in equal measure.
But when SD refused to accept the playful, I was left with just... roaring.
Who wants to be around that? No one. Not even myself. Definitely not my stepkid.
Over time, when aspects of your personality are continually shunned by those around you, you shut those parts of yourself down. I dated a guy one time who was ultra-sensitive to being teased. God that sucked — having to watch every single thing I said, every conversation taking place on eggshells. It’s not surprising that we didn't last. There was no way I could stay in a romantic relationship with someone while constantly second-guessing myself.
You can't break up with your stepkid, though.
So there I was all over again, biting my tongue all day, then at night replaying every mistake I made and wondering how I could fix it the next day. Not matter what I tried, my stepkid rejected me, and each rejection chipped more of my self-esteem into sawdust.
😬 What if your stepkid hates you?
I looked for the answer to this question for years, convinced I was the only stepparent in the world whose stepkid wanted nothing to do with them.
Somehow I'd gone from being a spontaneous gal who knew how to have a good time to someone who thought about the umpteen possible outcomes of every single interaction, then worked her way backwards from those predictions to decide what carefully measured response to give.
Gross. And so not me.
I couldn’t stand how serious everything felt all the damn time. Like the entire future of our family depended on my next word choice, or whether SD said good morning to me, or whether her mom flipped out over something I did or didn't do. Like every day I was walking on a tightrope strung out over hot lava. In the dark. While having no idea how to actually balance on a tightrope, knowing one misstep would incinerate everything. #nopressure
These are not conditions that lend themselves super well to having a chill relationship with your stepkid.
And yet, the tightrope was of my own making. I could've stepped off to safety at any time — I just didn't know it.
I was not (and still am not) responsible for how SD chose to interact with me. (I'm fun, dammit! How did I let a 10yo’s grouchiness convince me I wasn't??) Nor did I have any power to change whatever bullshit story HCBM told herself about me, or told her kid about me.
We're only responsible for our own actions, not for other people's responses to those actions. And we can't control how anyone acts toward us or what they think about us. We only think we can.
I thought my SD didn't like me because of how I interacted with her, and thought I could get her to like me if I acted differently. So I acted differently. Which didn't work. So I acted a different differently, then again and again until I became unrecognizable even to myself. And along the way, my life became so serious as to become unrecognizable, too.
Daily life shouldn't feel like you're living in a slowly collapsing claustrophobic nightmare.
The antidote? Be yourself. Rediscover what being yourself feels like — wholly, unapologetically, completely yourself. The serious will begin breaking apart and the fun will start shining back through. You'll find space to breathe again.
There’s a great quote from Lucille Ball that goes “Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line.” That for sure has been my personal experience with stepparenting. (And really, with life in general.)
If your stepkid’s rejection of you has convinced you that there is something wrong with you, I just want you to know I’m pretty sure there’s nothing wrong with you. On the contrary, I believe you’re a rare and awesome kind of human; not many folks are willing to dig in and do the work on this stepparenting thing the way you’re doing. Just by being here. Reading this. Trying to do better.
Denying your true personality means you are denying your stepfamily the gifts that only you can bring. And modeling authenticity for your stepkid can be a powerful example for them as they’re learning how they want to move through the world.
So be yourself. Love yourself. Take up space and do not apologize for it. Let your stepkid get to know the real you, not some Fakey McFakerton version of you.
And along the way, don’t forget to have a little fun.
🧡🧡
— Maarit.