Not Your Circus, Not Your Monkeys [ebook]

The frustrated stepparent's guide to reclaiming personal peace [a step-by-step guide to disengaging]

Intro

On paper, Dan & I seemed perfect for each other. I was a single mom; he was a divorced dad. We each had one daughter and they were both the same age. Our first date felt as comfortable as if we'd already been married for a hundred years.

We were completely blindsided when blending our family turned out waaay more complicated than either of us imagined it possibly could be.

Dan & I have opposite parenting styles, which was fine while we lived separately. I could have my rules at my house and he could have his lack of rules at his. Both kids understood that. When we moved in together though? Disaster. Dan's committed Disneyland Dad routine meant my stepdaughter (SD) wasn’t used to any rules while with him. She didn't even have a regular bedtime; French fries with spaghetti was a typical dinner.

There was no way I was gonna raise my kid like that.

As a middle kid who hated growing up in a family where my little brother was parented completely differently (junk food + coddling + lots of TV) from the way my older sister and I were raised (health food + chores + lots of accountability), I always planned on absolute fairness among siblings once I had a family of my own. So when Dan & I moved in together, it never even occurred to me to treat SD differently from my biological daughter (BD). We were all family now.

Dan agreed that he wanted everything to be fair between the kids and SD would benefit from more structure, but then he'd never follow through. I ended up doing a lot of “SD, would you please bring that to your room? SD, would you please take your dishes to the sink? SD, please remember to chew with your mouth closed.” Just like I would with BD: totally normal parenting stuff, no biggie. But any amount of parenting turned out to be a HUGE biggie to SD.

The problem was, SD didn't want to be my family. And she definitely didn't want me to parent her. All SD wanted was for her life to go back to normal — a normal where she got to keep her dad all to herself.

I didn't recognize my SD's sulky attitude as a sign that she wasn't ready for a relationship with me. I thought it was normal sulky kid behavior, the same as any special snowflake would act when someone starts calling them out on their shenanigans. How many spoiled kids had I babysat as a teenager who acted the exact same way? And just like with those kids, I wasn't going to let my SD call the shots. So I kept right on attempting to raise my SD the same way I was raising my BD: with love, structure, and accountability.

Yeah. That didn't work.

SD made it clear she didn’t want me around, nor did she want any semblance of structure or accountability. At best she was standoffish with me. At worst she'd make faces at me behind my back when she thought I couldn't see or lie to her mom about me (“Maarit wouldn't help me with my homework!"). Friction between houses increased, as did friction between me and SD.

Dan never addressed any of this, no matter how many times we fought about it. Then came one particularly awful summer when I was home alone all day every day with SD— Dan was working (I worked from home) and my BD was at her dad's for the summer. SD would ignore me the entire day, declining every invitation I extended to do stuff together. She'd find a reason to say no every single time. She literally would not stay in the same room as me longer than 5 minutes.

One night Dan came home and found me in tears over how much SD hated me and super kindly and unhelpfully said, "Maybe you just need to try a little harder, honey."

It was at that moment that I realized I could not try one bit harder.

I had tried my absolute hardest. And I was done. Done done done. Stick a fork in me, flip me over, DONE.

That's right about the time I found the Disengaging Essay.

And it hit me like ohhhhh... WOW. I am the only one working at this.

I was parenting Dan's kid and he… wasn't. I was struggling to make us into a family and he wasn't. And unless he was willing to get down and dirty in the trenches with me by also working and trying and parenting and struggling, nothing would ever change.

If you're reading this and you've been there, then you know how that lightbulb moment changes everything.

Recognizing those truths should've felt depressing, but instead felt freeing. We'd been together 5 or 6 years by that point, most of which I'd spent feeling invisible, hurt, and alone. After reading the essay, I felt this massive guilt-weight lift from my shoulders.

Because before I read the essay, I thought I was failing. Like I was the worst possible stepmom on the planet. After reading the essay, I understood that the problem wasn't just me. Blending our family was a group project, and nobody else was participating. I couldn't do this alone. And… maybe that was okay.

So I did my best to disengage. And slowly, life at home began improving.

Around that same time, I started getting into yoga to try and manage my stress levels better (go figure, the stress of stepparenting in a high-conflict situation kicked my anxiety up to 11). I'd started reading more about Eastern philosophies and religions, and learned about the Buddhist concept of non-attachment. I had another lightbulb moment: so THAT'S what the essay was trying to say!

Originally, I hadn't felt great about disengaging when it sounded like giving up — and angrily at that. Throwing up my hands and walking away like "She's your kid; YOU deal with her!" went against everything I believed about love and family. And I also felt like I couldn't not support Dan when it came to problems with his high-conflict ex (HCBM).

Yet, the principles of disengaging — stepping back from drama, letting Dan parent SD— were absolutely working. And the way Eastern philosophies described non-attachment was anything but angry or unloving, so maybe I needed to re-evaluate my preconceptions.

The more I understood that stepping back from parenting SD could be a loving act rather than an uncaring act, the more I could accept that disengaging as a valid approach to stepparenting. I started looking differently at how our family could blend: what worked, what hadn't worked.

By going over Dan's head to parent my stepdaughter, I was basically telling him that his parenting wasn't good enough — that I didn't trust him to parent his own kid as well as I could. The more I stepped in on how he managed his high-conflict ex, the more my actions told him I had no faith in his abilities there either.

What a shitty message.

So I stopped micromanaging and worked on accepting instead. Accepting that Dan wasn't going to parent SD the same way I would, and maybe that was okay. I also worked on accepting that we could be a "real" family even on an every-other-weekend custody schedule — even on long distance. I worked to accept that his ex wasn't going anywhere and would always be part of our life. And I worked on redefining what I thought about that, too: that maybe we didn't need zero conflict to be a "real" family.

When trying to be the best stepmom I could be made me into the worst version of myself, disengaging saved me. Instead of more rules, I brought in more downtime. More low-key hanging out. More laughter. By the teeniest tiniest baby steps, the tension in our home eased up and made room for love to enter.

I've been a stepmom now for over a dozen years. I've spent more than half that time researching disengaging and non-attachment and becoming a better mama and stepmama for it — and really, a happier human.

This downloadable ebook includes exactly everything I've learned along the way in the hopes that my many miserable years can help shorten someone else's steep learning curve. Here's hoping that someone is you!

xo,

Maarit.