Outside of the Inside

What are the chances of being a Step Dad and a recovering alcoholic and having it work out for all concerned?  Most days that is.  I would venture a guess that it’s probably less than average. Because the success ratios of a step dad blending well with children he did not sire mixed in with the attitudes of an alcoholic even though he is not drinking cannot be the best recipe for a family to digest.  However, for the most part I have been more apart of my stepchildren’s lives than their real father ever was.  I say that not in a smug way because he made my role tougher than it had to be by not taking a more active role as a father.  

It has been quite awhile for this stepdad to get acquainted with what boundaries are. Boundaries was a term I was not familiar with as I never had them in any of my previous relationships, but in a blended family I learned real quick that if I didn’t decide where my responsibilities started and stopped I was in for a boat load of resentment and my stepchildren would tear a chunk out of my heart because they were busy living their rightful egocentric life as children are inclined to do. I didn’t understand this at first because I thought that they would be so happy to find a male figure that had some emotional stability and that they would be eager to toe the line and have regard as to what I thought and to what I said. It was a fire bath for me because they may have been relieved that their mother was happy but I had little importance in what they were determined to have for themselves. 

  

And for most of my stewardship I have been in my words a ‘figurehead’ in my own home. I am not complaining because number one it would have not done any good and secondly and most important, I was very much loved by my stepchildren. Although I felt like I was outside the inside stories most of the time. My wife would make agreements with my children and tell me about it later. Sometimes she would claim that she had told me already and others she just kept to herself hoping (I suppose) that I would not find out or assume that I would agree with it if I did. 

I knew why this was because it was how her first marriage had to be carried out. He was an absentee father and she had to take on the dual role of making decisions for her children and maybe just wanted to give her kids more than she could on her first go round.  I for my part had to keep in mind that I had no biological children of my own and missed out on all the responsibilities I could have had to endure and enjoy had I been blessed with children of my own.