Step parenting for dummies. RUN.

I was doing something that is pointless and depressing. I was rethinking decisions I made eight years ago. I seperated from my husband, moved out of the house with my son and started a new life. The mind plays tricks with me and has me doubting my decision at times. Times when things are hard and I am sad and depressed. I was going over parts of the years I was married and a single word came into my mind..... Seige..... That is what I had come to feel I was living. A seige. I was married to a man with a daughter and I had a son. That is the worst combination for a "blended" family to succeed. The jealosy factor is high. The mom (me) can't defend her son for fear of having him called a mommies boy. And any criticism of the daughter is dealt with harshly. Or it was in my case. I also had alcohol thrown in the mix for extra entertainment. In the beginning when the kids were small it was easy to have them stay in their rooms and watch TV. They didn't realize their dad was drinking/drunk. And if it was bad, I would leave with them. I eventually got in the habit of keeping an extra key outside and my purse by the door. If I tried to stay home and he was drinking I would wait till he fell asleep , then unscrew the lightbulbs, unplug the phone , lock the kids door from the inside and pray. I couldn't lock my door . I tried once and he kicked it down and walked over the top.

As the years passed my step daughter realized what power she held over me and weilded it well. When she was young she didn't question my authority. When she got older she realized that her dad would make excuses for her and she began stonewalling me. Now I realize that he was afraid of loosing her love. He never liked to be the parent. He almost always wanted me to be the one to make decisions. So I was the proverbial bad guy. The wicked step-mother to boot. Because he never backed up my decisions, I started refusing to parent his child. I insisted that he do his parenting. It didn't work. Somehow she always found out . He learned to in the course of a conversation with his daughter, to let slip that I had complained to him that perhaps she was not doing a chore that she was supposed to do. Between the two of them and trying to be what basically amounted to a single mother bringing up a son I felt like I was in a kind of hell. Under Seige.