Parental Discard
My two adult stepsons are estranged from their father and, therefore, me and my adult children. One of them, the younger, just sort of went away. He is living a life in another province and we have absolutely no idea what that life looks like. He could be married; we could have grandchildren. Text messages are eventually responded to with one or two words and that’s the extent of our involvement with him. Last I heard, he and his brother are also estranged.
As for the eldest, a couple years ago, he took exception to a disagreement between his father (and me) and himself and went AWOL in response. There was a lot of hand wringing at the time, many conversations amongst ourselves, i.e. how can we fix this? My husband reached out: he offered apologies, explanations, defenses, shame and guilt. If you are a half-way decent parent, the worst feeling in the world is causing harm to your children, knowingly or not. But to no avail. Radio silence.
A year later, my stepson reached out to my husband, my children (with whom he’d enjoyed a loving sibling relationship) and me with what we thought was an offer of reconciliation, an opportunity to open the doors of dialogue. But, no, he simply wanted to make sure we were sufficiently feeling at fault for the entire sordid mess. Nothing short of his complete absolution would move us forward. To my mind, that is emotional blackmail. It is not about growing as a family. It is not about being mature enough to see one’s own contribution to the conflict. My children and I opted out. My husband is still trying.
None of which is to say his grievances aren’t real or valid. Sure they are. Families are messy; step-families are messier. There are so many more variables involved that can get in the way of trying to establish a new cohesive family unit. When I first met my stepsons, aged 14 and 10, I was looking forward to getting to know them, to introducing them to my own children, 14 and 18. I had visions of us sitting around the dining room table, shooting the shit, laughing. I dunno, like just being normal. I was not prepared for the resistance, for the deep resentments, for the sullenness that bordered on sociopathic. Call me naive, I guess.
My own children and I had an established expectation of treating each other with affection, with respect, and with trust. We didn’t always get along. We didn’t always like each other. We often disagreed and argued (teenagers, what are you gonna do?). But, and this is a big but, we always found our way back to each other - we hashed it out, we had the painful conversations, we showed our vulnerability and reestablished that it was safe to do so. Fuck, that’s hard work and don’t ever let anyone tell you it isn’t.
When my stepsons came for the divorce-mandated visitations (every other weekend and one dinner a week), they’d go straight up to their rooms where they behaved like prisoners being held against their will. They were secretive, silent and surly. I couldn’t live this way. There was no chance of bridging whatever divide this was if we couldn’t even be in the same room together. So, we established command performance dinners together. We hired a lawyer and entered into a contested custody battle with the boys’ mother so the boys were with us two concurrent weeks a month.
We All Have Our Wounds
I took it upon myself to do the work of healing all the wounds. I was raised by parents who were so absent of presence, who were so focussed on nursing their own personal grievances that they couldn’t find the wherewithal to give a shit about caring for their own children. I see, now that I am an adult, that my parents were operating through a lens of their wounds. And I could see at the time that my husband was living and parenting through the lens of his own childhood traumas. Likely, his ex was, too. My own children were reeling from the sudden disappearance of their own father back to his home country when they were 14 and 9 - no warning, no goodbyes - which caused such a profound rupture to their sense of safety and self that we are still navigating the harms twenty years later. I, myself, was actively healing from the traumatic effects of childhood sexual abuse.
So, yeah, there was a lot going on. My compassionate Mother self went into overdrive and for six or seven years, I put my all into trying to establish loving or, at least, affectionate bonds between us. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t. I neglected my own children. I took our relationships for granted, assumed that we would always be okay. I put so much energy into the new family that I simply could not be as present for my daughter and son that I would have wanted to be. I fucked up.
It Worked Until It Didn’t
By the time my husband and I were empty-nesters, our new family was pretty well established along respect and affection lines. The kids hung out together on their own having created and nurtured their own sibling bonds. We got together for meals and visits and all seemed to be going pretty well. I thought the worst was behind us. We’d worked hard to get to where we were.
But then, it just all went away. It was like the past ten years had never happened. Maybe, again, I was being naive. Maybe it was all just a house of cards, the illusion of which was too real for me to see it was false. I don’t know. What I do know is that, this time, with the wisdom of hindsight, I am not involving myself in the estrangements (or, as I have come to know it, parental discard). I feel badly for my husband who has done what he is able to do to make restitution but neither of his sons is having any of it.
My children are now 34 and 30. They are living good lives, mostly healed from past traumas, doing their best to navigate the messy investments in loving relationships. They are real. They are courageous. They have done the work required to move into adulthood with confidence. They are both reconciled with their father: they had those hard conversations and they are the better for it. And, two things being true at the same time, they love my husband, they look to him for affection and advice and are kind enough to laugh at his dad jokes. The feelings are mutual.
Do I hope that one day our blended family will be whole again? I don’t think so. Or, at least, I have no attachment to that outcome. I’m okay with owning up to mistakes I may have made. Mistakes are proof that at least you’re trying. If we cannot find the grace to know this, to take responsibility for this, to accept heartfelt apologies for damage done, then we are not living in truth. It’s hard fucking work, as I’ve said, and simply walking away is too easy.