Another NYT Post, On the Other Woman

Wow these just keep popping up in my Facebook newsfeed! But I read this post last night: The Other Woman Who Snuggles My Daughter. As much fear as this strikes in me, I appreciate the author’s honesty with how it makes her feel to think of another woman “replacing” her.

I definitely fear that the ex-wife will feel this way about me and NOT be the bigger person in the end. That she will say hateful things about me or about the bf to her daughter – she is, after all, her mom, and young daughters are especially impressionable. It scares me!

I’ve asked the bf before if he thinks that me being in his and his daughter’s life would cause trouble with the ex wife, but he said no. (Then again, he also said she would be supportive if he ever lost his job, and was wrong about that – and unfortunately I was right with my hunches on that!)

I kind of wish the ex-wife didn’t want/need to meet me – selfishly, that would make it easier for me, but at the same time if things go well or even moderately well, maybe it will make things easier in the long run, especially if she ends up not seeing me as a threat by any means.

Ah. In the end, this is all speculation. I wonder how things will actually go down, whenever that happens…

Also, I love reading people’s comments on the post – so many stories with all different outcomes, which again goes to my point that every situation is so different. Like my godmother’s vs my former coworker’s situations – both so different, who’s to say how my situation will turn out?

From the NYT: A Stepmother, Losing Her Marbles

I just read this post on the New York Times parenting blog, and it resonated with me. Not the sex part, or even the married part, since the bf and I clearly not even married yet, but these parts specifically:

I stopped sleeping in the nude, as I had for years living alone, for fear one of the children might jump into bed with us.

This is something I know will change when we move in together and his daughter is around. Or this:

I remember the morning I made the rule to never, ever leave our bedroom sans bra after I was caught by my new son and his sleepover friends making coffee, my size D breasts dangling in the white T-shirt.

Thankfully he has a daughter, but she isn’t getting any younger and the older she gets the more I feel like I don’t want to be the one teaching her about boobs, and it’s also pretty obvious when I’m not wearing a bra at all. Right now it’s just not something I’d be comfortable with – I don’t even walk around my apartment without a bra (or hoodie of some sort) on in case my roommate is around. When I’m just with the bf though, it obviously doesn’t matter as much.

What no one tells you when you become the new woman in an already intact family is that your needs and routines, sexual and otherwise, come last.

This scares me, honestly. I guess it’s a good thing he doesn’t have full custody right now, but if she does eventually choose to live with us, hopefully by then we have other children so I don’t necessarily feel like the bottom of the list, since I’ll be putting all the kids’ needs ahead of my own.

See the smiling stepmother, proving to all those who warned her off (Do you know what you’re getting into? Those children will ruin your marriage. Have you lost your senses, your marbles, your mind?) that she can love, and be loved by, someone else’s children.

For me it isn’t about loving and being loved by someone else’s kid, but more about proving that the relationship can work regardless, and that I can be just as fulfilled as someone else can be who is in a relationship without any children.

Anyway, just a few thoughts on this Christmas Eve! Happy holidays!

Ex-Wife

This past weekend was the bf’s birthday, so I took him on a little getaway for two nights. It was so fun – probably also because we had zero cell reception and so we talked a lot, and had great conversations, and I just love him so much – all this drama with my parents about him being dad is worth it for me.

On the way back in the car, he face timed his daughter, telling her he had an interview there coming up and if he gets the job he’ll move to be near her. She said, “Yay!” and then later said, “Are you picking me up tomorrow?” For some reason, that line really touched me. I felt like for the first time their relationship is really real, even though obviously it’s real but I just didn’t feel it. It’s most likely because I’ve never been around the two of them together, so I’ve never seen their relationship in person.

Anyway, he sent me a few screenshots last night of his text conversation with the ex-wife, basically because she does not want him to move there and “disrupt” their daughter’s “routine”, saying that she now has a home and she is “better” now that she isn’t going back and forth between them. Isn’t having her dad around better than a “routine”, though? Ugh, I’m just sad for him that he has to go through all this when he’s been trying so hard to move closer to her, and ex-wife has to say all this stuff. It just sounds selfish to me – she just doesn’t want him around and is happier with their daughter with her and her parents and that’s it.

Unfortunately for her, everything is already in their parenting plan and if she wants to change it she’ll have to take it to court, and there is no way the court will grant her more time and him less – he doesn’t even have 50% of her time right now and says if she takes it to court he’ll ask for 50% and will likely be granted it.

Anyway, if he gets this job (fingers crossed!) we will be heading out there and he’s going to set up me meeting the ex-wife (oh joy!) and get the ball rolling with all of that. Ack. That’s a whole other topic…!

Positive Vibes

Ok, so now I’m actually kind of excited about the whole moving thing. I finally started applying for jobs in the area he wants to move to, and there is so much more in terms of the industries I like! I applied to one job last week and four today, and already have a phone interview set up for tomorrow. (Even though I don’t think I’m super qualified for that job, but hey it’s a start, and you never know!)

I should have listened to the BF ages ago – one of the things he suggested I do in order to get excited to move is to apply for jobs. Haha.

In other news, we had a really good conversation Friday night. We were both slightly drunk at my apartment and I started tearing up – we were discussing our fight the weekend before, and he apologized for reacting the way that he did and I was trying to just get him to understand where I was coming from. With the whole feeling like an outsider thing, and how I know he’s super protective about his daughter but I just hope he’s just as protective of me, and all of that.

He also told me how much he loves me, how he knows we are going to be together the rest of our lives, how he has total faith in our relationship, how he’s never been in a relationship like ours, and how he loves how much I love the kiddos in my life and even the fact that I am so eager to meet his daughter.

All in all, I’m feeling really good about everything and I’m really excited for the next chapter in our lives!

Over It/Moving Update

So I decided I’m over it. The whole jealousy thing – I know he wasn’t being insensitive, I was just being too sensitive.

But if you must know, we had a huge fight about it. If I was sensitive about that comment, he was super sensitive about what I told him. It was pretty bad, but then we decided we were tired of fighting and both apologized to each other and now I’m over it.

In fact, I kind of wish I hadn’t even brought it up in the first place!

We did have an interesting conversation yesterday though about the potential move – he has a 2nd round interview- and this time in person- next week, and so was discussing me moving with him and all this stuff. I was like “Whoaaaa – hold your horses. I don’t plan on moving with you the moment you take off and leave – we haven’t even spent time there together; I literally can’t even visualize what life would be like there; and I’m in no way emotionally ready to go.” So he promised that we would go visit together in January, and he also said once he gets a job all the introductions will be made.

He did make one comment though as we discussed me staying behind initially, and that was “Well I hope you end up deciding to move!” Good. I need to instill some fear in him – there isn’t a ring on this finger so I am still gonna do what I want!

I just want to make sure I don’t resent him, and the best way I know to prevent that is to not move until I am 100% confident that this is what I want to do. I know I love him and I do think he’s The One, but I just need to do things on my time, too. And if I move before I’m ready to the worst-case scenario is that I’ll hate my life there and hate him for taking me away from my job, my family, and my friends.

Green Eyed Monster

Just went on Facebook and saw a photo the bf posted of him and his daughter (he is with her today), and the caption was “My favorite weekend – hanging with the kiddo”. Instantly, I am ashamed to say, I was both jealous and upset. I know – I know I can’t compete with a kid, I know I shouldn’t feel like I am in competition with a kid, but I just can’t help it.

I just feel like “excuse me, so whenever you hang out with me it isn’t a favorite weekend?”

I know this is incredibly petty, I know that part of it is that I haven’t met her so I have zero feelings towards her and no relationship with her whatsoever, aside from thinking she’s cute and knowing how lucky she is to have my bf for her dad. That’s not much to go on.

All of this is happening as I am planning his birthday weekend and trying to make it the best weekend ever – but now that I can’t have her come up for it, or have her around, it almost feels like my effort is going to waste, because no matter what I do it won’t be his “favorite weekend”.

I have all these mixed up ugly feelings right now and there is no way I can ever tell him about this because I KNOW how it looks and sounds. Guess that’s partly why I started this blog – show the truth of what it feels like for me to be dating a dad, when I have never done so before.

So forgive me for sounding like this – I simultaneously can’t help it and am beating myself up for being dumb and petty. I’m only human, after all.

Divination

A couple weeks ago, I hired a woman to do a divination for me. She asked what I needed guidance on, so I told her all about my situation with the bf and my parents and the potential move and all my anxiety about all of that.

Regarding the BF/our relationship:

• My ancestors (particularly my paternal grandmother, who passed away almost two years ago), are happy and supportive and excited for my relationship with the bf
• My relationship “is new, but the connection is old” – this validates the fact that I just knew he was the one from the beginning, and the way my heart just leaned to him from the very beginning
• There was a big shell representing his daughter, and a little shell right up next to it, representing our unborn child (I love this!!)
• Her advice to me was to keep spending time with him in nature, as it is the time he is “feels spirit” the most, and this is the time where our connection can deepen and our bond strengthen – “sacred time”, she called it. I love this too because we already do a lot more nature-y things than I ever have in the past, and I love that time with him.
• This relationship is very different from any he’s had in the past, something that he has told me before too
• We also need to practice listening to each other and validating each other – both of us have areas of our lives where we aren’t heard, so we need our relationship to feel heard. Speak fears, keep communication clear, don’t hold anything back. It’s healthy for both of us to do.
• It’s “very clear” that this relationship is “very healing” for the both of us

Regarding my parents:

• There is a lot of resentment built up over centuries of the women in my lineage being forced into arranged marriages.
• I will need to do a ritual to help my ancestors help my parents come to the other side of this, when the time comes to tell them about moving.
• When it’s time to talk to them about the move etc, show up with my heart. Show and have love and compassion, and speak from the heart. They are going to react how they are going to react, but I also choose how I will react.

Regarding the move:

• I don’t need to worry about jobs – apparently there will be an abundance of jobs for me, and she even told me not to just take the first job that comes my way but to wait until I find the one that feels the best.
• My network is apparently much larger than I know right now too (so yay – I’ll have friends!)
• The timeline to move is somewhere between 6-8 months – a good amount of time, I think! And she said that I may not move with him right away. (Which is kind of what I was thinking anyway, haha.)

On top of all of this, at one point she laughed and shook her head, saying “your sassy grandma!” I asked what she was up to, and she told me she was hitting her on the shoulder and saying “tell her this and tell her that” – exactly how bossy she would have been in real life! So crazy. This is the part I told my parents – I know they believe in this stuff too, and my dad the next day asked me more about what I told her about my grandma. (Not much – just that she passed away almost 2 years ago, and that although we weren’t super close, I remember her fondly and she was our crazy grandma!)

If any of you would like to know who I used, feel free to email me and I’ll forward the information!