Anyone who marries someone with children should have the mentality that their family is now their family. And one would hope that the stepparent's family would welcome those kids with open arms. Unfortunately, one stepmom is dealing with a less than welcoming family, and it got so bad she's considering walking away entirely.
In a Reddit post, the stepmom confessed that her immediate family hasn't been openly affectionate to her two stepsons.
She explained that she married her husband 14 months ago and gained two stepsons she absolutely adores, aged 11 and 7.
"My family are fine with Paul but aren't involved with the kids much," she explained. "Although they treat them well. But they don't show affection or love. I've stopped attending family gatherings because I've been told to not bring the boys with me which is unacceptable to me and very disrespectful. My family tried to look for excuses to justify their behavior…trying to leave my boys out of family functions. But last month they invited us all to dinner and it went fine. Paul was shocked but happy that my family finally worked out the issue and slowly started including the boys."
But the new stepmom discovered they apparently weren't really making any progress after she received an invitation to her sister's wedding.
"She sent me an invitation before," she explained. "Then told me they're having a small celebration with no kids. A child-free type of celebration. Once my brother confirmed he was coming with his wife and leaving the kids home I thought that I could go since the 'no kids' rule was for the entire family."
As it turns out, the kid-free rule didn't apply to everyone.
"That is until my cousin called me the night before the wedding," she wrote. "She's a relative she doesn't know exactly what's going on with my family and she's been good to Paul and the boys. She started talking about the wedding and said that she'd be brining her kids. I was confused I asked about the no kids rule and she said that everyone was allowed to bring kids. I checked with my brother's wife and she said she was allowed to bring kids and had no idea why I asked. I confronted my sister. She said she lied so I won't bring the boys and that it was mom's idea and couldn't think of a better idea because they didn't want my boys there. I yelled at them both and told them I'm not coming if my boys aren't."
So instead of attending the wedding, she packed her family up for a nice picnic.
"The boys had a great time and Paul as well," she wrote. "In the evening I got a ton of calls and nasty texts from mom and my dad and brother for not coming to support my sister and that I made a joke out of them and guests were looking for me and I let them and my sister down as her older sister. My sister was upset that I missed her wedding and called me awful for being inconsiderate of her feelings."
So now she wants to know if she overreacted, or if she was justified in choosing to put her stepchildren before her family's seemingly inexplicable dislike for them.
People assured the stepmom she was doing what was best for her family.
"…your children don't have to come out of you to be your children," affirmed one user. "It doesn't matter if they are adopted, step or by blood. Your family decided to exclude them and then lie to you about excluding them. Enabling them would massively hurt your children in the longterm so you absolutely did the right thing. You will have to endure your family harassing you though, because will probably never accept the consequences of their actions and blame you for sticking to your children."
And others noted how incredibly selfish her family was being.
"The fact that she lied to you about it tells you all you need to know," another noted. "She didn't have the guts to stand up for her awful treatment of your family so instead she lied to try and avoid having to defend her terrible treatment of you. You not going to the wedding after how they treated you is not unfair at all and the fact that THEY'RE offended just reeks of narcissism."
Sounds like this woman is taking her stepmom duties seriously, and what more could anyone ask for?
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