Today’s confession is a little more abstract than my usual anecdotes, but it comes from a very real, very concrete place. As a back story, I have a very close relationship with my dad BUT we have an usual system for talking about serious things. In general, his preference is to not bring up serious topics from my life unless I broach them first – in some ways, this has been great in fostering my independence and enabling me to make decisions on who is included in matters and when. On the other hand, it can sometimes breed a system where he doesn’t know what’s going on with me, or where I don’t bother to tell him because he would ask if he really wanted to know. Tricky tricky. That in mind, my dad and I haven’t talked too much about J. He knows she exists, he knows that I see her and that I’m working on a relationship with her. Occasionally he’ll hear stories from my partner when he’s here. But he’s not fully aware of my struggles and efforts – he trusts that I’m working hard to have a positive relationship, but he doesn’t know that I dread making dinner sometimes, or that part of me hates to hear stories about when her mother was pregnant with her (that’s a topic for another day). He just doesn’t know, and he just hasn’t asked.
Last week, he planned to give me a call on Sunday night. I was sitting with my partner, catching up on one of our favorite shows before he had to go to work, and opted to call him back later. When I did, before I could even explain why I’d missed his first call, he asked, “Were you with your daughter?”
I was floored. I quickly spat out, “Last I checked, I didn’t have a daughter.” He went on to posit that by now, I just HAD to think of J as my daughter… right? RIGHT?
And that’s sort of when this strange unease hit me – I had no idea that he expected that of me. Where did these great expectations even come from? He doesn’t know that much about her, about my relationship with her. Why would he expect that I’d view her as my own daughter? And more over, what else is everyone else expecting of me here?
To some extent, my partner has been very open about his expectations, or lack thereof, for this. I know he would like for us to get along, that he would like for us to love each other; mostly, he expects that we’ll respect one another, and that I in particular respect his relationship with her and the importance she has in his life. As for J, I have no idea what she expects from me, but I hope she expects me to be there for her. I have expectations of myself here, perhaps far higher than my partner’s and J’s combined. That’s a hell of a lot of work already. So how the hell do all of us stepparents balance our expectations, the child’s expectations, the partner’s expectations, the happiness of every party, and THEN be expected to juggle the expectations of other people?
We can’t just run away from all of those expectations (like Walter above), but we have to do something. As I ponder the diplomatic way to convey to my dad that his expectations – while probably filled with good intention – are too high and not helpful, I realized something else. What if my own expectations are too high, are standing in the way of doing a better job? From all of the stepparenting blogs I’ve read – all wonderful resources for me – I’ve noticed one thing in common. We are our harshest critics. We nitpick our efforts, and don’t celebrate our best accomplishments. Perhaps it’s past time we let go of our great expectations, and focus on the day to day steps of just being happy. We might come to find that letting go of these obstacles and the pressure from everyone else brings us somewhere better than where we’ve wandered to now:
“…I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” -Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Until next time, stay not so wicked, stepmothers.
Confessions of a (Not-So) Wicked Stepmother 