My stepmom is the major problem here, and it comes from her 1. trying to act like she's my mother and 2. trying to do it while she and my dad are living with me temporarily in the house I own and finally 3. me not having the guts or ability or experience to stand up to her properly.
When I was 15 my single dad (who I lived with) began dating my stepmom, and pretty quickly married her. I didn't know at the time, but she was a lot younger than either of them let on. My dad was in his late 30s and I thought my stepmom was 30 at the time, but she was 18.
I moved out when I turned 18, fell in love, and married when my husband and I were both 20. We bought a house, but at 24 he was killed in a workplace accident. Insurance paid out enough for most of the rest of the house. With our savings included I was able to refinance and on my lone salary I'm just able to keep my head above water. The house will be paid off in another four years.
Not long after, my dad's business went a bit rocky and his business partner screwed him over. Dad lost his house, found work in the same industry under someone else and he worked out with me that if he and my stepmom moved in with me rent-free temporarily, in 3 years he'd be able to get back on his feet independently, vs renting and taking 10-15.
Now for the last 7 months there's me in the house with my dad and stepmom, and she is utterly overbearing. She's almost the same age as me and treats me like she owns the house and it's been getting worse. When she first married my dad she took to the sweet mommy role a bit too hard and it was kind of creepy even when I thought she was 30. Knowing we're not really any different in age now it's just screwed up.
She tries to make decisions on how the house is decorated, and it's painful to keep shooting them down. She berates me for leaving cutlery out and items unwashed, and it's not like she's just a nitpicky housemate, it's like she's still trying to be my mother. She'll try telling me when to tidy up, that I have to keep up with chores around the house and when to do shopping. I don't get to keep the refrigerator stacked with what I like, because it all gets pushed aside and thrown out for what she wants.
I'm not allowed to cook in my own kitchen and I've kept my anger down for so long mostly for my dad's sake. I love him to bits and he's on track to be out with her in a couple more years but he's always been hands-off. If I complain to him about my stepmom he tells me he doesn't want to hear the fighting, and to fix it myself, not to drag him into it. Thing is, he's part of this. He and her are the item and I wish he'd have my back about her behaviour.
The last month has been the worst. I have the bedroom me and my husband used as my bedroom, and I have an entertainment room and a home office that it's a constant fight to keep how I want it. Stepmom completely reorganised the entertainment room into an inaccessible showoff-only half living room half dining room that's all show and she marked it to only be used for special occasions. She moved my husband's desk out of the office which shit me even more as I use it daily, and marked that room as her art room. She's dumped other things I have in the rest of the house in my room like I'm some kind of recalcitrant teenager who refuses to put their things away. The former entertainment gear was jammed into the side of the breakfast nook in about the most uncomfortable place in the house.
She does this stuff while I'm at work, and the last thing I want to do is deal with that when I come home tired at 6. Make no mistake her last big changes didn't last. as soon as I had a Sunday to myself I moved everything back where it should be. It caused a screaming match (which was more just her screaming at me and my dad, and me trying to ignore her) when she got back home, and the last week has everything back in order as I want it but I know it won't last. She doesn't work and I do, so I have half a day a week where she's not in the house where she has 8-9 hours every weekday when I'm not home to screw with my house. I can wordlessly constantly fix it without successfully demanding she stop but I'm so tired of that kind of passive aggressiveness on my part.
This is meant to be my home and it feels like I'm dealing with someone else's child.
The problem is I think that the relationship started out with her actually filling a mother kind of role, and I'd never had that, so I find it extra hard to talk back to her. I've never had to argue for myself before in my life with anyone. I know exactly what I want but not how to get it, or how to force it. Every time I try to speak back to say what I want to, like "Look here, this is my house, sit down shut up and get used to it and don't touch what isn't yours because you're lucky to be getting this chance" I choke up and all I do is bawl in tears. Of course she doesn't respect me, I can't offer even the slightest resistance to her.
What do I do to turn this around? My question is probably best summed in the TLDR...
tl;dr: My dad and my stepmom (who's almost the same age as me) have moved in with me for a few years while they get back on their feet. My stepmom is weirding me out and trying to be an ultra controlling mother figure when we're almost the same age. I have no practiced ability to assert myself. I want to make her to stop with the mommy act, I want her to shut up and accept this is my house and my rules, I want to be able to actually enforce my rules, I want to get all the conversations I have in my head with her out in the open and make sure she knows she's here by my grace alone and she's not to change a thing in the house unless I say. I want to be able to take respect. I just want her to leave me be. I know I'm a doormat and I need to stop. How do I stop being a doormat? How do I go from never having needed to assert myself, to asserting myself successfully? Why isn't there a course for this kind of thing?
Submitted May 13, 2017 at 02:53AM by nononostepmo http://ift.tt/2ptDZ2a relationships
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