I’m a woman in my 40s. My father died three years ago, my mother two. Three months after my mother’s death, her partner, Alan (not his real name), and my father’s widow, Martine (ditto), told me they were in love and a couple; it had started after my mother’s death.
I felt like a trap was closing in on me. Although I recognise that they seem happy and deserve a new life, when I found out I felt down. Jealous, even. They started popping up together at every family event. I felt like my mother was being erased. But I also felt the troublesome relationship with Martine resurface.
My father left my mother when I was four and went to live with Martine and her children. My father didn’t secure a place for me in his new family. Martine would deny me access to him while I was at their house, saying I had a poorly resolved electra complex, that I was jealous of her, making me feel that I wanted a place that was not really mine to have. My father didn’t intervene. I felt inappropriate and ashamed for wanting attention from him and for not fitting in.
It took an exchange year abroad in a lovely host family, and years of therapy, to understand that I was the child and Martine was supposed to be more of an adult. That it wasn’t my fault and mostly: what was my father doing? He later once said that he had fought for me but couldn’t win. I always found that an unsatisfactory, if honest, answer.
Today, Martine and Alan live in the house my mother bought and lived in with Alan. I have no attachment to it but I own half of it.
I want to move on. What belongs in the past and what to the present? How do I go ahead with the re-re-composed family?
Your original letter was really long; I struggled to edit it down because each bit felt important and significant. When readers present so much “evidence” what they are really struggling with is: “Am I allowed to feel like this?”. So allow me: yes, you have every reason to feel all that you do. You had a disrupted childhood, with few boundaries and weak behaviour from almost all the adults who were meant to care for you. As for your stepmother saying those things to you, this was wrong on so many levels at any age, but please tell me she didn’t say them when you were four?! I think you have had a lifetime’s feeling of being left out, not thought about, not being put first. No wonder all those feelings are now exploding out of you.
You have also lost both your parents, not that long ago and in very close succession. This was the first thing my specialist this week, UKCP-registered psychotherapist Hendrix Hammond, picked up on: “I think you’re still grappling with grief and making sense of the loss and what’s transpired with your step-parents. It’s a lot to get your head around. So what you’re having to do in that moment of grieving is also then expecting to be happy your step-parents are getting together.”
As Hammond said, “you’re entitled to need more time and space to get your head round it all.” And this is really the crux of it. We both agreed this was a very complex situation and this current coupling was stirring up a lot of things that happened to you as a child. You take as much time as you need.
This is what I would do if I were you. Seriously think about asking Alan and Martine to buy out your share of the house. Do something with that money, something that’s just for you. Go back into therapy for this stage of your life. Spend time with members of the family who you like and who make you feel good. You don’t have to play at big happy families with all of them. You were a child once who had few choices, but now you do have choices.
I think your sticking point is you still want approval and inclusion from your step-parents, but frankly they sound pretty self-absorbed. But you can go back to that relationship later, if you want to. For now make it all about you, put yourself first. I would also consider writing it all down and imagine it being made into a film one day. And if it were made into a film, wouldn’t you think the little girl in it had every right to feel angry, left out and very very upset? Now tend to that little girl, because she’s you.
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