People are flawed Bttrfly and I don’t think any of us ever get through life without doing something we aren’t proud of. I know enough about her life to know that XH came into it at a time when she really needed someone and I don’t fault her for that. Yes…she had an affair with my husband and was instrumental in breaking up our family. That is an indisputable fact. But, let’s be clear, if it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else. XH made the decision to sabotage our marriage and our family years before she came on the scene so it was only a matter of time. Maybe if she hadn’t been around, he might have had to face a few more things and do more work on himself but ultimately, I still think I would be divorced today. Too much had happened by then. Too many lies…too many indiscretions…there was very little chance we would have come back from that.
I know that she cares about my kids because of how she treats them and how they feel about her. I have never heard them complain about her treatment of them. They see her as supportive and a calm and gentle presence in their lives. Given their dad’s tendency to be irritable and reactive when he is stressed, I am grateful she appears to be the opposite of that because my kids need a buffer between them and their dad’s moods sometimes. So I am grateful she is there to be that for them and that he did not find someone who is in competition with our kids for his attention. From everything I have seen and heard, she takes her role as stepmother very seriously and now that XH is living a more honest life (hopefully), I think my kids are experiencing a better, more committed father and that can only be to their (and my) benefit.
So while I definitely still have some triggers and negative feelings around everything that happened and I write a lot about those as a way to work through them, I am still very aware that things could be way, way worse and the reason they aren’t is because of her. That is not lost on me. There is a reason the “evil stepmother” stereotype still exists…there are some bad ones out there. Fortunately, my kids don’t have to deal with one of those and I am very appreciative of that. Again…two sides of the coin…conflicting emotions…I am doing my best to balance them both.
