A Different Kind Of Love Letter
(April 2007)
I was never the type of girl who dreamed of a fantasy marriage. I suppose when I was younger and was truly a girly-girl, I had some idea in my mind of a Barbie doll-type, Cinderella-esque match made in heaven. I hoped for a He-Man prince to sweep me off my feet, but never quite knew what that involved. All I knew was that I’d better be prepared with a rather poofy dress so there was never any danger of my Rainbow Brite underwear showing when the sweeping took place.
As I grew older, I shed all those mincing girl fantasies and concentrated instead on the type of man I felt I could partner with for life. My husband would have to be funny, of course, and he’d have to enjoy doing the taxes, the ironing, and the cooking, since I hated all three. It wouldn’t hurt if he were rich, either. But the most important thing about our marriage, I decided at fifteen, was that we’d be partners: he’d wash, I’d dry; he’d sweep, I’d vacuum; he’d clean the car, I’d fold the clothes; he’d buy the groceries, I’d eat them.
There was one thing I knew for certain: I was a giver. I would shower the man I chose worthy of my love with attention and devotion and quirky little personal presents. I would give our children the gift of a mother who was as playful and awe-inspiring as my own mother had been to me. I would not waste such a love on any man. The man I chose to be my husband and the father of my children would be special. There would be no rush to find this man. When the time was right, I’d know it.
And so I waited. And I waited. I graduated from high school, then entered college. I spent Freshman year believing I’d meet the man of my criteria Sophomore year, then I spent Sophomore year figuring it would happen by the time I was a Junior. I graduated from college and moved to North Carolina, sure I’d meet some mountain man who’d lean me into a tree at sunset and huskily croon, “Come on back to my cabin, Baby, and I’ll do your taxes.”
I wasn’t in North Carolina long enough for the mountain man to find me, and the Virginia gentleman who might barbecue me up some tasty ribs and then wash my car never materialized. And so it was that, three days before my twenty-fourth birthday, I packed up and moved out West.
Nearly two years later, my longest relationship had still lasted only three months. And I was tired. I hated the dating game. I hated feeling small and insecure and silly. I wanted a man who cared about me at least as much as I cared about him, and he was nowhere in sight. And I was twenty-five! Nearly an old maid! I had never been in love, really and truly in love, and I ached to know what it was like. Even if the love didn’t last, I wanted to feel what it was like to be the most important person in someone else’s world, if only for a little while.
The year I was twenty-five was the year I grew up. I needed that year to stop feeling childish and shaky and start realizing that I was a good person worthy of good things. Once this happened, I was able to relax and open myself to others more. And I knew I was finally, truly ready.
It worked. I was barely twenty-six when I met the man I would marry. Falling in love was not what I thought it would be. There was never a first crashing moment of clarity when I knew I loved this man and he loved me and all was right in the world. Instead, we sort of drifted along, me knowing only that I was probably going to love this man some day, until the day came when I realized I’d loved him for a while, but never really knew when it had started. I suppose he just kind of grew on me. Like a lichen.
What has been best about our relationship is that the love grows stronger and surer every day. It has turned into that passionate, clarity-filled love I hoped for when I was fifteen. When I am at my ugliest and fiercest, he makes me feel like I am the most beautiful and gentle being in the world, and, more importantly, he makes me want to try to be that every day. I am not ashamed of the giddy love I feel for him, which is a huge accomplishment for one who was becoming as jaded as I.
It also helps that he cooks. He actually likes to cook, and insists on being the primary cook. This is mostly because he has yet to learn to appreciate my dinners, which I classify as “smoked” while he stubbornly pigeonholes as “burned”. But he also meets my other criteria, albeit in roundabout ways: I don’t have to do the taxes because he hires someone else to do them, and I don’t have to iron because he’s perfectly happy wearing the same wrinkled shirt three days in a row. He’s hilarious, which disgusts me sometimes since I was supposed to be the really funny one. And while it is true that he’s not what I would categorize as “rich”, I content myself (in true love’s nauseating fashion) by telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s rich in love.
What has been hardest about our marriage is that I never got that thing I cried for so much: to be the one most important person in my someone else’s life. My husband’s greatest love will always be for someone else, and there is nothing I can do about that. My husband is, first and foremost, a father; and the child is not mine.
I count my blessings that I have the stepson I do. He makes the process of being a stepmother easier. He is funny and thoughtful and sweet. But I still feel bitter, sometimes, that I have this competitor for my husband’s affection. I find myself angry that I never had the chance so many other young brides did to spend evenings that seemed to stretch towards eternity wrapped in the arms of their lovers, sipping wine by the fire while jazz plays softly in the background. I get several evenings like this, to be sure, but they are interrupted by the evenings spent nagging my stepson to finish his chores and trying not to count all the times I’m certain husband allows his son to manipulate him.
I suppose the hardest part for a woman in my situation is not knowing where she fits in. I have no clue what my role is. The boy doesn’t need a mother, for his own lives five minutes away and showers him with love every other day. He doesn’t need emotional comfort when he’s at our house, for my husband gives him so much attention that I worry he takes it for granted. And he truly isn’t a problem child, so it’s not as if I should fill the role as the disciplinarian. I want to be needed, but I’m not. Instead, I am the woman who moved into their lives and changed things, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
I feel guilty a lot. I’m concerned that one or both of them will believe I take away from “boy time”. I worry that they think I enforce too many silly rules (like the whole toilet-seat-down thing or not shooting BB guns in the house). I feel outnumbered all the time. And, hardest of all, when my stepson’s mother asks us to take the child an extra day that week, how can I possibly say no when my husband already misses half of his boy’s life? So my choice is either to feel helplessly angry or guilty. Sometimes, for good measure, I feel both.
At the same time, I know my husband feels caught in the middle. He loves his son and he loves his wife and he wants to be with them both and be with each alone and, mostly, be all together as a happy family. So I feel bad that my husband feels bad because I can’t always pretend to be blissfully, newlywed happy. Guilt is like a second skin to me. What can I say? I was raised Catholic.
Not only do I not get to be the most important person in my husband’s life, but I haven’t turned into the “giver” I thought I’d be. For one, I find myself pretending to boss my husband around a lot, but I think that’s mostly due to the amusement and wonder I feel that he’ll laugh and actually obey. Mostly, though, I find I just can’t seem to make the effort to provide that “sense of wonder” for my stepson that I figured would be natural for me. I thought I’d throw myself into cookie decorating and nature treks and arts and crafts, but I just don’t seem to have the interest.
I was supposed to be cool and easy-going and invite confidences, yet I still can’t seem to spend even half an hour alone with him without feeling . . . unfit. I find myself speaking in monosyllables and not making eye contact; I’m like an unsure child, while he confidently steers the conversation forward. I watch myself and worry that I’m going through the motions without putting any heart into it. And I’m I terrified that he knows it.
Still, sometimes I’m surprised at the caring touches that are second nature to me that my husband would never think of doing. Like the night before my stepson’s eleventh birthday when I blew up several dozen balloons and snuck them into his room while he slept. And last Christmas, when I egged my husband to stay up late with me three nights in a row so we could redo the boy’s room as a surprise. I figure those should count for something.
My husband says I have too many expectations. He’s probably right. And yet, now and then he seems to get frustrated that I still have a tough go of it at times. I want to scream: is it really so shocking that I don’t love someone else’s kid as I would my own child? Do my actions now really reflect how I will be as a parent? Still, when I’m quietly by myself, I’m uneasy: don’t those actions say something about the kind of person I am . . . or am not?
My husband and I have signed up to join a group for a stepfamily-counseling course. When we registered, the therapist told us that our situation (stepmother without her own children) is statistically the most difficult one. I wanted to cry when I heard that; it felt so good to know others felt so bad.
We’re waiting for our first class to start, and I’m kind of nervous. Our little family has been meshing pretty well recently, and I’m afraid the class will open up cans of worms better left unopened. But mostly I’m relieved. Because making this effort to bring each other a little more comfort and happiness proves to me just that much more that I love this man and he loves me.
What is good about the two of us as a couple is that we try to be attuned to the other’s feelings and to both give credit and take blame when each is due. We’re partners, just like my fifteen year-old self hoped we’d be.
What is good about the three of us as a family is that we mix fun and stability and spontaneity. I love the nights when it all comes easy: when the three of us sit around playing Pictionary or roll up the rug and spend hours dancing around the living room, then my stepson goes to bed and my husband and I lie on the couch together for a few minutes.
But I’m learning to appreciate the hard times, too; I’m so blessed to go through them with this man and this boy. For I know I wouldn’t love my husband as fiercely as I do if he wasn’t the man he is, and he would never have become the man he is if it wasn’t for his child. Maybe I don’t yet love his boy the way he does, but I love his boy for his sweetness and joyfulness and how happy he makes the man I love.
And that’s got to be a good start.
I was never the type of girl who dreamed of a fantasy marriage. I suppose when I was younger and was truly a girly-girl, I had some idea in my mind of a Barbie doll-type, Cinderella-esque match made in heaven. I hoped for a He-Man prince to sweep me off my feet, but never quite knew what that involved. All I knew was that I’d better be prepared with a rather poofy dress so there was never any danger of my Rainbow Brite underwear showing when the sweeping took place.
As I grew older, I shed all those mincing girl fantasies and concentrated instead on the type of man I felt I could partner with for life. My husband would have to be funny, of course, and he’d have to enjoy doing the taxes, the ironing, and the cooking, since I hated all three. It wouldn’t hurt if he were rich, either. But the most important thing about our marriage, I decided at fifteen, was that we’d be partners: he’d wash, I’d dry; he’d sweep, I’d vacuum; he’d clean the car, I’d fold the clothes; he’d buy the groceries, I’d eat them.
There was one thing I knew for certain: I was a giver. I would shower the man I chose worthy of my love with attention and devotion and quirky little personal presents. I would give our children the gift of a mother who was as playful and awe-inspiring as my own mother had been to me. I would not waste such a love on any man. The man I chose to be my husband and the father of my children would be special. There would be no rush to find this man. When the time was right, I’d know it.
And so I waited. And I waited. I graduated from high school, then entered college. I spent Freshman year believing I’d meet the man of my criteria Sophomore year, then I spent Sophomore year figuring it would happen by the time I was a Junior. I graduated from college and moved to North Carolina, sure I’d meet some mountain man who’d lean me into a tree at sunset and huskily croon, “Come on back to my cabin, Baby, and I’ll do your taxes.”
I wasn’t in North Carolina long enough for the mountain man to find me, and the Virginia gentleman who might barbecue me up some tasty ribs and then wash my car never materialized. And so it was that, three days before my twenty-fourth birthday, I packed up and moved out West.
Nearly two years later, my longest relationship had still lasted only three months. And I was tired. I hated the dating game. I hated feeling small and insecure and silly. I wanted a man who cared about me at least as much as I cared about him, and he was nowhere in sight. And I was twenty-five! Nearly an old maid! I had never been in love, really and truly in love, and I ached to know what it was like. Even if the love didn’t last, I wanted to feel what it was like to be the most important person in someone else’s world, if only for a little while.
The year I was twenty-five was the year I grew up. I needed that year to stop feeling childish and shaky and start realizing that I was a good person worthy of good things. Once this happened, I was able to relax and open myself to others more. And I knew I was finally, truly ready.
It worked. I was barely twenty-six when I met the man I would marry. Falling in love was not what I thought it would be. There was never a first crashing moment of clarity when I knew I loved this man and he loved me and all was right in the world. Instead, we sort of drifted along, me knowing only that I was probably going to love this man some day, until the day came when I realized I’d loved him for a while, but never really knew when it had started. I suppose he just kind of grew on me. Like a lichen.
What has been best about our relationship is that the love grows stronger and surer every day. It has turned into that passionate, clarity-filled love I hoped for when I was fifteen. When I am at my ugliest and fiercest, he makes me feel like I am the most beautiful and gentle being in the world, and, more importantly, he makes me want to try to be that every day. I am not ashamed of the giddy love I feel for him, which is a huge accomplishment for one who was becoming as jaded as I.
It also helps that he cooks. He actually likes to cook, and insists on being the primary cook. This is mostly because he has yet to learn to appreciate my dinners, which I classify as “smoked” while he stubbornly pigeonholes as “burned”. But he also meets my other criteria, albeit in roundabout ways: I don’t have to do the taxes because he hires someone else to do them, and I don’t have to iron because he’s perfectly happy wearing the same wrinkled shirt three days in a row. He’s hilarious, which disgusts me sometimes since I was supposed to be the really funny one. And while it is true that he’s not what I would categorize as “rich”, I content myself (in true love’s nauseating fashion) by telling anyone who’ll listen that he’s rich in love.
What has been hardest about our marriage is that I never got that thing I cried for so much: to be the one most important person in my someone else’s life. My husband’s greatest love will always be for someone else, and there is nothing I can do about that. My husband is, first and foremost, a father; and the child is not mine.
I count my blessings that I have the stepson I do. He makes the process of being a stepmother easier. He is funny and thoughtful and sweet. But I still feel bitter, sometimes, that I have this competitor for my husband’s affection. I find myself angry that I never had the chance so many other young brides did to spend evenings that seemed to stretch towards eternity wrapped in the arms of their lovers, sipping wine by the fire while jazz plays softly in the background. I get several evenings like this, to be sure, but they are interrupted by the evenings spent nagging my stepson to finish his chores and trying not to count all the times I’m certain husband allows his son to manipulate him.
I suppose the hardest part for a woman in my situation is not knowing where she fits in. I have no clue what my role is. The boy doesn’t need a mother, for his own lives five minutes away and showers him with love every other day. He doesn’t need emotional comfort when he’s at our house, for my husband gives him so much attention that I worry he takes it for granted. And he truly isn’t a problem child, so it’s not as if I should fill the role as the disciplinarian. I want to be needed, but I’m not. Instead, I am the woman who moved into their lives and changed things, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
I feel guilty a lot. I’m concerned that one or both of them will believe I take away from “boy time”. I worry that they think I enforce too many silly rules (like the whole toilet-seat-down thing or not shooting BB guns in the house). I feel outnumbered all the time. And, hardest of all, when my stepson’s mother asks us to take the child an extra day that week, how can I possibly say no when my husband already misses half of his boy’s life? So my choice is either to feel helplessly angry or guilty. Sometimes, for good measure, I feel both.
At the same time, I know my husband feels caught in the middle. He loves his son and he loves his wife and he wants to be with them both and be with each alone and, mostly, be all together as a happy family. So I feel bad that my husband feels bad because I can’t always pretend to be blissfully, newlywed happy. Guilt is like a second skin to me. What can I say? I was raised Catholic.
Not only do I not get to be the most important person in my husband’s life, but I haven’t turned into the “giver” I thought I’d be. For one, I find myself pretending to boss my husband around a lot, but I think that’s mostly due to the amusement and wonder I feel that he’ll laugh and actually obey. Mostly, though, I find I just can’t seem to make the effort to provide that “sense of wonder” for my stepson that I figured would be natural for me. I thought I’d throw myself into cookie decorating and nature treks and arts and crafts, but I just don’t seem to have the interest.
I was supposed to be cool and easy-going and invite confidences, yet I still can’t seem to spend even half an hour alone with him without feeling . . . unfit. I find myself speaking in monosyllables and not making eye contact; I’m like an unsure child, while he confidently steers the conversation forward. I watch myself and worry that I’m going through the motions without putting any heart into it. And I’m I terrified that he knows it.
Still, sometimes I’m surprised at the caring touches that are second nature to me that my husband would never think of doing. Like the night before my stepson’s eleventh birthday when I blew up several dozen balloons and snuck them into his room while he slept. And last Christmas, when I egged my husband to stay up late with me three nights in a row so we could redo the boy’s room as a surprise. I figure those should count for something.
My husband says I have too many expectations. He’s probably right. And yet, now and then he seems to get frustrated that I still have a tough go of it at times. I want to scream: is it really so shocking that I don’t love someone else’s kid as I would my own child? Do my actions now really reflect how I will be as a parent? Still, when I’m quietly by myself, I’m uneasy: don’t those actions say something about the kind of person I am . . . or am not?
My husband and I have signed up to join a group for a stepfamily-counseling course. When we registered, the therapist told us that our situation (stepmother without her own children) is statistically the most difficult one. I wanted to cry when I heard that; it felt so good to know others felt so bad.
We’re waiting for our first class to start, and I’m kind of nervous. Our little family has been meshing pretty well recently, and I’m afraid the class will open up cans of worms better left unopened. But mostly I’m relieved. Because making this effort to bring each other a little more comfort and happiness proves to me just that much more that I love this man and he loves me.
What is good about the two of us as a couple is that we try to be attuned to the other’s feelings and to both give credit and take blame when each is due. We’re partners, just like my fifteen year-old self hoped we’d be.
What is good about the three of us as a family is that we mix fun and stability and spontaneity. I love the nights when it all comes easy: when the three of us sit around playing Pictionary or roll up the rug and spend hours dancing around the living room, then my stepson goes to bed and my husband and I lie on the couch together for a few minutes.
But I’m learning to appreciate the hard times, too; I’m so blessed to go through them with this man and this boy. For I know I wouldn’t love my husband as fiercely as I do if he wasn’t the man he is, and he would never have become the man he is if it wasn’t for his child. Maybe I don’t yet love his boy the way he does, but I love his boy for his sweetness and joyfulness and how happy he makes the man I love.
And that’s got to be a good start.
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