THREE+ME: Jealous of your stepkids? Um... Part 2

When you don't have an answer, what do you do?

If you're me, you hit up the all-knowing Google. That's what I did when I was faced with my own envy toward my 7-year-old stepdaughter's potential.

Yep, remember Snow White's evil stepmother? That's me. A few months ago, I became acutely aware that my stepdaughter's future can hold successes where I've experienced failures. And I was jealous. And I felt terrible.

But how abnormal is such a feeling? I wanted reassurance that I'm not alone — and maybe not evil.

So I went looking for answers.

“This tension between age and youth is as old as time," author and psychologist Carl E. Pickhardt wrote in one of the (very few) articles I found that seemed to normalize the feeling I had. “Youth has always envied the prerogatives of age, and age has always envied the potentialities of youth.”

Yep, that was what I envied – my stepdaughter’s potential. In seeing her positive attributes, I realize I’m no longer where she is.

“The girl’s bloom into young womanhood is ahead, while the stepmom’s bloom is passing or past,” Pickhardt told me in an email.

That stung. It’s selfish, and shallow, and I know it. But it doesn’t make it hurt any less to be reminded that I'm past my prime.

So I hoped to find something positive. The initial result seemed to be that sure, it might not be unheard of, but it was still depressing.

That led me to Robert A. Walker, a psychologist based in Warwick, Rhode Island, with a specialized focus on blended and adoptive families. When I finished my phone interview with him, the outlook seemed a bit brighter.

These feelings are "extremely common," he said. "They exist more often than not” – even with birth parents.

“I don’t know many biological parents who don’t feel that way," he added.

Derek Foulds, who is [deep breath] the director of In-Home Therapy and assistant clinical director of the Behavioral Health Center at Family Service Association in Fall River [catch breath, and wonder how he fits that on a business card], agreed. "I know plenty of bio moms that have feelings you expressed, for sure," he added. "It’s not that the market is cornered on stepmoms who have that kind of feeling."

"But biological parents aren’t as aware of it,” Walker continued. “...When you’re a biological parent, you don’t dare voice this; you think it’s abnormal and you don’t have the freedom to talk about it. Stepparents, particularly smart ones, tend to think about these issues more, they ruminate over them more."

Smart, you say? Overthinking all this, means I'm actually doing something right?

Apparently. “The fact that you’re thinking about this is a two-edged sword,” Walker told me. Recognizing this in yourself, he said, means “you’re concerned and you want to be better. But on the other hand, ignorance is bliss – if you weren’t thinking about it, it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be happening, you just wouldn’t be concerned about dealing with it.”

So how do I deal with it?

"Therapy is a great place to start," Foulds recommended. It would challenge me to look at my history and the underlying reason for my jealousy, so I can be in the here-and-now for the kids, he said. 

"Going through life with them, the ups and the downs -- you’re able to do that if you’re emotionally present" -- which is difficult to do if you have your own stuff going on, like anger, stress or, in this case, jealousy, he said.

Foulds added something else, too, correcting me on my use of the phrase "actual mom" in Part 1 of this column. "It isn't as relevant what kind of mom you are," he said. Stepmoms, biological moms, adoptive moms, foster moms -- you're "not second fiddle," he said.

And as for being villainized as the stereotypical evil stepmother?

"How much does it matter what society thinks?" Foulds said. Don't let the concern about society's opinion "impact your mood or your function," he said.

So maybe all this isn't as evil-stepmotherish as I feared.

After last week's column, I received a lot of feedback from other moms  — all of which was surprisingly supportive. One email actually offered a perspective that I hadn't given much thought to before.

"I believe when you look back you will be happy that your stepdaughter will be all the things you write about," wrote Sheila Oliviera, a reader in Westport, "yet perhaps she won’t and that would [be] much worse."

That second part made me pause. I have these expectations for my stepdaughter, and in my mind, they'll be glorious and wonderful, the picturesque young adulthood I wish I'd had -- and I'm jealous of that image. But as Oliveira, who has three grandchildren being raised in blended families like mine, points out: Wouldn't it be much worse if my stepdaughter doesn't live up to that image?

And as for my shallow dread of becoming older as my stepdaughter reaches her prime, Oliviera also had a bit of wisdom for that, too. "Egos are hard to leave behind but at some point we all become something we no longer recognize."

I'm not alone in this. I'm not the only human growing older, and I'm not the only woman whose little one will bloom with more beauty and strength than she herself did. Nor am I the only adult concerned about all this.

As Foulds encouraged: “Don’t beat yourself up about it. You’re a human being."

Maybe unlike the evil ones in the fairy tales, this stepmother can have her own happily-ever-after, too.

Email Emely Varosky at evarosky@heraldnews.com.