Me (17m), my mom and my stepfather have been going to family therapy (with like 9 different therapists) for the past 5 years. We’re going because my stepfather and I fight a lot. He insists he’s my dad because he’s been raising me with mom since I was 8 and I insist he will never be my father and my dad dying didn’t open up the spot to someone else and even if I was open to a new dad it would never be my stepfather because he feels entitled to it.
My mom’s pregnant with their first kid right now so we have a lot of stuff going on and it took years of help for them to have a baby together. So my mom has pushed for us to make the most of therapy before it’s too late because she wants us to be a family.
In a therapy session last week my stepfather told me he’s sick of me saying he’s not my dad, of correcting him when he calls me his son, correcting mom when she asks me to get my dad when she means him and doing the most to make sure everyone in my life knows I don’t like him and don’t think he’s worthy of being my dad. He said he’s been here since I was 8 years old. That my parents were divorced when dad died and even if dad were alive I’d have gained a second dad, but as it happened he stepped in after a respectable year of grieving and that’s long enough to accept someone else wants to fill the role.
Then he told me that he has been there, he has paid for stuff, he has tried to reach me, wanted to adopt me, became my legal guardian so he’s responsible for me if something happens to mom, has taken on everything and for that and every other reason we have talked about previously he deserves to be my dad. Not some ghost. He told me that’s what my dad is now. A ghost. A memory. And I am holding onto the past and rejecting the present and it pisses him off because my dad got 7 years while he’s 9 in and still pushed away. Then he said he would love to burn my dad’s memory to the ground because he deserves to be recognized instead of the ghost.
The therapist spoke for like 10 minutes and basically corrected him for talking like that. She told him that it was not going to help our relationship and he had fed me reasons to dislike him and it was unhealthy to be that bitter about it. She said many stepparents don’t ever get elevated past step and some could be 40 or 50 years in the life of their stepchild.
When she asked me if I had anything to say in response to my stepfather I told hi, that I hope some guy says the same thing to his kid one day.
That really pissed him off and the therapist asked me to step outside. You could hear him yelling. My mom was upset and she told me after that it was such a cruel thing to say. She said it was as good as wishing him dead without saying those words. He stated the same last session and I had to leave the room again because he got explosively angry. After that session he demanded an apology for what I said and he told me I better say I didn’t mean it how it sounded. But I refused to apologize or clarify what I meant.
My mom asked me why I’d drag the baby into this. I told her he believes fathers are replaceable so he can get replaced someday and I won’t cry about it.
AITA?
Comments
Ultimately I’m going to go with NTA.
He kept pushing and said the heinous thing first. All you did was put a mirror up to his actions.
Also, it’s nice to hear of a therapist setting those boundaries.
You need to tell your mom to talk to him, and he needs to back off. Your mom is just as guilty. You’ll be leaving soon, hopefully for school. Do you have other family available to stay after you turn 18 and graduate? She will lose you, her firstborn child, if she doesn’t get him to let this go.
NTA. Listen, go totally hostile. No peace. No discussion. Burn the relationship to the ground. Your mother is a waste of space for subjecting you to this guy and she deserves no consideration. She deserves everything she gets. Do it before you turn 18, just make life absolutely unlivable. Scorched earth. Good luck.
NTA. You took the gameboard he was playing on and flipped it on him. Pretty hard to respect a hypocrite. My apology would be I’m sorry you’re a hypocrite and I called you out for it.
Nta. I would tell mom hope shes happy with yalls realtionship cause she has ruined it by pushing this. And she put his wants over you for years and that has consequences.
Forcing realtionships ruins realtionships.
And tell mom what he said was beyond cruel yet she didn’t tell him off.
NTA hang on till you turn 18 then leave, go and stay with family and tell your mom she chose to support him bullying you so you won’t be back. It’s up to you if you cut her off. In fact explain to her now that if things stay as they are, you’re gone as soon as you graduate, try to stress she’s losing you because of their behaviour. Updateme
OP, you are NTA. step dad on the other hand is a MAJOR AH and needs to get his rear end pegged with a cactus with metal spikes for those comments about you.
Step dad is angry cause you flip the script on his words. keep your head high OP, big hugs.
You need to address your mom’s “that was a cruel thing to say” in front of the therapist.
The response to her is that you essentially repeated or mirrored back to him the sentiment that he’s been saying to you all along. That instead of just “wishing” – he’s actually DOING. Ask her how wishing that your memory of your father would “burn away” isn’t cruel? How does hating your dad so passionately mean he deserves anything? How does that make him loveable? Ask if the role were reverse – if she had been the one to pass away, would she feel the same if his second wife was saying and demanding that you forget her and dismiss her as some ghost who can easily be replaced?
He doesn’t want to be bonus dad, he wants to be dad (in a twisted definition of it) and I think forget that your mom was ever with someone else, that she never had a child with someone else.
Even if you were to suddenly verbally agree with him and pretend – the fact is, she procreated with someone else and that will never go away.
Whenever I read of stepparents being overly keen to adopt, I cannot help but think the child has been left an inheritance and by being their guardian the stepparent is able to access the inheritance. This is reinforced by your stepdad telling you about stuff he paid for. Might not hurt to check with your family members.
NTA
Ask him if your mom has you babysit her child. Will that make you the child’s dad?
NTA and start planning ahead to move out once you turn 18 because your mom is enabling his behavior and she is making herself look like a bad parent, regarding your stepdad he is a total piece of garbage for the way he is trying to erase your dad from your memory. Tell your mom your gonna go either LC or NC once you turn 18 after you move out unless you give her an ultimatum because it’s a bad mother move for how she is letting that stepfather yell at you.
NTA. How can you have any love or like to someone who is so cruel to a loved one that you lost? Spoiler alert: you can’t.
nta
around 9 different therapists and they still do not understand they are in the wrong?
wow
your mother asking you about dragging the baby into it totally missed what it is about, you are not dragging the baby into it, you tried to make him understand what he seems to be unwilling or unable to understand.
Beside: him telling you he‘d love to burn your dad’s memory to the ground is IMHO way worse, he is the older, more experienced adult, he should be the levelled one, not the one screaming, but still expecting from the non adult (with way less ‘training’ how to behave/handle stress/a discussion/disappointments in theory) to be more mature than him?
Isn’t that a bit ironic?
Please, as soon as you are able to move to your relatives, or latest at 18th birthday, check your credit score, freeze credit, get a new bank account, get legal advice for how to make yourself financially secure in your country, get a new email not related to any phone or phone plan one of them (mother and her husband) was ever on too, get a tax pin … change addresses also at the old school, all places that might or might not have something to send to you later on (even of its only a class reunion in 10y). Sometimes old schools have offers of something money saving / opportunity giving for things you might not expecting.
And check into what did happen with the inheritance of your bio-dad, of they were not married anymore, who got or took his things? Life insurance? Car? Bank account? …
I do not trust pushy and or entitled people (too often proven to do not oK things)