I’m a planner. I plan out events in my personal life, and I plan projects in my work life. Knowing and preparing for what will come in the next week, month, six months, year, brings me calm. I’m one of those people. I have lists, charts, spreadsheets, and my iPhone calendar looks like a rainbow.
Here’s the thing, you can’t help who you fall in love with. You can’t plan for that or for what’s next.
A little background…I met the love of my life at work. He worked in IT, and I worked in marketing. I’m a Mac person, and he’s a PC guy. So, needless to say, if I had a computer issue (which I never did, because I work on a Mac), he would be the person who would fix it. I think in the year that we worked for the same company we had maybe two or three short conversations, since I never had a computer issue. We talked briefly about music, The Who, specifically, my favorite band and one of his. I think at one point he mentioned he was divorced with kids.
Fast forward to my last day at the company, and my phone rang. He said, “I just heard it’s your last day. I can’t believe today is your last day and we never hung out.” I said, “I’m changing jobs, not dying.” He said, “What are you doing Sunday?” That was the start of a beautiful friendship that slowly blossomed into love. I fell in love with an amazingly kind, funny, tenderhearted man.
My husband, who I call, the Captain, has two kids. At the time, the girl child was 12 and the boy child was nine. He went through a very difficult and contentious divorce, and his kids had been through the ringer, too.
We started dating a year-and-a-half after the Captain’s divorce. We knew, after about five or six months of dating (which was about eight months of hanging out) that we wanted to wait a year before he told the kids about me. Everything we heard from experts, and read, said that it was important to know the relationship was serious before the parent introduced a significant other into their lives. So that year, we saw each other every other weekend, and in the summer, we would go several weeks without setting eyes on each other. Although this was difficult, you know, when you’re in love and happy, you want to see your person, we both knew this was the right thing to do for the kids.
Finally, a year had gone by, and it was time for the Captain to tell the kids. I couldn’t have predicted what would happen next. I think I’m still feeling the effects from that.
After he told the kids (which he did without me, thank God), the first thing the girl child said (or yelled) was something to the effect of, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, you lied to me. I never want to meet her, I’ll never talk to her, I’ll never like her. I’ll never, ever have anything to do with her.” Probably not totally out of the ordinary. My guess is divorced parents who have had similar conversations with their kids hear something similar. The difference is, she meant it. She really meant it.
So even after our thoughtful approach to waiting, and after waiting a year, we were screwed right out of the starting gate.
And, there you have it, that my friends is the shit you can’t plan for.
The Unofficial Stepmom 