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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Direct-Caterpillar77 on 2024-07-04 04:02:03+00:00.
I am not The OOP, OOP is u/tafornoweg
AITA because I (38F) don’t want to take my stepson (9) on vacation?
Originally postedtor/AmItheAsshole
Thanks to u/czechtheboxes for finding the update
TRIGGER WARNING: emotional neglect, abandonment
MOOD SPOILER: Evil stepmother vibes, but a positive update
Original Post July 21, 2023
AITA because I (38F) don’t want to take my stepson (9) on vacation?
My husband (39) and I have been married for 5 years. We have two children of our own, both girls, aged 5 and 2. I also have a son (10) from a previous marriage, but I was widowed.
My husband’s ex is barely involved in stepson’s life at all. They got divorced when stepson was 2, and his ex wanted “a fresh start” so my husband did the decent selfless thing and had complete custody of their son, even though he’d wanted shared custody.
I got a bonus at work and I really want to go on vacation with just MY family JUST once. We’ve been on family vacations all together lots of times. But just once I want to spend MY money going on vacation where I’m not looking after someone else’s kid. I want stepson to stay with his mom while we go on vacation. My husband sees my point of view and is okay with it. I don’t think I’m being at all unreasonable.
My mom found out what I was planning and says I’m being a complete AH. These are the reasons she says I could be the AH:
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My mom says that if stepson’s mom isn’t properly involved in his life, I should be even more involved in his life to compensate (I think this is a completely unfair expectation).
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She also says that I’m being a hypocrite taking my son, but I think that’s totally different because my son DOESN’T HAVE ANOTHER PARENT. I’m all he’s got.
If stepson’s mom won’t take him just for once then obviously he’ll come on vacation with us. But I don’t think I’m the AH to ask if I can have a vacation with my own family just one time. It’s not like I hate stepson or something, he’s a nice kid, he’s just not mine. Am I the AH?
RELEVANT COMMENTS
AsinineAdeline
INFO: If my math is right, you and your husband got married when stepson was 4?
What kind of relationship does stepson have with you versus with his bio mom?
OOP
Yes, he was 4, and as I said, he barely sees his bio mom. I’m not sure what point you’re making?
VERDICT: ASSHOLE
Update - Jul. 22, 2023 (Assumed. She tried to post a separate update which was removed, so she added it to the original post instead.)
UPDATE: AITA because I (38F) don’t want to take my stepson (9) on vacation?
We definitely won’t be going on vacation without stepson.
After a couple hours of replies, I decided to show this to my husband. We sat down and had a really long talk about it. He told me he’s never been comfortable with my attitude to stepson, but didn’t know how to say to me before.
I don’t want to be a bad person, I just never thought of stepchildren being “yours”. I don’t think it would be easy for anyone to accept this level of criticism, but all your replies have shown me I have a LOT of work to do. As many of you suggested (and so did my husband) I intend to see a therapist to help me with that. As I said, I don’t hate stepson in any way, I have never been deliberately cruel to him, I’ve just always thought of him as my husband’s child. But I realize my mindset needs to change.
So I’m going to start working on that. I want my family to be the best it can be, and I need to accept that it includes my stepson. I understand that now, and I’m going to start seeing a therapist to become a better person (we’ve also talked about maybe having family therapy too). I’ve also made up with my mom, and she is 100% behind the changes I want to make in my life.
It wasn’t easy to hear everything you said, but I understand that I needed to hear it.
NEW UPDATE *
Update to my AITA post June 20, 2024
In July 2023, I wrote a post on the AITA subreddit about taking a family vacation without my (step)son (https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/155rmmj/aita\_because\_i\_38f\_dont\_want\_to\_take\_my\_stepson\_9/). I wasn’t given permission to post an update to my original post on the subreddit, because the replies I got were too heated, and the mods advised me to post an update to my profile instead.
When I made my original post, I was told by literally thousands of people that I was TA, and it helped me see how wrong I was and had been for the last 5 years.
I booked a therapy appointment the following week and started working through my issues. My own father died when I was less than a year old. I don’t even remember him. My mother married another man when I was 7, but he left when I was 11 and I never saw him again.
It hurt me in a way I’d never processed before. I loved him, he’d been my dad, and suddenly he was just gone. That taught me that step-relatives weren’t part of your family. They weren’t forever.
I always thought I was doing better than my ex-stepdad. Because I provided for my (step)son and I stayed in his life, I was better than my ex-stepdad. But I made my (step)son feel the way my ex-stepdad made me feel when he left me and I regret it so much.
A little while after I started therapy, we started family therapy too. The therapist helped me explain to my (step)son the way I felt about step-relatives and why I’d always behaved the way I did. He cried and said he was afraid that I just didn’t like him, and we had the first proper talk we’d ever had. I told him that wasn’t true, and I had just been a bad step-parent like my ex-stepdad had been to me.
My relationship with my (step)son is so much better now. We spend time together just the two of us, and except for this post, I never call him, or think of him as my stepson. He’s my son. I accept now that he’ll always be my son, that unlike my ex-stepdad, he’s forever. Even if something happens between me and his dad, he’ll still be my son.
Most of all, he always called me by my first name, but last Thanksgiving, he asked to start calling me mom. It made me so happy. I told him that I loved him and he said he loved me too. Since then, he always just calls me mom.
A lot of people also talked about the ways my husband needed to improve, to be more assertive and protective of his children. He knows that. It’s very easy to see the problems when they’re presented to you all at once in a Reddit post, but when things happen day to day, it’s a lot harder to realise how issues are building up. But he’s working hard, like we both are, to try to make our family the happiest it can be.
We both know we still have to keep working at this. I’m still in therapy and we’re still having family therapy. But I’m grateful to work at it. I’m grateful to have all my children.
It’s very hard for me to write this, to think about the way things were before I started therapy. It makes me cry everytime I think about it. But I want to thank you, Reddit. I wrote my original post just looking for validation for my own point of view, and I never thought the internet could change my life this way. But it has. I feel like for the first time, we’re truly a family.
Thank you all.
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