Figuring out your relationship with the ex will happen over time. But my advice is don’t push it. No matter how wonderful or kind or manipulative or horrible you think she is, you’ve got to respect her position as mother to your stepchildren.
Remember this: Those lovely attributes your stepchildren exhibit don’t all come from your husband’s influence. My own stepmother, Nancy, put this concept very eloquently. “I had a great appreciation early on for the decency, warmth, and sense of humor that you and your brothers had and I always knew a huge part of that was your mom.
I could see a lot of good things in all three of you that were less likely from your dad because he was gone so much.” It can be hard for new stepmothers to respect mom’s place in her children’s lives.
In fact, according to a study called “Contesting the Myth of the ‘Wicked Stepmother,’” published in the Western Journal of Communication by Allison Christian, a professor at the University of Denver, stepmothers sometimes combat the myth of the wicked stepmother by slamming the biological mother to make themselves feel better. But I contend that if you harbor anger at your stepchildren’s mother, it’s only going to hurt you, your husband, and your stepchildren.
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