Evil Stepmother

My Stepmother..eh.. blarghh..ugh.. so much effort..
Ok, she has some kind of personality disorder, or perhaps just plain depression. In any case she is ###$ up. I'll give a breif description/profile of her symptoms.

Jodie (thats her name)
-Is insanely concerned about what others think and their opinions on her and her family.
-Is very nice to outsiders, and props up this extremely amicable trendy facade in public.
- Secretly loathes herself and every aspect of her existence.
- Is always exaggerating how poor we are, and how terrible our lives are, and how she deserves better but will never get it.
- Is always making endless problems up in her head.
-All of the above problems are because she married my Dad.
- No matter how obviously good a situation is, Jodie will catastophise it into the worst thing that has ever happened to her.
-She is the constant victim of the world, and is always seeking victim status.
-When she is at home, she drops her facade and becomes this wretched hag, venting her self-loathing and frustration on myself an my father. If you call her on her $#%^, then she goes hyper agressive for a bit, argueing like a histrionic teenager, then quickly collapses and seeks victim status from your 'harassment'.
- She is extremely petty and underhanded, no attack is too low. She systematically attempts to deconstruct my fathers simple healthy self-esteem by attacking his masculinity, his self-wprth, and other approaches. With me, she used to do the same thing when I was young, but as I learned how to push her buttons and pull her strings, she focussed on the only one thing that could piss me off, telling me my dead mother didn't love me/would be ashamed of me.
-She wants nothing to do with any of my father's family (who are the loveliest, friendliest people on earth). Instead she prefers to hide away and isolate herself. The only family she will see is that of her family, which is ruled by her insane mother Sue (Sue has all of the featuyre that Jodie has, plus she is an alcoholic).
-Jodie's greatest fear is judgement by others. For example, her greatest fear in our relationship is that my fathers side of the family would judge her a bad mother in raising me, so it was of paramount importance that I succeed at everything I do, lest it reflect poorly on her.
-When she goes hysterical, there is no telling what she will do. She has thrown me down the stairs, shoved me into closets, screamed her absolute lungs off, smashed plates full of food, cut up my clothes./artworks, etc. Note that the most extreme of these only occur after systematic button-pushing on my behalf (I am no angel here, however I will note that I was never the one in mouth-foaming madness).
-She spread BS lies to anyone who will believe her about how much of a victim she is (the only person who believes her these days is her mother). For example, she banned me from any contact with my little sisters "for their safety", fearing that I would kill them and her. Her fears weren't at first genuine, but rather a devious assault on my character, however as time went by, I believe she started to believe her own lies.
-It seems that she is a 16 year old trapped in a 39 year old's life. Sometimes she jjust cracks from all of the pressure and has regular mini-nervous breakdowns.
-She is extremely introverted, and hates meeting new people. However she has a very small handful of freinds whose opinion means EVERYTHING to her.
- She is a control freak. Also, she seems to have a fear of her childhood repeating in mine or my sisters (who, thankfully she adores). As such she will attempt to avoid us getting bullied by removing us from all social contact with peers (well ,not me anymore, but I have just found out that she is doing it to my little sisters now.)
-She is usually a decent mother to My little sisters(her biological daughters). This is good, for their sake. However, from her treatment of my father they know she is ###$ up. She used to try and attack my self-esteem by blatantly favouritising them in psycho ways (like I wasn't allowed to eat in the same room as the family, or they were allowed to have desert and I was not, or even they were allowed to stay up later than I was when I was 12-16 and they were 4-Cool.
-She to this day uses my sisters as a buffer from my dad, pulling them from their own beds to sleep with her, thus forcing my dad to sleep alone in one of their beds. This happens every night and has been the arrangement for about 10 years. My sisters are currently 12.
-plus there is a whole new list for the $#%^ she pulls on my dad.

My guess is that she has been suffering from chronic clinical depression for about 25 years. Her siblings (nice peole) have acknowledged her ###$ and say she has been that way since she was 16ish. Any approach tfor her to get help ends up with her initially projecting her problems onto you, and acting very reasonable, and then eventually ends in her fliping her top if you push it further, ending in her hating your guts for a week, and victimising the $#%^ out of herself. Nobody knows what to do. I keep trying to get my dad to divorce her and take custody of my sisters. He wants to, because she actually hates him and makes it abundantly clear. However, he is a simple/traditional bloke and doesn't want to ruin my sister's childhood/doesn't have the balls to actyually do it/ values masculine tenacity. I personally think my sisters' childhoods face greater danger under her influence then under a split family. Nevertheless, my dad keeps saying he will divorce her but never does, in the end it is up to him, and I cannot divorce her for him.

By the way, my dad is a really simple, happy, easy going, friendly, healthy, attractive guy who is 45 but looks 25-30. He is in the military, but has a great sense of humour and is a bit of a larrikin. He is extremely loyal and lots of fun. He could totally get a woman half Jodie's age, and 1million times her attractiveness. Jodie is corroding his very soul and every day i see him he is a little bit more dead inside. It is excruciating, but what can I do. I can easily convince him that splitting with Jodie is the best thing to do, and he will eventually always agree, but he just never goes through with it (actually he never starts, he just decides to do it, then goes back into the pattern of withdrawal from reality). i hate, and I don't know what the ###$ I can do. Seriously.

If she hates herself, then she has nothing to stand on to change. As hard as it is, my suggestion would be... if you must lve with her, try to make her see the things of actual value in herself. She needs real self esteem to change. She needs to love herself in order to change herself.

Maybe in the cosmic order of life, your Dad is assigned this role... to give her love which others would not be able to give her.

If she is being mean to your Dad, you can always side in with him (?) without confronting. Like, try a peaceful way?
If she says to him, "Why is it you always.... " whatever... maybe you can say the opposite but in a nice way... "I kind of like how you do that, Dad..." It supports him but without giving her the leverage to rebel against you for saying it... ot maybe she will... but then you can kinda say "Sorry you feel that way".

What she says about your Mother... IGNORE. She has NO RIGHT to say that to you!!! People have pulled that BS with me adn my Dad who passed away and it made me so upset until I realized that is their own sick sick sick self hatred which makes them say these hateful things.

I hope this helps?

digital.noface wrote:. From growing up, I remember sometimes the line between reality and #######4 was blurred when it came to Jodie's belittling. Sometimes there were brief moments when it started to seems as if it was indeed myself who was the source of all of the families problems. Of course I woke up, but my father isn't as smart as me, so I worry.

digital.noface wrote:It never ends. No matter how good news can be, it is always not only bad, but the worst possible outcome imaginable. Imagine how she reacted upon hearing that I was getting married to an asian immigrant

digital.noface wrote:Haha. Seriously though, stuff her. I've settled the score already. I don't want to waste any more of my talents on her. She's too easy.