The Stepmom Inoculation

Nov 17, 2009 by Peggy Nolan

Integrity.  Commitment to Excellence.  Stubbornly Optimistic!

People pleasers! Please raise your hands.  Ok…I see…one, two, ten, seventeen, fifty, the whole room?  Sounds about right.  Sister stepmoms, my name is Peggy and I’m a recovering people pleaser.

What exactly is a people pleaser?  What do they look like?  How do they behave?  Raise your hand if you’ve ever tried to morph yourself into someone your husband, boss, parents, siblings, children (yes, children), your EX-HUSBAND, your ex-wife-in-law or anyone else in your life wanted you to be?  Expected you to be?  Women are more likely to be people pleasers than men because we’re wired to be the caring, nurturing ones (although we don’t own the patent on that, many men are caring and nurturing).  Wednesday Martin, author of “Stepmonster” talks about this in her book and often on her blog – we stepmoms just want to be liked.  We’re nice.  Why can’t our stepkids and our husband’s ex-wife see how nice we really are?

We get trapped inside this bizarre mind loop…and it borders on obsessive thinking…before we know it, we’re rationalizing and justifying our behavior because we MUST be seen as nice…really nice.

If you followed my articles on my blog over the summer, you know I wrote several articles based on the Arbinger Institute’s principles of conflict resolution found in “Leadership and Self-Deception” and “The Anatomy of Peace.”  If you are ready to peel away a layer of your own onion, follow me because I’m exploring the third type of behavior justification, and perhaps the one most common to every stepmom “The Must Be Seen As” justification.

According to the Arbinger Institute, “we exaggerate the differences between ourselves and those we are blaming.  We see little in common with them, when the reality is that we are similar in many if not most respects.  We also exaggerate the importance of anything that will justify us.”  Ouch.  Consider that your stepmom vaccination.  You’ve just been innoculated against the latest flu strain of niceness.

If you’re a people pleasing stepmom, you’ll exaggerate everything you do from bandaging boo-boos to paying for your step-daughter’s car insurance.  You’ll justify picking up the parenting slack of both your husband and his ex-wife because you must be seen as the woman living a life of quiet desperation.  And you grind your teeth as you smile because really, it’s about how you think other people see you.  You want to create that image of quiet softness.  Only inside, it’s not really working, is it?

Arbinger states that in this mode of behavior justification, your view of others is “judgmental,” “threatening,” and they’re your “audience.”  You feel “anxious, needy, stressed,” and most days you’re just “overwhelmed.”  You view the world as “dangerous,” “watching you,” and “judging you.”  Double Ouch.  I don’t think you’ll get the StepMom flu this year.

We stepmoms are so worried about being liked that we keep ourselves from “doing the helpful and right thing when the helpful or right thing might be something the other person won’t like.”  And now I don’t think you’ll get the SM1PP1* virus either.  At this point you either get this or you hate my guts.  That’s ok.  I’m a stepmom and I’m a recovering people pleaser and I’m no longer seething soft on the inside.

For those of you who are still with me (thank you!) I know you’re wondering how I unmucked myself from this morbid merry-go-round.  If you haven’t poured yourself a martini or a glass of wine, go do that I’ll tell you about one of the magic keys I found, of all places, in a business seminar.

About five years ago I was on a business leadership call and the trainer was discussing how women in business get side tracked with the notion that they have to be liked by everybody.  The leadership trainer (I really wish I could remember her name to give her the credit for this!) explained, “you know one hundred people.  Ninety-eight of them like you, love you, some may even want to be just like you.  Two of them hate your guts.  And you spend the majority of your time trying to convince those two people to like you while you barely pay attention to the ninety-eight who adore you.”

That was my dope-slap, my ouch, my inoculation.  Why?  Because even though I was divorced, I still tried to get my EX-HUSBAND to like me and he couldn’t stand me (to the best of my knowledge, he still doesn’t).  I’ve been in recovery ever since.  I slip up from time to time but I’m HAPPILY re-married to the love of my life, a wonderful man who just wants me to be me and not some people pleasing victim of my own self-deception.

If you are interested in peeling away a few more layers, I recommend both books by The Arbinger Institute.

*SM1PP1 is StepMom PeoplePleaser Influenza, a highly contagious and virulent strain of the more common StepMom flu…