u/Resident_Eagle8406

Almost …. There….

Weymouth pride across the pond.

Last time I posted a related one of the best experiences I had with my wife and step daughter through her teenage years in the form of a couple trail reports. Something about my tone gave people the impression that I was leading my family into the Bataan Death March, and I got downvoted into oblivion. Oh well, you can’t win everyone over, my family holds onto it as a positive memory.

A lot of people post in here from places of despair. Often people will post how things don’t get better for them or their step family as children don’t always age out of their problems. But I will say that in my case they did get better.

When I married my wife I took on two step children. Those children in turn brought baggage from the toxic dynamics of their bio dad’s family. Generally their dad’s family used their mom as a scapegoat and taught them to pathologically blame her for everything. You can see why she got divorced.

This meant they were taught not to respect our house, or our rules, or us. This led to a lot of conflict.

The wife and I live in the northeast and the kids lived with the dad most of the year in the mid west. We couldn’t in good conscience leave the kids in that environment, so we got into a drawn out legal battle. Initially the courts determined that moving the kids out of state represented too great a change, so they would do the school year with bio dad and summer vacations with us in the northeast.

Those summers were tough. In bio dad’s house they learned that they could get what they want if they threw a big enough tantrum. It was a culture shock when that didn’t work anymore. We had multiple occasions where we called the police to restrain our step daughter as she physically assaulted me on more than one occasion. We generally understood this behavior as a manipulative way to try and get sent home. We never gave in.

By the time it came for her last summer here our step daughter eventually admitted to her mom that her best memories were with us.

The kids started to realize that things weren’t right as things started falling apart over there. Their equally toxic step mother died unexpectedly, which created instability in their lives. Bio dad eventually found a new woman to shack up with, although she seemed to have no interest in being a step mom. He seemed to check out at that point.

Bio dad allowed his 17 year old high school aged daughter to have her 22 year old unemployed boyfriend spending the night with her. She eventually graduated early with honors and a baby bump.

While our step daughter reached adulthood, our step son asked to move in with us for most of the year. It got to the point where my wife was paying her ex child support and buying food for the kids. They were literally getting in fights over food.

So, now we have primary custody of her high school aged son, and her daughter is considering moving closer to us, as I am now a step grand parent. She discovered that young mothers need support and found us to be more reliable than pretty much anyone in her life. The other day I over heard her on the phone with her mom saying how she was talking to her therapist about apologizing to me, her evil step dad, for all the bad behaviors she exhibited in her youth.

Step son experienced some culture shock when he learned that our school district is far more demanding than the one he left. The clash between expectation and reality hit him hard. There is still a lot of work ahead of him, but if he took the right lessons from his first year, he can still be a successful student.

Obviously things don’t always work out like this. Part of it was due to factors outside our control. We always knew bio dad would drop the ball, we didn’t know whether the kids would be aware of it or not. I think a key part of it was when they became aware of their how dysfunctional the family dynamic was on that side.

Sometimes you gotta put some spin on that résumé.

Explain in comments.

I’ve gotten banned from so many leftist reddits for my contempt of Stalin than I ever imagined. I genuinely thought most leftists understood the damage this man did to the socialist cause. That seems not to be the case. Instead you see this attitude where admitting to the atrocities of Stalinism would invalidate the class struggle in general.

Honesty requires the individual to be honest with themselves. Socialism is not and never has been the promise of a worker’s paradise. Socialism didn’t promise an end to all suffering. Socialism doesn’t create anything. Socialism only provides for an end to economic exploitation and economic domination of one class over another. The failures and betrayals of certain socialist leaders should be something we can admit without giving up on the cause.

One of the most applauded Christian humanists of the 16th century, Thomas More posited several questions regarding private property and its viability in God’s world. Is it just? Did More find it just? Find out by watching this deeply Christian commentary on the man for all Christians