The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

(this is raw unedited text transcribed directly from the audio)

Again, I'm Dr. Ellen Kenner on The Rational Basis of Happiness, and I think I have some time for a very quick question. "Dr. Kenner, my ex-husband Max and I have two children. After our divorce, Max remarried a woman named Mary. Mary is now fighting for more custody of our kids. She's been overstepping our custody agreement. I am a professional. I am a very mentally fit mom. I am drug and alcohol free. Why is Mary, the stepmom, tenaciously going after custody of my kids? Is this some sort of psychological disorder? Belinda." 

There is no psychological disorder called Possessive Stepmother-itis. There is nothing like that. But I can imagine for you it's got to be incredibly disturbing. These are your top values. They're your kids. You don't want the stepmother to step in there and pretend she is the mother and you're not and try to just erase you from the picture, which is what it sounds like she's working in that direction. Neither you or I can get inside of Mary's mind, the stepmom's mind, and find out why is she going after your kids? What's up with this woman? But you can look at some possible motives. One of them is financial - maybe she doesn't want your ex-husband Max to pay you child support, and so it's a financial thing. If she has the kids, they keep the money. Maybe your ex-husband has told lies about you and you look like the evil mother and so she's rescuing the kids. Well, if that's the case, you need the truth to come out in the open. Maybe she's very insecure and she thinks that you're more confident, you're a professional, and so she's trying to make her domain the kids and look more important in your ex-husband's eyes, or she may be jealous of you and your ex-husband maybe too, and they may be looking to undermine your happiness. People do collude in that and that's a huge problem. Or maybe she never had kids and she wants a big family and so your kids she wants as her kids. What you need to do is get legal advice asap. You want to keep a log of every time she oversteps her bounds. You want to protect the kids from this noise as much as possible, from the custody noise, and you want to obviously get the legal advice. Find out more about Mary's character.