I met my fiancé’s stepmother for the very first time after we announced we were getting married. She lives in another country, so this was my first opportunity. She hits me with some heated questions the moment we’re introduced.

Stepmother-In-Law: “Why aren’t your parents listed on the wedding announcement?”

It’s so sudden that I freeze.

Me: “Because… we both have divorced and remarried parents. There are eight parents between the two of us. We wanted the announcement to focus on us, not a giant list at the top.”

She frowns, unconvinced.

Stepmother-In-Law: “That’s not how it’s done. The parents should be on there.”

Me: “We’re in our thirties. We’re paying for our own wedding.”

She purses her lips, clearly offended.

Stepmother-In-Law: “Well, I just find it disrespectful. Weddings are built on traditions!”

Fiancé: “Yeah, Sharon. Like ’til death do us part. Remember that one? My dad is your what, third husband?”

She dropped it quickly after that!

CONTENT WARNING: Mentions of physical violence

My dad’s first wife likes to plan family gatherings on the same day we have ours. We’re not sure if it’s intentional, but it sure does happen a lot. This time around, our stepsister has accompanied her dad and is joining us for our gathering.

Sister: “Hey, [Stepsister], you’re always welcome here, but why did you decide that this was the year you were gonna come with Dad?”

Stepsister: “Well, last year my mom and aunt got into a fist fight at my grandmother’s house. Don’t want to have to deal with that drama.”

Sister: “Wow, I hope it wasn’t too bad.”

Stepsister: “My mom banged her head off of every cabinet and countertop in the house.”

Me: “All of them?!”

Sister: “Small house? Or was your mom just super dedicated to the task?”

Stepsister: “Sorry, I should have said kitchen, not house. She was very dedicated to the kitchen portion, though…”

She started spending a lot more time at our place!

CONTENT WARNING: Abuse

Growing up, my living situation was a game of hot potato as my stepparents competed to see who could make my life worse, resulting in my parents handing me off to each other several times rather than deal with the situation. This story takes place while I was living with my father and stepmother, following my mother’s fourth husband grabbing me by the neck and shaking me like I was Bart Simpson.

My stepmother was taking her adult children and their partners to an Orlando vacation for Christmas, hitting up the major theme parks. She didn’t want me to come, but she had decided that, despite being seventeen with a part time job, I couldn’t be trusted alone and if I wasn’t brought along, I’d “burn down the house out of spite.” My biggest crimes up to this point had been not cleaning my room to her satisfaction and playing too many video games, so I have no clue where she got that idea, but she ran with it.

My stepsiblings and in-laws, bless them, liked me and were not okay with how their mother treated me. On the trip, they did their best to mitigate the situation even as my stepmother did things like “lose” my ticket to one of the parks and try to make me wait in the car all day (in a theme park parking lot… in Florida…). The real fireworks, however, started the night before we came home.

I forget what exactly she considered to be the final straw, but it was egregious enough in her eyes that she demanded I leave the time share and figure out my own arrangements for the remaining night. My father had me to wait outside the front door while he and the others argued with her. I was standing there with my suitcase for a few minutes, then the door opened, and my stepmother screamed “This is what you get for standing there eavesdropping! I told you to leave!” and dumped a full stock pot of water on me. My father gave up and took me to a cheap hotel, with me stuck soaking wet until we got there. We didn’t talk much that night, and in the morning headed for the airport.

I should now note this took place before 2001, so in-flight rules were somewhat more lenient than they would be today. My stepmother was sitting three rows in front of me, on the opposite side of the aisle, with pretty much all of her kids in between us as a buffer. It was also long enough ago that a two-hour flight served a meal, and her turkey sandwich apparently went down the wrong pipe. She lost it.

She began screaming that I had tried to kill her, using my “evil psychic witchcraft” to make her choke, and demanded the flight attendants throw me off the plane. To be clear, she didn’t ask them to land and deplane me; she wanted them to open the door at cruising altitude and toss me out. When they didn’t, she threatened to do it herself.

The flight crew’s solution to this was to find some poor guy in first class who was either a psychiatrist or psychologist and brought him back to sit with her for the rest of the flight, where she played the victim about how I was evil incarnate. (I do feel really bad that this was how he had to end what was presumably a vacation.) Within a couple weeks of our return I was living with my mother again.

I don’t really have a good conclusion, no snarky bon mot or profound insight. I eventually went no contact with my father. I’m in a much better place now, decades later, with found family, an actual support network, and zero interaction with just about everyone from my childhood. But I do still have a panic attack any time I’m caught in a sudden downpour.

I went home to visit my dad and stepmom. I’m from my dad’s first marriage, and my dad and stepmom- his third marriage- also have two kids together, though there’s a pretty big age gap between us.

Sister #1: “Who are you texting?”

Me: “My sister. I’m going to go visit her next month.”

Sister #1: “Is it far?”

Me: “Yes, I have to get on an airplane to visit her and her husband.”

Sister #2: “I wanna come!”

Me: “Maybe one day you can! She wants to meet you guys in person. It would be fun to have a good portion of my sisters together.”

Stepmom: “ALL of your sisters are right here.”

Me: “No, they’re not.”

Stepmom: “YES, they ARE. You only have TWO sisters, these two.”

Me: “I actually have four sisters and two brothers, which you know full well.”

Stepmom: “They’re not your sisters! They’re just your mother’s daughters and her husband’s children. You don’t have any brothers.”

Me: “Then I guess these two are just my father’s children, which would make me an only child. Fun, I’ve never been one before.”

Stepmom: *Slams pot onto stove and screams.* “THEY ARE NOT YOUR SISTERS!”

Dad: “[Stepmom], you need to calm down. You know [My Name] has a very blended family. Her mother and I were idiot teenagers when she was born, and we both got remarried and had more kids. She has a ton of family. She and [his former stepson] even still call each other brother and sister, just like I still call him my son.”

Stepmom: “NO. Her ONLY sisters are these two right here.”

Me: “That’s not how that works… at all. You and I aren’t related, you just married my father. If you want me to claim my half-siblings as my siblings, then I claim ALL of them, not just the ones you provided. I have six brothers and sisters, including my stepbrothers and stepsisters.”

My stepmom looked angry, but dropped it. 

A few weeks later, I posted pictures online of the mini-reunion I had with two sisters and a brother, and got a lot of confused comments from her family. Apparently, she’d told most of them I was an only child before her kids were born. I had to publicly set the record straight, which caused a lot of friction in [Stepmother’s] world for a while. I still can’t grasp her logic, but at least she now admits I have more siblings than just her children.

My stepdad set off driving in very severe snow and ice. The car rapidly froze up, and he had to stop to scrape the screen. What he didn’t see was the old lady on the footpath at that exact spot, waiting for her son, who drove the same car in the same colour.

He stops, she can’t see in, he can’t see out. He jumps out, she jumps in, doors bang in unison. He’s looking at the screen, she’s looking in her bag, nobody notices anything wrong, until he leaps back in, and they both abruptly notice each other and scream like it’s a cartoon.