Spending the holidays with your husband's ex-wife sounds like prime material for a straight-to-streaming holiday-themed romantic comedy, but the reality is that it's not nearly as funny when it is your reality.
This stepmother turned to this online community for advice on a complex personal problem she was facing and wondered if she was in the wrong for encouraging her 19-year-old stepdaughter to speak up about ending their joint family holiday gatherings with the stepdaughter's mother, her husband's ex-wife.
Surely, this tradition was begun with the best of intentions: an attempt at co-parenting between divorced parents to keep the family together for the holidays. The problem is that even though everyone is together, no one is having any fun, and the "awkward" gatherings are joyless and spoil the intended spirit of the holidays.
Sometimes, in life, rituals and traditions outlive their welcome, and our unwillingness to let them go simply holds us back. This seemed to be the case with this family, which is why the stepmother prodded her stepdaughter to speak up to her parents about how much she didn't enjoy these holiday gatherings and put an end to them.
Image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Image is for illustration only and subjects are models.
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