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Fears and anxiety
I am feeling super anxious and stressed about things I can’t control.
Now that’s school is over my step son will be staying at my house more often he is 13, in the past I have found him openly masterbating when he is as my home, this made me very uncomfortable and anxious, is caused stress in my relationship with my partner.
Now that this has happened I am constantly worried when he is at my home he is masterbating. I don’t sleep when he is at my
home, constantly worried this is what he is doing.
My fear is that I can become pregnant from him doing this and not washing his hands and touching things that will also touch.
Now that’s school is over my step son will be staying at my house more often he is 13, in the past I have found him openly masterbating when he is as my home, this made me very uncomfortable and anxious, is caused stress in my relationship with my partner.
Now that this has happened I am constantly worried when he is at my home he is masterbating. I don’t sleep when he is at my
home, constantly worried this is what he is doing.
My fear is that I can become pregnant from him doing this and not washing his hands and touching things that will also touch.
COMMUNITY LEADER
That's not how pregnancy works. :>) To get pregnant, you need to have sexual intercourse. Someone masturbating in the home is not going to leave random sperm around that will find their way into your vagina. However, it is perfectly reasonable to speak to the boys father and set boundaries. The boy can masturbate but needs to do so in his room only and not 'openly' (whatever that may mean). That is a private activity and he can do it alone in his room or perhaps the bathroom. You will not get pregnant from it, that's not the concern. But his privacy and your ability to not see it would be great.
Again, no risk of pregnancy from this type of activity and am slightly surprised you don't know this. If you have general anxiety, that is a treatable condition. I would talk to your doctor about it to navigate irrational fears. Take care
Again, no risk of pregnancy from this type of activity and am slightly surprised you don't know this. If you have general anxiety, that is a treatable condition. I would talk to your doctor about it to navigate irrational fears. Take care
4 Comments
It’s not that I don’t know these things I do, they are just fears that I have and I think they have gotten worse since it was me that seen him masterbating. He was spoken to about it by his father ( or that’s what I was told) and he told his father he wouldn’t masterbate when he is at our home
It would be a good idea to talk to a counselor about anxiety in general and dealing with the sexuality of a kid in particular. This is probably more about having this child who is not yours in your house, and not so much about the one incident in particular.
You may be right about that, I have been having a lot of stomach issues lately and I sometimes feel it’s because of the anxiety I have around this but other times feel it’s a legit stomach issue.
You call the child your stepson, and you also call the man with whom you live your "partner." Is the man your husband?
I ask because you also said the kid is coming to stay "at our home," as though it is not also the child's home, though his father lives there. If you and the father aren't married, I could see there being some conditionality to your attitude about parts of your partner's life that you didn't have a hand in creating, that might interfere with your dream of being with him. Especially if it was your house in the first place and the partner moved into it, versus it being his house first, or you two buying a new one together. But (and I'm guessing you don't have children if you don't know this), when a person has a child, the parent's house is the child's house. (At least until the child is no longer a minor, and often longer than that.) His expectation that his dad will shelter him is natural (and also, his father has the legal duty to provide shelter). Besides, his father loves him. Their bond and their love are prior to your bond with the dad.
If this was the child of both of you, you would understand this emotionally and not be irritated by the child coming to live in 'your' house (until he becomes a noisy teenager and plays his music too loud and doesn't do his homework because he is gaming, and all the other fun things that happen when a kid is a teenager. Then you'd be irritated by him but would still understand that it is all of your house, not just your own house without the kid). And you would not even be thrown if one day you walked into his room to put away his laundry and accidentally caught him doing the deed. Teenagers can't help that they are full of hormones, and of course they will masturbate. You'd probably just make the mental note to always knock, or you'd put a lock on the door for him to use, and you would never to enter his room without permission, and you'd shrug off the incident as mutually embarrassing but just one of those things.
The fact that you were so thrown by this minor event that it affected your relationship with the father suggests you are not OK all the way with having the kid live with you, and felt at an emotional level almost like the kid was "out of control" or challenging you or something (I can guarantee he wasn't. He was just being a teenager). If you feel threatened or worried about this child, or just don't want him there very much, you do really need to sort it out with a counselor, marriage counselor, or therapist. If you are married to the man (or intend to marry him), you've got to accept all the way that he comes with children. The only way to be well thought-of by someone else's kids is to be a wellspring of uncritical love and support for them. Don't become the archetypal stepmother who wishes her husband's kids would just dry up and blow away. It doesn't work, and it does affect your relationship with your partner, who sees what you do not, which is that his love for his child came first and will last forever.
After my parents divorced when I was a teen, both remarried. My stepmom only wanted my dad and his affluence, she wished his kids didn't exist. She changed the locks on the family house, which (I had younger siblings and we were all under 20) was a very big signal. We were being locked out of our home. She made my youngest sister move out even though she was only 13. Nobody grieved her when she died (I think including my dad). If she had been left after dad died, nobody would have taken care of her or watched out for her.
My stepfather, on the other hand, always celebrated all of us. He went to our ball games and school events and cheered our successes, he came to see our babies at the hospital and he dotes on all the grandkids. This was pretty remarkable for a man who never had kids of his own, I don't know where he learned it, but I do know my mom chose well when she remarried! My mom is 94 now and they have just moved from their house into assisted living, and who came to sort and pack the house and help in every way? All of my siblings. We have busy lives -- one sister is in the middle of selling a business, one was in the middle of moving house herself, one works 9 to 5, one cut out a long-awaited vacation to raft the Grand Canyon, and one flew in from across the country on her own dime (and she is not wealthy). We searched out a place for them to live, sorted, packed and unpacked all their belongings, went to see them every day, handled their worries. This kind of relationship doesn't come from duty, but from years of his being a wonderful supportive stepdad, and from our love for our mom.
I guess I'm saying you get what you create. A lot of women have written in to MedHelp complaining of things in their partner's children that they would never even notice if it was their biological child. Sure, parents and kids don't always get along, but when it's one's own biological child there is no undercurrent of wishing the kid weren't there. In your shoes, if you want the relationship with the dad to be successful, work it out with a counselor that your role as a stepmom is to be always unconditionally supportive of his child. A stepparent doesn't have the right to be the disciplinarian, but can make the child so appreciative of her support that he won't want to let her down. This required you to let the kid have his rightful place in his parent's life without you glaring from the sidelines or being nervous of his presence.
Good luck with this!
I ask because you also said the kid is coming to stay "at our home," as though it is not also the child's home, though his father lives there. If you and the father aren't married, I could see there being some conditionality to your attitude about parts of your partner's life that you didn't have a hand in creating, that might interfere with your dream of being with him. Especially if it was your house in the first place and the partner moved into it, versus it being his house first, or you two buying a new one together. But (and I'm guessing you don't have children if you don't know this), when a person has a child, the parent's house is the child's house. (At least until the child is no longer a minor, and often longer than that.) His expectation that his dad will shelter him is natural (and also, his father has the legal duty to provide shelter). Besides, his father loves him. Their bond and their love are prior to your bond with the dad.
If this was the child of both of you, you would understand this emotionally and not be irritated by the child coming to live in 'your' house (until he becomes a noisy teenager and plays his music too loud and doesn't do his homework because he is gaming, and all the other fun things that happen when a kid is a teenager. Then you'd be irritated by him but would still understand that it is all of your house, not just your own house without the kid). And you would not even be thrown if one day you walked into his room to put away his laundry and accidentally caught him doing the deed. Teenagers can't help that they are full of hormones, and of course they will masturbate. You'd probably just make the mental note to always knock, or you'd put a lock on the door for him to use, and you would never to enter his room without permission, and you'd shrug off the incident as mutually embarrassing but just one of those things.
The fact that you were so thrown by this minor event that it affected your relationship with the father suggests you are not OK all the way with having the kid live with you, and felt at an emotional level almost like the kid was "out of control" or challenging you or something (I can guarantee he wasn't. He was just being a teenager). If you feel threatened or worried about this child, or just don't want him there very much, you do really need to sort it out with a counselor, marriage counselor, or therapist. If you are married to the man (or intend to marry him), you've got to accept all the way that he comes with children. The only way to be well thought-of by someone else's kids is to be a wellspring of uncritical love and support for them. Don't become the archetypal stepmother who wishes her husband's kids would just dry up and blow away. It doesn't work, and it does affect your relationship with your partner, who sees what you do not, which is that his love for his child came first and will last forever.
After my parents divorced when I was a teen, both remarried. My stepmom only wanted my dad and his affluence, she wished his kids didn't exist. She changed the locks on the family house, which (I had younger siblings and we were all under 20) was a very big signal. We were being locked out of our home. She made my youngest sister move out even though she was only 13. Nobody grieved her when she died (I think including my dad). If she had been left after dad died, nobody would have taken care of her or watched out for her.
My stepfather, on the other hand, always celebrated all of us. He went to our ball games and school events and cheered our successes, he came to see our babies at the hospital and he dotes on all the grandkids. This was pretty remarkable for a man who never had kids of his own, I don't know where he learned it, but I do know my mom chose well when she remarried! My mom is 94 now and they have just moved from their house into assisted living, and who came to sort and pack the house and help in every way? All of my siblings. We have busy lives -- one sister is in the middle of selling a business, one was in the middle of moving house herself, one works 9 to 5, one cut out a long-awaited vacation to raft the Grand Canyon, and one flew in from across the country on her own dime (and she is not wealthy). We searched out a place for them to live, sorted, packed and unpacked all their belongings, went to see them every day, handled their worries. This kind of relationship doesn't come from duty, but from years of his being a wonderful supportive stepdad, and from our love for our mom.
I guess I'm saying you get what you create. A lot of women have written in to MedHelp complaining of things in their partner's children that they would never even notice if it was their biological child. Sure, parents and kids don't always get along, but when it's one's own biological child there is no undercurrent of wishing the kid weren't there. In your shoes, if you want the relationship with the dad to be successful, work it out with a counselor that your role as a stepmom is to be always unconditionally supportive of his child. A stepparent doesn't have the right to be the disciplinarian, but can make the child so appreciative of her support that he won't want to let her down. This required you to let the kid have his rightful place in his parent's life without you glaring from the sidelines or being nervous of his presence.
Good luck with this!
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