It was a little after midnight in Chichester Estates. A drone flying overhead could view the lights burning here and there in bedroom windows of custom homes across the subdivision. In daylight hours, mature oaks and elms cast shadows on the well-appointed yards and house thousands of birds and squirrels.
In my office on the upper floor of one of these homes, I was checking the APA format on a research paper I was sending in for publication, entitled "Bonds of Intimacy Between Step-parents and Step-children." My name is Gianna Vine and I'm a therapist specializing in family relationships involving step-children and step-parents. I also have a private practice as a sex therapist, and in this role, I sometimes see my step-parent therapy patients.
I'm also the stepmother of Jazz, the 19-year-old son of my husband John and his previous wife Anna. I have worked hard on my relationship with Jazz. When his high school sweetheart dumped him for a wealthier boy, I saw how Jazz's confidence was shattered. Jazz confided in me that his potency had also been affected. He had lost his trust in women. I decided, then and there, to build Jazz back up and do everything in my power to help him be the strong, confident Alpha I knew he could become. I taught him how to act with women, and gave him insights into feminine psychology and female sexuality.
As our intimacy increased, Jazz and I formed a deeper bond. First, we grew more affectionate, and I encouraged physical displays of affection. I'm ten years younger than Jazz's birth mother, and I like to think I'm fairly attractive for 35. One night Jazz kissed me on the mouth as we said goodnight. I was touched and moved by his passion and boldness. I saw he could use me as a trusted surrogate to develop his skills with women. Then, one long weekend when John was in Vegas, Jazz and I crossed what I like to call the "Bridge of Sighs."
Jazz told me later that I was the one woman in his life, whom he trusted completely. He knows I am always in his corner and, since his father is often gone, he has naturally become a substitute "man about the house". He makes me coffee in the morning, brings me breakfast in bed on weekends, and shows his appreciation and thoughtfulness in a hundred little ways. Touched by his gallantry, I was also completely frank with my husband. I told John that Jazz is rebuilding his male confidence with me, and John was all for it. He knows I get lonely when he's gone on business, which is often, and he is happy for me to have my needs met while helping to rebuild his son's confidence. In fact, I know he gets turned on by the situation and, if anything, it has improved our marriage. When he returns from a trip, he asks me to describe my "sex therapy sessions" with Jazz while he was gone. Whispering the details in his ear has led to some spectacular nights of passion and our marital sex life has improved remarkably.
My professional life has also been affected by my relationship with my stepson. My clients are mostly divorcees and many are step-parents. My experiences with Jazz convinced me I could help stepmothers stepfathers and their stepchildren to form deeper bonds. And so, counseling stepparents and their stepchildren became my therapeutic specialty. Of course I know that family dynamics like mine are the exception, but I also know that among the many emotions that stepchildren project on a new stepparent, such as anger, resentment and jealousy, sexual tensions can easily develop between young hormonal males and females and a step-parent. Girls may compete with their mothers for the new man of the house's attention. Boys may resent the new woman who takes their mother's place, but they are also often attracted to this fresh, often younger, woman. She plays a maternal role with the sexual role of "other woman" just as a stepfather combines the fatherly role with the role of someone who has taken their mother as a sexual conquest. The combination of parental and sexual roles is real, and even if the majority never act on it, it's healthy for stepparents to understand and engage with this unconscious aspect, to help develop closer relationships with their new family. To help explain what I do, here's a case history from my journals. Of course the names and details have all been changed to protect may patient's confidentiality.
In a bedroom, down the street from my house, one of my clients, Joanna Mason was alone in bed reading a steamy historical romance novel. Joanna's husband Earl was often gone for weeks at a time, installing high-tech equipment in European factories. During these long breaks, Joanna developed a taste for romantic novels. She is a voluptuous, highly sexed woman with a rich fantasy life. Her stepson Jake was neglected by his father and his birth mother for years. He had adapted to the lack of affection and support by developing a remote, indifferent manner with his father and Joanna. He spent hours in his room alone, playing online games. Yet Joanna knew that beneath the facade was a young man starved of love and attention. She did her best to substitute for Jake's mother, who now lived in San Francisco with her new husband and his children. Joanna tried to be Jake's friend and confidant, but often Jake shut her out. She understood that Jake's fear of close relationships came from his early abandonment by his mother. She gave her stepson his space and was patient with him.
As a woman, I appreciate Joanna's powerful attraction for women and men. Joanna is a brunette with shapely, toned legs and thighs that she works on with Pilates and squats. Her most stunning features are a large, round ass without a trace of cellulite that stucks out fetchingly in yoga pants or the short dresses and skirts she likes to wear, and her huge breasts encased in the support bras she has handmade. Without a bra, her breasts remain firm, she told me, but when she pushes them down, her nipples touch her smooth-shaven vulva. This trick turns her husband on mightily.
That night, Joanna was tucked in bed, lost in the plot of "Mistress of Barn-bridge Estate", when suddenly a voice called out from down the hall.
"Mom!"
She set her book aside. It was Jake, but this was unusual -- unheard of -- for him to call out to her like this in the night. He was eighteen, hardly a child. Why didn't he come down the hall and talk to her directly? Something must be wrong! Was he ill? Forgetting her novel, Joanna threw the covers back and opened her bedroom door.
"God! Mom!"
It was Jake's voice again, but he sounded strange. He must be running a fever. Had he caught Covid at band practice? She moved quickly to his door, but before she could open it, Jake spoke again.
"Mom! Joanna! Fuck!"
Joanna felt waves of panic. Something bad was happening! She threw open the door and stepped across the threshold.
"Jake what's the matter? I..." She stopped in mid-sentence. Jake was asleep. He was stretched out naked, his sheets and bedclothes having fallen on the floor. By the nightlight's glow, her eyes focused on his large, thick, erect penis. His arms were at his sides. He was not touching himself or masturbating. He was clearly in the middle of a dream. He spoke again.
"Tits! Fuck!"
Jake thrust his hips up in the air, his penis was rigid, as if he were making love to an unseen partner kneeling on top of him. He gave several more hard thrusts and then cried,
"Yes Joanna! I'm cumming in you!"
His rigid penis stood straight up and ejaculated stream after stream of thick semen. Jake moaned with pleasure in his sleep as he released; some jets shot over his face and hit the wooden headboard. Joanna had never seen such a forceful explosion. She stood with her hand over her mouth, watching Jake's spasms, as the orgasm wracked his muscular body. Finally, he fell back on the bed. A sweet smile softened his normally stiff features.
Joanna picked a sheet up from the floor and spread it over her stepson's sleeping form, seeing the pools of semen wet the cotton. Her instinct was to clean him off with a damp cloth, but she was too nervous to touch him. She smoothed his dark curly hair off his forehead, the only maternal gesture she felt comfortable with at that moment, and backed silently out of the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.
Back in her room, Joanna sat on her bed stunned. There was no doubt. Jake was calling her name as he orgasmed. He must have been having an erotic dream. If he had just been saying "Mom" it might have been a dream about his birth mother, but he had called "Joanna," twice. He had also said "tits" and "fuck me"!
Jake was having a wet dream about her. But why? Had she been putting out signals without knowing it? Was it the way she dressed? She had always worn form fitting clothes, it was her style. Did Jake interpret that as seductive? God forbid, did he think she was coming on to him? He was eighteen and full of uncontrollable urges. She noticed her forgotten novel. Was it the books she read? Did he see her as a frustrated wife? Had he heard her masturbating? God! Was he a teen voyeur with secret cameras in her bedroom? She had a vision of Jake watching her undressing, on his laptop screen. Had he seen her stripping and touching herself in the mirror? Had he found her vibrator? The butt plug? Oh God! I really have been careless, she thought. Way too careless around him.
The clock read 2.30 and she suddenly felt exhausted. This will all look different in the morning, she thought. I just need to talk to someone with more experience. The next morning she called me and set up an appointment. When she came in my office, I saw a very attractive woman, who any teenage boy might fantasize about, but Joanna was seriously upset about the late night incident.
"Why would he be dreaming about me?" she asked, "I don't understand. I really have never tried to tease him or be seductive, at least consciously!"
