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I'm 36, once divorced, now remarried since last year. My first husband Bradley and I chose not to have children, and now that I'm a step-mom to Jasper's children I can see we were right. Being a parent is really hard and thoroughly unrewarding work.
His kids treat him with disrespect and have a tremendous sense of entitlement. Jasper always did well professionally and his family never wanted for material things. Bradley and I were - are - social workers, and never had a lot of material things.
Dating a middle-age man with children was everything I had heard - bad. They always tended to pull his attention away from me. Jasper cancelled several dates we had arranged when one of his kids suddenly "didn't feel well". While we were dating they were generally cool and distant with me, almost but not quite impolite. Dismissive, that's the word. Their father's latest girlfriend, not likely to last long; I was not to be taken seriously.
I thought I understood them. I knew they saw me as this new person who wanted to take some of their only parent's attention from them. I loved him so much I wanted to make it work as a new family.
I knew better than to try to be "their new Mommy". Their biological Mom would always be their only mother and they were too old to have a maternal relationship with me. I set out to be more like a new aunt or something. I invited them to call me by my name, Rebecca, instead of Mom. They were teenagers, 15 and 18, doing well in high school. Maybe this would work.
Within weeks of moving in Anders, the eldest, began to flirt with me. I was very slow to see it for what it was, mostly because he was so open about his compliments and other behaviors. At the dinner table, with his Dad and little brother with us, he would rave about what I was wearing, or had worn the day before. How well I cooked, how nice I looked. Damon, the youngest, tuned us all out at meals, worked his phone.
Jasper just agreed with any kind thing Anders said, and I seemed to be the only one feeling it was a little creepy. Or mean. I had to consider that maybe the older boy was teasing me, getting a kick out of my taking him seriously when he wasn't sincere. These exchanges became fraught for me. First some flattery and I was pleased, then suspicious of his sincerity, then cross that he was toying with my vanity. I began to pay more and more attention to him, sometimes warmly, other times defensively. He soon loomed as large in my awareness as his father. I had to pay attention when he spoke, glean the real and hidden meanings. I paid more attention to my looks, my choice of clothing. I was preening for him and had no clue.
Anders sometimes called me "Becky," a diminutive I hated. I told him I preferred my full name, Rebecca, and thought Becky was a kid's nickname. Anders began to use both. He referred to me as Rebecca when speaking to the others, such as "Rebecca said dinner will be ready soon." But speaking to me, he called me Becky, and I bristled but didn't make a big deal about it. "Rebecca sounds like a librarian. Some stuffy old spinster", he told me. "Becky is hot, she's a cheerleader."
There were hugs, too, again both alone or with the others present. A hug when left for school and again when he came home. The hugs were only a second too long, the accompanying embrace only a bit too tight. His father never seemed to notice. I mentioned the hugs to Jasper, alone in our bed at night. He said I was maybe misunderstanding, and that all teenagers have a crush on a pretty older woman. The younger boy had spent the previous year crushing on a teacher. I hadn't thought of it that way, as a sincere crush, as opposed to willful misbehavior. For the first time that night, in bed, I marveled that old me - Rebecca the librarian - might be sexually attractive to a high school boy. The sex that night with my husband was better than usual, and I knew why, and was slightly ashamed of myself. I let my inner Becky loose.
I ceased to perceive Anders' previously unwanted attentions as vaguely disrespectful, or hostile. I realized that contrary to resenting me, he was thinking of me as a sexual being, and it was flattering. I no longer cringed when he hugged me, or kissed me on the cheek. And one day I realized that I had begun to primp a bit, check my hair and clothing, mid-afternoon just before the boys arrived from school. One day, looking in the mirror as I adjusted my brassiere "just so", I had the thought "who is this woman?" Why was I now looking forward to the positive attention that radiated from the boys? I had just never before paid much attention to how I looked. Years working alongside men for whom I never preened. A first husband who never cared what I wore, or how it fit my body. "Look at you now, Rebecca," I said to the smiling, perfectly made-up wife in the mirror. "You're becoming Becky."
Anders knew. I don't know how a young man with so little experience with women could tell, but he knew I now welcomed his attentions even though I did nothing to encourage them. His hugs became a bit longer, a bit tighter. He gave me footrubs when we all couched in front of the TV. Short-lived but tender neck massages if I complained at the dinner table of tight shoulders.
When I worked at a counter, or the sink, in the kitchen, he would come up behind me and hug me from behind. "How is Becky today?" he would ask softly next to my ear. No resistance from me, no rebuke. I lapped it up. Jasper wasn't an inattentive husband, but we were a married couple and we spent only some of our time focused on each other. Time with Anders was like being on a date, two people relentlessly focused on each other. I could often now feel his hips pressed into mine from behind. Soon I noticed he was often erect in his trousers.
