At 6 years old my parents divorced and at 7 years old I had a new step-dad. I remember my mother telling me to call my step-dad "dad", which infuriated my biological father. It was weird because here is this man who moved in with us and now my mother insisted I call him “dad”. He wasn’t my dad, I barely knew him, and besides, I already had a dad. It was difficult because when I went with my father for visitation I had to be very careful not to refer to mom’s new husband, my new step-dad, as my “dad”. I remember being with my father for visitation and focusing extremely hard on not referring to my step-dad as “dad”. Somewhere along the way I began to differentiate between a “father” and a “dad”.
We as adults have to be careful when it comes to starting a new relationship. As adults, we have the capacity to understand this new relationship as well as the titles that come with it. As a child, I remember being angry at my mother for making us call her new husband, “dad”. I felt a sense of betrayal to my father and at 7 years old I was unable to tell my mother “no”. This had such an impact on me and still to this day, I do not refer to my step-dad as “dad” when I am with my father.
Just for the record, my step-dad became one of the most influential men in my life and even when he and my mother divorced when I was 18, I still called him dad until he passed away last year.
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