Proactively Seeking ‘Stepping’ Advice
Hello all! I stumbled upon this site researching topics related to some soon-to-be ‘step-experiences’ in my relationship with my fiancé. I’ll apologize now for not knowing all the acronyms and such I’ve noticed on here; I’m sure I’ll get the hang of them. And I’ll apologize now for how long this is, but hope to lay out the situation to get the best advice possible for our situation.
TLDR: what boundaries, lessons learned and discussions would you suggest a couple blending families have BEFORE they tie the knot/move in together to make things go as smoothly as possible when the time comes?
A little background: I’m a divorced/single mother to a 19 yo daughter who lives full-time at home with me (her father has lived out of state for years due to his work). I am engaged to a wonderful man and great, dedicated father with two young children (10 yo son, 8 yo daughter). We are both in our mid-40s. He has his home a couple miles from mine, and he has 50/50 shared custody of his kids (week on, week off). Relations with his ex-wife seem amicable from what I can tell by their convos, and I’ve met her. Nothing crazy that I can see at this time; my interaction with her is - reasonably - limited, but she seems genuinely thoughtful about FI’s and my relationship. My relationship with my ex-H has largely been very amicable, as is also with his wife (she has called me her wife-in-law for years as we get along so well, keep kids the focus, etc.). So largely - everything/one is ‘honkey-dory’ so to speak.
Why I’m here is - I’ve never been in a relationship where I’ve been the step-parent figure, and hope to proactively get some perspective, suggestions, etc. for things FH and I should ‘hash out’ and talk about before we take the next steps (e.g., moving in together, marriage, etc). While we are very happy/great relationship, etc. and are engaged, we have not yet set a move or wedding date because I want to make sure we take our time and do things right to the extent we can, especially when it comes to our kids. Yes, I’ve raised my daughter and she’s overall a good kid, but it’s been awhile since she was ‘little’, and in some respects we’re more “adult/friends” now vs. me having to ‘airplane feed’ her, if you know what I mean. So admittedly I do forget sometimes how “they” can be at that age. Our plans - once we decide ‘when’ - is to unload both our homes and buy a home together so we’re all starting fresh in a new ‘our’ place vs. consolidating at his or my house.
For the most part, FH and my daughter get along, but given her age, and she works a lot and is always busy doing “19-yo things” so they don’t spend much time together. FH’s kids and I get along, but admittedly, my relationship with his son is better/stronger than with his daughter. His son is generally more respectful/less ‘challenging’ and more accepting of my role in his dad’s life. He and I bond quite a bit better when it comes to many things, are playful, throw football together, cuddle watching tv. Admittedly, I’m a little more ‘tom-boyish” so we click. His daughter on the other hand, not so much. She definitely exhibits some jealousy when I am there, for example: constant attention seeking, always insisting FH sits beside her/holds her hand/constant hugs/demanding his attention/etc. even to the point he gets annoyed by it. She also is more ‘testy’ when it comes to listening (e.g., I say ‘no’ to something, and she goes to FH and asks the same thing in front of me while giving me “the look” - you step-parents will know what look I mean lol). I make a serious effort to NOT ‘intrude’ on his need to show his kids reasonable attention & affection when I am there, but there is definitely a difference in how they both behave toward me.
FH and I have talked about the situation with his daughter, and he thinks she is jealous (though not sure why since we don’t hang all over each other or anything when I’m there and basically run the household like a family, divide & conquer chores, etc.). He thinks it’s just an attention-seeking phase, and has iterated to them both that they are to be respectful, that if I say something, it’s as ‘good’ as him saying it, etc., but I know enough (from experience) to know if we don’t nip some of the behavior in the bud now, it may be a VERY long phase. I’ve talked with her about “good” and “bad” attention, and she responds that she understands, won’t ask her dad for things when I’ve said ‘no’, etc., then turns around and does it again. I get that a lot of this is normal, blending families is difficult, we’ll have lots of issues like this to address, etc. so I’m not going into this with rose colored glasses. Really, I’m just trying to get suggestions/input from those who have walked in the step-parents’ shoes about some things, discussions, lessons learned, etc. BEFORE we take those next steps, so FH and I can have those conversations now vs after we tie the knot, relocate our households, etc., and hopefully preventing us from getting DEFCON 5.
The one thing that I think FH and I see differently that will likely be a hard convo to have is our views on who/what ‘comes first’ - e.g., kids vs marriage. I’m more of the mindset that your marriage/spouse is first (foundation), and I think he is the opposite. And I know this very viewpoint has the potential to create a lot of conflict, so any perspective on that would be helpful as well.
Thanks - in advance - if you read through all that and have advice to offer.
Nu2, welcome ....there is
Nu2, welcome :)....there is much to learn here and many different viewpoints to give you a well rounded experience.
There used to be a poster here, StepAside, and she wrote this back in 2009. I have kept this in my file for years as it helped me immensely, so I am sharing with you in the hope that it can bring some benefits:
One word for why blended families have so many problems...
Blended Family Issues
Fear
Bear with me. I don't have a psych degree, but I do have almost 2 decades of experience as a SM, have a HR degree, have read lots on psychology and have gone to counseling with my DH over this.
So this is my amateur summation of why these situations are so difficult.
As stepmothers, we experience a wide array of emotions: sadness, anger, resentment, rejection, insecurity.
These are secondary emotions. The underlying primary emotion is fear.
We fear our spouses will stop loving us if their children hate us enough.
We fear our spouse will choose his children over us.
We fear our stepchildren will invade and divide our marriages.
We fear our spouses will allow his children (and even his ex and/or mother) to hurt us.
We fear losing our serenity when his children are allowed to act out towards us.
Likewise, our spouses do what they do out of fear.
They fear their children will stop loving them.
They fear their mother will turn their children against them.
They fear their children will feel rejected because he remarried.
They fear their children will stop loving them if they tell them anything they don't want to hear.
The children feel fear also.
They fear their father has a new life and they may lose him.
They fear you have replaced them in his life.
They fear they have lost value in their dad's eyes.
They fear he may love you more than them.
They fear that you don't like them and you might be able to turn their father against them.
The BM feels fear.
She fears her children may be mistreated while in your care.
She fears her children may become more loyal to dad and want to leave her.
She fears that you may replace her.
What's the answer?
My counselor said that humans are terrible at saying what they really feel. I have no doubt. Looking back at the history of my marriage, my DH and I did a horrible job of conveying our feelings. We threatened each other, gave conditions, made demands, used rage and intimidation against each other. We felt threatened, became nervous, anxious, restless, worried, fearful and rejected. What I really wanted to know was that he loved me. I wanted his actions to show that he loved me. Allowing his children to treat me like dirt did not signal that he loved me. I was too wrapped up in my own fear to realize that he was allowing their behavior because of his own fear.
I think this is where counselors are a real asset. They can help convey things better than we can. Many of us are shooting ourselves in the foot with our words.
Consider this:
Me: "If your daughter disrespects me in front of your family again, I'm going to call her out and I don't care if there are 100 people around. I'm going to make sure she never tries it again."
What I'm really thinking is: "I fear being humiliated again. I'm sad that you have allowed it so much to date. I've accepted it for so long because I've lived in fear and I'm so humiliated to have let my fear rule me. I wanted you to protect me and let me know that you love me, and since you haven't, I'm going to go to the other extreme and threaten to demolish her so that you'll be forced to stop her. I wish you would have stopped her because you love me, but since you didn't, I'm willing to resort to intimidation to protect myself from her antics."
See the disconnect? I doubt my DH has spent much time considering how his daughter's behaviors have made me really feel. He probably thinks they have pissed me off. But more than that, I doubt he realizes that when he allows their behavior, that signals to me that he doesn't love me. I suspect his adult daughters know this (even is subconsciously) since they cheer every time they get away with their behaviors. Their behaviors are tests for their father. "If he doesn't stop me, and lets me disrespect his wife, that tells me he loves ME more than her." The kid is looking to calm their own fears.
Last night my family went out to dinner. Our 12-yr-old son was eating the calamari off the appetizer plate. I told him to put some on his small plate. He replied, "I'm fine eating it off the big plate mom." He was sitting across from me and next to DH. I said, "DH, DS apparently doesn't know how to eat appetizers in public, could you teach him how to put the food on his own plate instead of eating off the appetizer plate?". DH didn't think twice and took charge of the situation.
Now, if that had been one of my SD's, DH would have been horribly offended if I told him to teach her how to eat in public. My SD would have been irate with my interference. She would have thought I was trying to replace her mother. Everybody would have been up in arms.
The difference? There's no fear in an intact family. DH doesn't fear that I'm trying to hurt DS. DS doesn't fear me. I don't fear DH's loyalties to our own children. We trust each other.
The parent who remarries plays the most critical role in the blended family. This person is the one with the most to gain from being educated. I think it's probable that with the right education, a blended family can have much better outcomes than without. Everybody needs reassurance that they are loved. Boundaries and limits can be set without losing the love. Parents can parent their children and still be loved. But all of these things need to be discussed, and discussed properly. The couple needs to be able to communicate honestly how they feel, without all the distractions of secondary emotions.
I wonder how different my own outcome may have been, if we could have conveyed our fears to each other early on. Instead, we did lots of posturing. Now, my DH finally gets it. Now the walls are down. I love him again. His kids rarely come around. Their choice. But I finally have the peace to know that if they do misbehave, my DH will stop it. He's not about to give up the peace we have now, to satisfy their fears anymore. It's unfortunate that his kids were allowed to become accustomed to acting out due to their own insecurities. It's now the only play they know.
Love, not fear, is what makes the picture better. Fear never makes things better. Hope and love do. Love and hope come with trust. And trust is so hard to achieve when we have been in patterns of dysfunction with our spouses and their kids. If you're in this situation, I'd recommend counseling to achieve the trust. Could make for a much brighter future.
Ohhhhhh that IS insightful!
Ohhhhhh that IS insightful! And makes a lot of sense (the fear aspect) for all involved. Thank you so much for having saved & sharing that, Veritas, as well as the warm welcome.
I may think about how I can talk with his daughter about those fears - on her age level - to reassure her that I am not taking her dad away, replacing her, etc. He does encourage me to talk with her about this stuff b/c he feels like - me being a woman - I’ll get it/be able to explain it better than he can. At her age, I find analogies work well with getting her to relate ... so maybe something like "just like you getting a new book, movie, toy, dress, etc., doesn’t mean you love your other things any less, your dad asking me to be his wife doesn’t mean he loves you or your brother any less; he has a special kind of forever love for you both as his children, and a special/different kind of love for me as his wife-to-be. So you don’t ever need to be afraid that your dad isn’t going to love or be there for you just because he loves me, too." Does that sound like it’s on the right track, ya think?
Glad you can use it Nu2! I
Glad you can use it Nu2!
I don't have, and have never had, younger children, only an adult SS, so I can't speak to what would work best for your SD. I will add how important it is that communication stays open, as you have noted. I would not assume how SD is feeling but would instead just ask and let her tell you.
Again, there are so many on here that will be chiming in soon with what has worked best for them...a lot of good support here!!!
Thank you for your thoughtful
Thank you for your thoughtful insight & perspective, StepRightOff. I get that - with the limited details I’ve provided - it probably reads like he’s putting it on me to ‘fix’, but that’s not the case per se. He has talked to her as well, and he does correct/scold/punish her (and her brother when needed) for their behavior. He’s actually a pretty good disciplinarian, and when she starts pulling this “sit on the couch by me, daddy” business to the point of annoyance, he will flat out tell her “no, I’m going to sit over here with Nu2Stepping”. He just happened to take note that his son and I seem to be really close, and that his daughter and I - not so much, and he’d like to see that improve, as would I. He’s talked with her already, and just thought that if I also talked with her, it might reinforce what he told her. I told him I felt that was a ‘talk’ WE should have with her together vs. us going in separately, so we present a ‘united’ front vs. a divided one. He didn’t disagree, but thought a 1:1 ‘girl chat’ might help as well.
I’m definitely not naive, and having read just a few threads on this forum, I see exactly what you’re warning me about, and I get it. I also grew up in a ‘step’-home so I understand how things can and do go in that regard. But being a kid (then) vs. an adult (now), I’m sure there are things I’m not thinking about, scenarios, etc. that would be good discussions for us to talk about/flush out now vs. later. And I’m trying to figure out what all of those things are.
On the issue of what/who comes first - marriage or kids - I don’t mean to imply that my FH doesn’t put me “first” now. He actually does a very good job of balancing ‘attention’ and time, and he’s made it clear to them that I am his partner and what that means to/for them and our ‘home life’, expectations for their behavior, etc. On the weeks he doesn’t have the kids, he is a VERY doting partner who goes above and beyond to ensure I feel the love without me needing to ask, we have tons of quality time together, etc. On the weeks he does have the kids, it’s not that I take a back seat per se; rather, it’s more like we go into a more traditional ‘family mode’ during the day, homework, chores, planning/doing things with the kids, etc. And we’re both pretty wiped out once they go to bed so we cuddle on the couch for awhile and go to bed. We still manage to have ample ‘adult time’ when they visit, if you know what I mean. I don’t feel like I need to compete or that he doesn’t make me a priority - quite the opposite really; rather, there are some times (and this is what I mean) when planning things, he will sometimes directly or indirectly solicit the kids input before mine ... the joint things we talk about planning to do, I think he’s so used to only having it be the three of them that he forgets to consult/talk with me before bringing things up with the kids. One example - and this caused us a bit of strife for a few weeks - was after he asked me to marry him. We’d talked about it just being the two of us, and essentially eloping out west alone so it would be just about us, no muss/fuss/etc. The next week, he was excited to tell the kids he’d asked me, and spilled the beans after picking them up after school on the ride home. That turned into his daughter getting immediately worked up/excited about being a flower girl before we had a chance to tell them exactly what our plans were (we hadn’t even finalized them yet). And as a result, our plans to elope quickly came to a halt, and we started re-planning a local ceremony to include the kids, which then snowballed into a shitstorm because of a host of ALL the things we originally wanted to avoid in a wedding. We’re back to the elopement idea now, told the kids, his daughter pitched a little bit of a fit, but he basically told her it was our wedding, we had a lot of things to work around to make it happen, and we’ll still do something to incorporate them once we come back.
As for the future home plans, that is definitely NOT going to change on either part due to our individual/shared belief that neither of us wants to live where the other lived ‘married’ at a prior point. And we both feel strongly about OUR future home being just that - ours. Not mine, not his, but ours.
I will definitely talk with him more about having him take more of the lead when it comes to reigning in his daughter’s behavior when she acts out or gets jealous, and/or at the very minimum, having those discussions be jointly held vs. just me. I do see some ‘manipulative’ type behavior, so I do not want to be in a situation where it becomes “she said/I said”. But to some degree, I know some of that is also ‘the age’ and boundaries that he/we just need to clearly and consistently define. We’re working together to figure out what exactly those are now. I do think there is some guilt there on his part about the whole divorce thing, but it’s been 4 years (and no, I wasn’t in the picture at all for that). So this really is largely the ‘life’ the kids have known - a week at mom’s, a week at dad’s. But he largely and really is a very good father - not a doormat to his kids at all. I think it’s just an adjustment all around for his daughter to have another ‘woman’ in the house, for him to re-acclimate to having a partner again vs. having to do it all/make all decisions on his own, and for me in figuring out how this all should work, what’s fair, what’s ‘typical kid behavior’ vs potentially long-term, destructive behavior, etc. as well as having a partner again as well because I - too - have been doing it all on my own, so I get how hard that is to do.
I guess what I’m saying is - I don’t see our situation being ‘dire’ to the extent I’ve read in others on here; otherwise, I wouldn’t even consider marrying him until those issues were resolved. It’s more about trying to go into things proactively, maturely, and responsibly blending our families while trying to minimize potential strife. And when it comes to his daughter, trying to remember/understand how much of her behavior is normal/age vs. a potentially detrimental behavior.
Wow, you're genius for
Wow, you're genius for seeking some views before the wedding! I love that you're trying to foresee problems before you move in together. That's a really kind thing for your kids and your stepkids. I also tried to do this, but didn't seek advice from stepparents - only friends, who kept saying, "SD's practically an adult. She'll have her own life and her jealousy will abate." Yea, it didn't.
Finances were a huge issue I wanted cleared up before the wedding. How will financial decisions regarding SD be made? Will I be consulted? What financial commitments has he made - four years of college? Down payment for a house? Gifts? Will your husband want to give his kids cars? Pay for their phones?
I also made my husband agree that she would never, NEVER, ever, EVER live with us. Fortunately, this has not been tested. But I would say for you, talking about kids who fail to launch is important. What happens if they flunk out of college? Do they get to move home? What happens if they have addiction issues? May they continue to live with you? What if they don't have problems, but they're 25 and still living in your house? When does rent kick in? When is it fair to kick them out of the nest? What about girlfriends/boyfriends staying overnight? What if someone has a baby for whom they are not prepared? Will you let them live with you? Will you babysit?
Yes, learning what takes priority - marriage or kids - is very important. You need to be frank about your expectations and make him talk about his. We had to hash this out with two therapists after the wedding, which is expensive and awkward. You are at a perfect point to have this conversation and work it out. If you can't come to agreement or you suspect you're not really on the same page seek counseling before the wedding - he needs to understand how important this is to you. Our therapists told us the marriage must come first or we would be sunk and the kid would crush the marriage. She damn near did and she didn't even live with us.
Your SD sounds very much like my SD. You already know there's a problem. Focus on that because she's likely to get worse. Hold "special negotiations" on how things will be handled because she is definitely going to challenge you. It sounds as if he's off to a good start - telling his kids your word is as good as his. If she ramps it up, will he still be behind you? Try to find out how quickly he'll crumble if she gets worse.
You can't foresee all the issues with kids who are so young. But if you know him well, know his character, his morals, you'll likely know some answers. One way I used to gauge my husband was by watching the news and talking about what we see. For example, there are so many shows about addiction now. Talk to him about what you see. Find out how he would handle a kid with addiction. Tell him what you would do. And if you aren't sure, don't race to the chapel. There's plenty of time to marry, but once you're married, these issues take on an immediacy that can't be stopped.