if only blended families were more like blended fruity drinks...
this may be long. apologies in advance.
my fiance has two kids, a daughter who is 11 and a son who is 8. fiance and i are expecting a child of our own in about five weeks. (super excited!!!)
but... as you might infer from my presence here, all is not well on the blended-home front.
when my and fiance's relationship started, fiance and his daughter had a very strained relationship, so much so that she was refusing to go home with him when he had custody of her. when i showed up, daughter and i bonded quickly, and those issues disappeared. daughter seems to really enjoy me, and her relationship with her dad seems healthy and loving.
that's the good news. the bad news is that fiance's son is now refusing to come home with fiance when he has custody. fiance only has custody for two days every two weeks, and we live 2 1/2 hours away from the kids. fiance's son pitched a fit on friday when fiance went to pick up the kids, and son said he wouldn't go with fiance because he doesn't like me.
fiance was hurt by this situation and understandably sad, and now is taking it out on me by being very cold, blaming me for "shoving change down the kids' throats," etc. (backstory: when i showed up, we started doing things like cooking together and sharing meals at home, something fiance had never done with the kids. daughter loves this. son would rather eat fast food and ice cream cones. initially, fiance thought having more of a cozy home-life was great, but now he seems to think it's a large part of what makes his son upset.)
anyway, the whole situation is pretty upsetting to me. i think son is a nice kid, generally, who is just really insecure about his relationship with his dad. he feels jealous that i'm in his dad's life and wants me gone, so he has more time alone with his dad. i try very hard to be compassionate with son by acknowledging his feelings and being gentle with him. i know that this change has to be hard for him.
however, it's hard for me too. i'm very pregnant, this is my first child, and i could really use some love and support from fiance. i have explained to him my concerns, and he has responded by lashing out at me, insisting my expectations of his kids are far too high (i have this crazy idea that the kids should maybe learn to do things like set or clear the table or say please or thank you without being prompted) and so forth. fiance says he blames himself for allowing me to cause so much change in their lives.
in the midst of this argument, i asked fiance if he would go to counseling. he said he would if i would. i made an appointment, but now fiance says he does not remember agreeing to go to counseling, and he insists he does not need therapy.
i'm sort of at a loss. do those of you with experience with step kids and blended families have any advice or ideas as to how i should proceed?
i think fiance (like so many
i think fiance (like so many divorced dads with limited custody) feels guilty about how little time he has with the kids, and is lenient as a way of ensuring that the kids will love him and think of him as the "cool dad." hence the lack of discipline. i get it... but it doesn't make the kids any easier to deal with. fiance insists that he does eventually want them to learn manners and have healthy eating habits, but he thinks this is just too much change all at once, and we need to lay off until things are more settled.
(which makes me ask... "so when....?")
re: the split with BM, fiance's version of the story is that BM met and fell for another dad at the kids' sporting events. BM and her current husband were married within a month or two of the divorces from their first spouses. though this sounds pretty damning of BM, it would be unlikely if that were the whole story. i know they were having financial difficulty at the time, and i can certainly testify to how hard it is to get fiance to communicate effectively about problems.
i quite literally laughed out
i quite literally laughed out loud.
thank you for that!
i don't have much of a
i don't have much of a relationship with BM. we exchange pleasantries from time to time when dropping off/picking up the kids, but fiance is the one who communicates with her. what i know of her is mostly through what daughter tells me about her... which, recently, hasn't sounded great. mainly, BM and BM's mother have recently been preaching to the kids that fiance and i are living in sin since we're not planning to marry before our little one is born. (frankly, marriage isn't high on my list of priorities. i have nothing against just having a good, healthy, committed partnership. given our current struggles, i'm even less keen on marriage.) anyway, i just reminded daughter that jesus had other teachings besides that - love thy neighbor as thyself, judge not, etc - and told her that the next time the subject comes up, she might remind them of this. we got a good laugh out of that, though she insisted she'd get grounded if she dared to say it.
i agree with you that fiance's anger is just misplaced. it's just a shitty place to be misplacing it, imo.
re: therapy, i agree! i had a good therapist years ago following a late miscarriage, and she was a wonderful support for me! she helped make my grieving process so much better and more of a period of growth and change, rather than simple sorrow. i hope that the therapist i'm seeing on friday will be as helpful.
what do you mean by something more to this? ideas?
i missed one of your
i missed one of your questions... as for how the kids took the pregnancy news, daughter was excited and happy and can't wait for baby to arrive. son initially insisted we kill the baby, because he can't bear the thought of not being the baby.
this was, as one might imagine, rather dismaying.
i think you're right to note
i think you're right to note that one of the kids DOES like these changes, and i think they've benefited her pretty greatly. she's a much more secure, happy child now than she was before i came into their lives.
as for the blame game, i think it's just pretty normal. it's hard NOT to take out your frustrations on the person you're closest to.
still, it sucks.
the more i think about all this, the more i realize... what has happened isn't anyone's fault. it's not my fault, it's not son's fault, it's not fiance's fault. i think it's just normal for some kids to act out a lot when there is a new partner or a new baby. maybe we all just need to take some deep breaths and be gentle with each other.