Comments on: Top Stepmother Concern #5: My Husband is Married to his Kids, Not Me!

By: In Depth Parenting | You Can be Great If You Really Want To

In Depth Parenting | You Can be Great If You Really Want To — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:41:39 +0000

[...] Wednesday Martin» Blog Archive » Top Stepmother Concern #5: My Husband is Married to his… [...]

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By: Susan Wisdom

Susan Wisdom — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:18:36 +0000

Wednesday and Marty – This is such an important subject to talk openly about and shed some light on. Stepcouples by nature are guilt ridden and emotionally demoralized from having gone through divorces in which their kids were torn away from their parents. It’s their parental job to protect their kids at all costs…to shield them from being torn away again. So how do adults handle falling in love with someone new and sharing that person with the kids …when it feels like such a violation? Is it too much to ask for? No, not if you’re lucky enough to find the right the person with whom you can work together in adjusting to the challenges of stepfamily life. If the relationship is strong, mature and respectful, you don’t have to shield the kids from it. In fact, you won’t want to! If anger, jealousy and resentment are showing up in the beginning of a stepcouple relationship, you will be torn between choosing kids over partner or visa versa. And that’s a yucky place to be!

Thanks, you guys, for offering this great stepcoupling advice.

By: maya

maya — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:27:01 +0000

Okay, I’m one of the ones whose husband withdraws all affection while the kids are here (they’re 12 and 16) and so I do in fact associate them showing up with being deprived of affection or just having less of my husband I only now realize. Thing is it feels so petty and classically wicked to say a word about this, like, “Why can’t I have ALL of you” but I’m so glad to see I’m not alone here. I think there will now be a way to discuss it without both of us going ballistic. It always rocks my world when I think I’m the only one–and then I learn that this is normal stuff when you have stepkids. THANK YOU for that!

By: Da Wiznitch

Da Wiznitch — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:49:50 +0000

My partner’s children never saw him hold hands with their mother, either. Their relationship had been on the rocks for so long that the kids were not used to any display of affection between adult partners. Plus, the kids (although not their father) are very conservative Catholics who have a big problem with sex to begin with. All of this set the stage for a lot of tension and jealousy.

It didn’t help that their dad told them that I was his “room-mate” at first! When they found out that I was his girlfriend, they were really angry that he had lied to them.

It’s amazing what poor choices fathers often make, trying to avoid the wrath of their children. I advised my partner to be up front with his kids about our relationship from the beginning, but he didn’t not heed my advice. I didn’t insist; I should have. I thought he knew them better than I did, and it didn’t seem like any of my business how he handled them. Boy, was I wrong.

If there is any advice that I could give to women just beginning a relationship with a man with kids, it would be: trust your instincts about how to handle the situation. Your instincts may be a lot better than his, even though he is their father. If anything violates your sense of ethics or truth-telling, speak up right away and insist on living by your own values.

I think if I had insisted from the beginning that my partner be honest with his kids about our relationship, we would not have had as many problems as we have had. They are mostly ironed out now, but it was a long and painful decade fixing the problems that he set in motion in the beginning.