For the You Get What You Ask For Series, someone asked me to write about second marriages. Since I am still on my first marriage, I asked Erin Hallstrom-Erickson, who is navigating her second, blended family, to tackle the topic. Erin runs the online community Stepchicks.
As I sat down to write this post, I found myself in the middle of a three-way. The scene was what you might expect: brows were raised, sweat was dripping, and my breath was deep and loud.
I wish I could say I was in the throws of passion with Phillipe, my fake Italian lover, and my husband. I could have stayed in that forever. No, I was in an email triangle between my husband, his ex-wife and myself. What we were discussing isn’t relevant, but needless to say it was an intense discussion and one that has played out numerous times in my married life.
I am my husband’s second wife. Sloppy seconds, the next Mrs. X, the She Devil. Despite the fact that I did not break up the marriage, I’ve still heard every term imaginable to describe my status as she-who-came-after-the-first.
I am also a stepmom. I am neither wicked nor cruel and the last I heard my stepkids think I’m a pretty awesome lady.
Whether I’m Mrs. X or Super Awesome Stepmom, I am becoming part of a growing trend in American marriages: that of the blended family. According to preliminary census figures, blended families are expected to become the majority family type starting with the 2010 census.
All of the death, divorce and remarriages taking place in the last 10 years have prompted a surge in the number of families that “blend” together to become a new family unit. Yes folks, the Brady Bunch has become the new American Dream.
You’d think that with such a significant increase in blended families, that the marriages would have a high success rate, right? If you think about it, most of the people entering into these relationships have been previously married so they should know how to work it out. Wrong.
More than half of second marriages end up in divorce. Add children into the equation and you’ve just added another 25%. If you’re getting married to a man (or woman) with kids, it stands to reason that you have a one in four shot of being happily married in your blended family.
The odds sound pretty dismal. So dismal that it makes you wonder why people are getting married in the first place.
Hope is not lost. In fact, my blended family pals and I always like to remember a few important strategies for staying sane in your blended family.
1. Do not expect perfection. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve hoped, wished and prayed that I’d have the perfect blended family. We’d all get along and would never argue; we’d all see eye-to-eye at all times; and would spend holidays and weekends together. Everyone would respect my opinion and no one would ever put Stepmom in the corner…or under the bus. Yeah, that only happens in TVland. No family is ever perfect, blended or not. You may get lucky and you, your stepkids and their mom may all have a loving relationship. Or you may not. It’s a crapshoot and sometimes no amount of trying can turn it around.
2. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. This can’t be stressed enough. Don’t assume you’ll have the perfect blended family and don’t assume your spouse knows what’s going on in your mind. He or she may not be able to understand it, but you’ve got to at least tell them about it. Blended families are rife with turmoil. Anytime you add an upset or angry person in with someone new and fresh without talking it out, you will get a negative result. Trust me.
3. You are responsible for you. Unless you’ve brought children into the relationship, the only person you really need to worry about is yourself. Your spouse and his ex may want to drag you into their disagreements. They may want to turn people against you. Let them or don’t let them, but remember that the only person’s happiness you’re responsible for is yours.
Erin Hallstrom-Erickson, both a stepdaughter and a stepmother is the writer of a personal blog, The Erin Experiment; the creator of Stepchicks, an online community for stepmoms; and creator of The Stepfamily Letter Project, an anonymous letter writing site for members of blended families. She can be reached at erin@erinexperiment.com.
If you have advice for blended families or questions for Erin, leave it in the comments area.
Copyright 2010 Project Happily Ever After
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m sure this post will be very helpful to lots of readers. My husband was on his third blended family when we married and did a lot better with my kids than I did with his. (Fortunately his kids were already adults and lived in Sweden, so I do not have to deal with them much anymore.) My husband went from having my older daughter say she wanted to spit in his face as a teenager to total devotion as an adult. He’s like a marathon runner, able to endure the early abuse/contempt and work out the kinks, so that in the end he could create a relationship that meant something to both parties. In his own words, “Don’t try to be an authoritarian father. Rather, treat them as friends.”
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When I married Ray, I had three children from a previous marriage ages 13, 10 and 6. Unfortunately the 13 year old was a girl (Good morning can sound like f***U from a 13 year old girl) and Ray didn’t have children. They didn’t get along very well, more her fault than his until she went into the army at 18. My son, the 10 year old, and my 6 year old daughter fell in love with Ray from the get go. Since my ex was still around Ray didn’t try to be their father but another adult they could go to and count on that freely loved them. It was hard for him but he knew marrying me these were the only children he would have and he made the most of it.
We both would be so angry at my ex because he would ignore the kids when they wanted him so desperately especially the 13 year old but we never said anything negative about their father.
My children are now 29, 26 and 22 and as my son said at his wedding recently “Ray is the best thing to ever happen to our family” He was a dual best man with my Ex. My daughter at her wedding had a special father/daughter dance with him and everyone cried knowing how far those two had come. My youngest has always said that Ray is her dad and no one else will walk her down the aisle.
The only problem Ray and I ever had in our blended marriage was that sometimes I had to put the kids first. He had a hard time with that. I tried to explain to him that he was #1 in my life, for the rest of my life, but that sometimes the kids had to come first and that is just the way it is. We managed to work through it.
In addition to being a stepmom, I’m also a stepdaughter and I’m confident that has helped me understand the ups and downs of blended families. It’s also helped me appreciate my own stepfather even more.
Not a visit goes by anymore where I don’t tell him how much I appreciate everything he did for me as I was growing up.
Being any kind of parent –step, biological, foster, adoptive — can be difficult particularly when the kid(s) are struggling for whatever reasons. It takes patience and thick skin to withstand it all.
What makes Ray so extraordinary as a step dad is that he had a very hellish childhood and yet he loved/loves those kids. When the girls started to drive and he would have to go out in the middle of the night to rescue them from the side of the road or when my daughter volunteered for the rescue squad and he kept a set of keys and a pair of shoes at the front door and back door so he could run her to her calls at a moments notice because he didn’t want to worry about her driving in a hurry not once did he complain.
He didn’t have a thick skin though and the kids very quickly learned how easily he could feel slighted but they were conscious of that.
They always said that Ray was their dad , that Duncan (my ex) was their father. He still goes food shopping for the youngest so he knows she has good food to eat and not just junk that young people living on their own eat.
Great post Erin! I’m sort of a product of a blended family. I’m the product of my parents’ second marriages (well, the 2nd product… I have a brother almost 4 years older than myself). My father came into the marriage with my mom with 3 boys, my mom had 1 girl, so they blended. Then they added 2 children… one of whom has Down syndrome (my brother). I came last. I don’t know how smoothly the blending went other than stories told now that I’m an adult. What I do know is now, although my parents are no longer married (my father is on his 3rd marriage, which includes 3 additional adult step-children), is that we are one family, period. I have 4 brothers and a sister. My older siblings may feel differently than I’m about to interpret, but overall, my older brothers have a mother and a mom and my sister, whose father passed away when she was a child, has my father as a dad. I’ve never used “half” to describe my siblings unless discussing dynamics of how my family came to be (and the 15 year age gap between my oldest brother and myself). We’re all one family in my mind… with some distance between some family members, but when there’s a family with 6 children, I can imagine that’s bound to happen at times.
My husband is also somewhat blended, as his mother remarried. He may not have always gotten along with his step-father while growing up, but they get along great now.
It’s too bad that when I was growing up with a step-mom in the picture “blended family” was not part of the culture. My mother gave me a really hard time when she saw that I kissed and hugged my step-mom good-bye after my weekend visit with at my dad’s. I was seven at the time. I had lost my dad and I was fearful of losing my mom. I turned into a real brat for my step-mom. Forty-one years later, we barely have a relationship. I do call her at least once a month, or more when I remember. But we could have been so much closer if things had been different.
The one key thing I learned from my parents divorce was to not bad-mouthed my first husband to our daughter after we divorced. All these years later, I know my daughter’s father will swear that I spoke badly of him to our daughter, but I only did once out of anger and then corrected myself in front of my daughter. All because my mother spoke horribly of my father from the time they divorced until just before she died. And my dad was exactly opposite – he was still madly in love with my mom even tho he’d been married to my step-mom over 35 years.
Towards the end of my dad’s life, and his mind was wondering to the past frequently, he would talk lovingly of my mom in front of my step-mom. (I never told my dad how my mother abused me. He was aware of the abandonment, but didn’t fix it.) Rather than seeing my step-mom hurt by my father’s words about my mom, I’d tell him to realize he had a wonderful woman sitting in the chair next to him, taking care of him in his final days and to shut up (yes, I could lovingly tell my dad to shut-up, that’s the kind of relationship we had). I sure hope my step-mom appreciated what I did for her.
This is also why I wouldn’t date a man with children from a prior marriage/relationship. I never wanted to deal with an ex-wife or a kid that I hadn’t raised from birth. I tried a couple of times and it was horrible both times. Yes, it was a double standard since I had my daughter. But her father wasn’t in the picture to cause problems.
My second marriage resulted in us having 6 teenagers between the two of us. Pretty scary but when the kids were with us we always presented a united front. But in private there were many poignant and heated discussions.
I think that we were united helped. I also never tried to replace anyones mother and visa versa. That helped a lot too. We were always just another adult to talk to and ask for help and advice.
I also signed up to popular social network and keep track of and in touch with all six, which helps a lot.
But it sure was and still is a tightrope when a crisis hits.
I have two boys by my former wife, and my new partner has two adult girls. Luckily they are pretty grown up (the youngest of them all is my younger son who is 15), and in the couple of years we’ve been dating all so far so good. I suspect my former wife trys to put me down when she has our younger son with her (that’s half the time), and my older son lives with me full-time, so no issue there. I’m very careful not to say anything negative about her no matter what silly things she does.
I never had to deal with a blended family as my parents were married for 55 years and all my married siblings are still with their original partners. On my former wifes side she’s adopted, and while her adoptive parents were together for life both her biological father and mother (we knew them both) had 3 or 4 marriages each, so clearly commitment wasn’t one of their strong points. Guess that opens the argument for nature vs nurture!
Such a good & helpful post. While I don’t have a blended family it is my second marriage. By the time I met my beloved her kids were almost grown & the judge had let them decide which parent they wanted to live with. Being in their late teens at the time, naturally they chose the parent who would have no rules & no discipline. But I digress.
Before I met my beloved I dated a few ladies with younger kids living at home & saw firsthand the problems that could arise. I didn’t have kids in my first marriage as my wife of the time was an active duty Air Force Officer. She was often gone on military duty so we decided not to have kids. So after I had a couple relationships that lasted short term I decided on a couple of dating rules & problems I learned can come up in dating.
1) No dating anybody with young children. It eliminated quite a few but at age 40 many had kids who were grown. I realize that is not an option at all for most but that worked for me.
2) No dating anybody who has serious security & self image issues. Kathy commented about the problem with this one. In other words, her words (whoever you are dating) would refer to any woman you ever dated, was married to, or even winked at you..lol would be refered to as that slut, whore etc that you used to be with. This dispite that person may have been a god person where it just didn’t work. That is a HUGE dating red flag. They will be unbelievably possesive, jealous & have a terrible self image. One even got mad at me & threw a HORRIBLE temper tantrum because I dared to say that my ex was a good person. You can’t fix this problem and noting YOU can do will ever make them more secure. They need to work on themselves.
Now once I met my beloved she was totally secure in herself, her kids were mostly grown & then it got weird. She met my ex & the REALLY liked each other..LOL They stayed in touch for a while exchanging emails & such. Hey I was worried about them comparing notes..lol But marrying somebody with the security issues & there are blended families involved can cause serious problems in raising the kids. Their petty jealousies could sabotage the relationship with both step & bio parents. Anyway just a couple of things I learned from experience. I could write a LOT more things I came across but those are 2 that have serious repercussions. Especially the second where kids are involved.
Agree with Drummer Guys second point (didn’t have to deal with anyone who had young kids as noted in your first point so don’t know!). I have been super lucky with my partner of a couple of years – she is very confident in herself (but not over the top) and self assured, so she is not threatened at all by my former wife’s silly contacts. That really does make life easy! We even talk about my former wifes interactions with me and the kids, and usually get a laugh out of them as they are often quite bizzare.
Also interested in Drummer Guys comments about the kids choosing to go with the parent who does not have rules or discipline for them (like asking a kid if they would prefer chocolate or vegetables!!!). I agree that would normally be true, but in my case it’s been the opposite. My older son (was 16 at the time we parted) elected to live full time with me, and my younger son (13 at that time, now 15) lives 50/50, but always come to me when there are issues. So ultimately I’ve come out much the better with the kids. I think this is because of her emotional immaturity and narcissitic traits; so while they thought it would be good to have a parent who didn’t set any boundaries, subconciously what they have rejected is her ups and down mood swings, using them as an emotional crutch, blowing them off without a second thought if she has a ‘better offer’, etc. I think subconciously they sense her lack of true commitment to them. Kids really do want stability and for you to be a parent (not just another buddy) and boundaries, and in my case they have gravitated to me rather than her. In someways I feel sorry for her, but she did bring this on herself, so I just have to get on being the best father I can. I am pleased that my boys have my new partner as a better role model on how adult females should behave, as I don’t want them to go into the wide world thinking that all women act the way their mother does.
As one who has lived through a blend, I have to echo the importance of communication. People bring their views and values with them into a blend, and it can be troublesome to partner to raise a family when you aren’t talking with your spouse about the way you see things. So many disagreements between my mother and her husband could have probably been avoided if they would have opened their mouths and expressed their POVs.