Reply to Blended family success

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "Blended family success"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have several friends with young children who have divorced and remarried and blended families and things seem to be going ok besides some resentments about differing financial statuses of the other parent (the ex of the wife is pretty wealthy so those kids get more in the way of gifts/vacations) and general kid disagreements over sharing and space etc.

However it’s ironic that you asked this bc just this month we have found out that two blended families we know with kids who are now grown, who we thought were very happy, have experienced upheaval that is causing a lot of problems. 1- they found out that the wife’s youngest child was not the child of her ex but of her new husband (conceived while having affair before marriage end, apparently) and 2- teenage stepson accused of molesting his stepsister decades after the fact. So I think…there’s no way to know how it will work out 🤷‍♀️ [/quote]

Same.  The blended families I know (many, at my age) are miserable.  They have problematic teens who grew to be problematic young adults, they never accepted the marriage, and continue to cause problems.  Never mind the ex spouses, and their inflicting pain at every turn, even after the kids are out of college.  You can only live for yourselves as a couple, at this point. You can't just hope it works out, that is not going to happen. [/quote]

lol. this is the self-pitying attitude that can wreck a blended family. everyone’s fault except the blameless couple!

It basically all depends on whether the parents are willing to put the kids first (both their own and their partners). That might mean not having another baby if your kids are small - although if the kids are older, a baby sibling might actually be a nice distraction and bonding.

Both parents have to be brutally honest with themselves about whether they are feeling threatened or overly offended by normal behavior from the stepkids. In fact, I doubt a blended family can truly work unless the stepparents honestly love and enjoy the stepkids. On the flip side, a delusional belief in “we are a happy blended famileeee!!” is also totally toxic.

Basically for this to work, you have to be a good and generous person who is absolutely in tune with your own feelings and honest about them, prioritizes raising all the children, and takes responsibility for your own feelings.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics