Blended Families: The Challenges of 'Yours, Mine and Ours'
Creating a blended or step-family is usually challenging to say the least. If you have your doubts, watch the movie, "Yours, Mine and Ours" and see for yourself!
Here's a question from one of our visitors and his honest feelings about his blended family situation...
"I am a 30 year old man who has recently entered into his third marriage. Both my past marriages ended because my wives cheated on me. The woman that I am married to is wonderful and I love her very much. We are expecting our first child together, her second, my fisrt in December. The problems for me have arisen due to her five year old daughter. I guess I feel like something is wrong with me. I just don't want her daughter around all the time. I get annoyed with her when she is constantly on me 24/7 following me around. The biological father is still in the picture and I don't want to get in the way of that. But to tell you the truth I hate changing my plans for him. I have begun to grow to resent my stepdaughter because of the other man. I don't want to treat her badly and want her to be happy as well. Everything seems to have gotten even worse for me now that my wife and I are expecting our first child. I need some advice on how to deal with this."
Here's our advice and we hope that it may also help others in similar situations...
You have a great deal going for you that you are in love with your wife but as you've probably figured out, it takes more than love to make it all work. Since you've never had children and I'm assuming that there were no other children in your previous marriages, you are probably shell-shocked by suddenly being a step-father to a 5 year old and the prospect of having a child of your own soon. As you probably know, your world as you knew it before is about to completely change with a baby on the way and changing your schedule because of your wife's ex-husband is just a precusor of the changes that you know that are in store for you.
Your wife's daughter obviously wants your attention since she follows you around. Her world has been rocked too! So how about sitting down with your wife and talking about how you can have some space and still connect with her daughter. What things can you and this child do together and are you willing to give her your full attention to connect with her for a period of time? Maybe your wife has some ideas about things that you can do with this child every evening for a short period of time and then you have some time for yourself. Your wife would probably enjoy the time by herself too. Because the truth is that the more you push this child away, the more she will want your attention--so begin to turn toward this situation instead of running from it.
There is no magic elixir to make you want to interact with your step-daughter or even your own child. It sounds like you have 1 foot in the marriage and 1 foot out. You have to decide that you want this family and commit to communicating and connecting. Start with talking with your wife about how to make this work for everyone. If your previous wives cheated on you, we suspect that you perhaps withdrew from them and they went elsewhere for attention and love. This may or may not be true.
If it is true--don't make the same mistake again. Communicate with your wife and be willing to open your heart to her and to the children in your life. Only you can make changes in your life and only you can stop running from them.
