Being a stepmom

Can we ever find peace in the blended family dynamic?

Hello you!

I told her I was sorry on her 18th birthday. We were having a party just the four of us. My husband, his two girls and me. It was mid June so we were able to enjoy time in the garden. I was making a mini film of the day I planned to put music over and send her as a memory to keep. There was cake, nibbles and a lot of regret on my part.

Being a stepmother was a job I never wanted. Does anyone? Snow White doesn’t exactly paint the role as a favourable one. I was 22 when I married a man with 2 children, who were 3 and 6 at the time, but it would be close to a decade before I felt anything close to comfortable with the title. I knew he had children when we met, but as a teenager head over heels in love no less, I wasn’t able to understand the consequences of this in terms of a relationship.

By the end of our marriage I can honestly say I loved my husband’s children and enjoyed spending time with them, but the feeling of being the outsider never left me. It didn’t help that I was the woman their father had left their mother for. Though they never once mentioned this to me, I always felt guilty about it - and ashamed. I felt responsible for their pain. In an ideal world children want their parents to be together and I blamed myself for being the reason they weren’t. I would understand if they had blamed me too.

The feeling of being on the outside was there from the beginning - well as soon as the lovers in a bubble phase was over and it was time to roll up our sleeves and have a go at real life as a couple. It’s not that he wanted me to feel this way, though if he did the foundations were there to pull at my vulnerability strings, it was that there were natural borders we couldn’t change. He was their father, they were connected by blood and I was his chosen partner. I wasn’t obliged to attend parent evenings at school or find a way to buy the birthday present they so desperately wanted. I had no memory of the day they were born to reminisce.

The parenting was left to him, as it should have been, and I never once felt the desire to act in a parental role with the girls. I found my place as a background figure who was there to have fun with in the beginning and later on, make dinner, drinks and offer emotional support if they came to me for it. My relationship with them deepened and became more fulfilling as I got older, secure in my relationship and self-aware but in the beginning I wished it was just the two of us and I hated myself for that. I’m struggling not to hate myself for typing that because I know it’s the thing you’re never supposed to say but it feels more important to be honest than palatable.

The hardest part of being a stepmom was that I always felt in an indirect relationship with the mother of his children. Later on he admitted that he would hide what was really going on behind the scenes in the early days for fear I would leave him if I knew the truth. A divorce is messy, I know that now, but a divorce with children and cheating involved is a whole other gear. The arguments, power plays, emotions and negotiations can take years to turn down to a simmer and even then resentment often remains.

You can divorce your spouse but you can never untie the bond between parents. That’s not to say they’re still in love or their relationship extends beyond that of co-parenting but they are still in some sort of relationship that cannot and should not be terminated. His attempts to shield me from the front line worked to a certain extent but you cannot pretend this other person doesn’t exist. The girls loved talking about their mum, they’d use her to manipulate their father into getting what they wanted because she’d let them if she was here. She was a constant presence in our home even as a ghost. If necessary they’d have to deal with serious situations like health together, in person. She would always be their mother as he would always be their father. The question I used to fret over was where did that leave me? And where would that leave me in the future? Would I be on the head table at the girl’s wedding? Would I even be invited? In my more insecure younger years I felt in competition with her, inferior to her and heavily intimidated.

As someone who naturally felt on the outside growing up and knowing what I know now thanks to talking therapy, I can see that this situation felt familiar to me - which is one of the reasons I weathered it for so long. The dynamic was a direct channel to my feelings and beliefs around shame, unworthiness and inferiority. Then there was the desire for an unavailable man to love me, which he did as best he could, but never in the way I truly needed. A part of any healthy parent is always unavailable. I’d created the stage for my hard wired beliefs and assumptions to play out. At the time I used to wonder why me, why couldn’t our situation be just perfect, but now I see that it was no surprise a fatherless daughter found herself in such a relationship. I’d manifested my own internal pain.

I feel grateful we lived in as much balance and peace as we did, though I know this was because of how much of myself I was willing to sacrifice. Despite my subconscious resentment I was willing to give up my needs to make him happy. The cost was deafening loneliness. I’ve heard stories of real battle lines being drawn in such blended family dynamics and I can see how these easily get out of hand. Arguments become about the children but they’re really about our basic needs to feel seen, prioritised and tended to. These are tender topics at the best of times but potentially explosive and even more harmful when there are children involved in a relationship and even more so when these children aren’t biologically yours. Innocents end up in the firing line or being used as pawns in the game of love. An incredible amount of security, self-awareness, trust and surrender are required to steer the ship; the kind most mere mortals can only strive for.

I’d love to say it all worked harmoniously, but it didn’t and looking back now aged 36 I see it was a situation I should have never been in. As I grew older I developed deep regrets about my childish behaviour during arguments, shameful feelings of inferiority, jealousy and neediness. These emotions were never played out directly because I didn’t have the capacity to understand my needs let alone the language to voice them but I was hardly the model stepmom and I knew that. Perhaps this was the best version of mum guilt I was able to muster. Wishing I’d done things differently and the deep longing to go back in time to make amends.

As I educated myself on childhood trauma through therapy I began to feel afraid of the damage I may have indirectly caused. My growing empathy towards myself extended out into my reality and all those who were a part of it. I wish I’d insisted they were at our wedding instead of agreeing it was for the best they weren’t there for fear of drama. The times I felt relieved they weren’t coming that weekend haunted me as did the mornings when I’d stay in bed because I felt so awkward around them. Had they felt unwanted? My absence? Blamed themselves? I couldn’t stand the thought and this was what I wanted to apologise for. I should have done better or not done any of it at all because I should never have married him if I wasn’t up to the full job description, which I wasn’t.

When I started dating post divorce, I promised myself I would never fall in love with a father again.  I had a new found understanding of Julia Roberts in stepmom and the Sex and the City episode when Miranda declares she doesn’t want her guy to be ‘used’ hit hard. I also wondered if this was too much to ask. Even though we’re having children later in life, divorce and separation rates are still high so once we reach a certain age the number of available partners who don’t have children begins to dwindle. It becomes a big topic that requires a lot of consideration on both sides. On the plus side, men who have children tend to be more responsible in my experience and if they’re a good father, well that’s the true measure of any man. The dilemma isn’t a simple one. It’s highly nuanced but rarely discussed.

The disparities between men and women as parents looking to date can’t go unnoticed. As a single parent my mum was all too aware that she wasn’t the most desirable prospect to men, but when the shoe is on the other foot things seem to be different. As a woman I feel pressured to step into a maternal feminine role and that I should be open to a man who has children even if that’s not what I truly want. It feels selfish and uncaring to draw a line. The counter argument on a man’s part, which I’ve heard on numerous occasions is - ‘I don’t have them all the time’. As a fatherless daughter these words make me shudder. I once went on a date with a guy in his 30s who had 2 children to 2 different women and he said, ‘I know I have 2 kids but I still live the life of a single guy’ - so you’re an absent dad I thought. Why would that make you a decent prospect to me?

I’ve found that single dads struggle to manage parenthood. What single parent doesn’t? It feels like these men need someone who will fit in with the established, be on call when necessary and not always but they will play the children card to set boundaries, create distance and excuses. This means you cannot argue, or if you do you’re the bad one - especially when you add the female guilt of not being stereotypically maternal.

Is what lies at the bottom of all this that we are simply wired to be cherished as women, prioritised and emotionally showered with intimacy? Can anything less sustain us in a nurturing relationship? Can this exist when there are children involved? When we strip the meat from the bones we can argue that to come second to a being we haven’t birthed is unnatural and our lack of feeling emotionally cared for is the foundations of the negative emotions such as jealousy that can arise.

In his book The Jealousy Cure, Robert Leahy explains that men tend to feel jealous about physical contact and women about emotional. The reasons for this are rooted in our primal wiring. Historically men would never truly know the child of the woman was theirs and as their primal goal is to reproduce, their sperm must be the successful fertiliser of an egg and any physical contact from another man threatens this. For women, they are made vulnerable during pregnancy, labour and post child birth. A man showing another women emotional affection during this time threatens the survival of both her and her children. When we understand what’s really going on under the surface at a core level, I wonder if we can we ever find peace in a blended family dynamic.

‘Give over’ and an eye roll was her response to my apology for any bad feelings I may have caused over the years coupled with a clear verbal declaration of love for her. A typical teenage response I thought. One that shrugged off anything deeper than surface level emotions. I’d clearly made her uncomfortable, which was the last thing I wanted. I read her resistance as a way of coping and I respected it. We both laughed to lighten the mood and reached for a second piece of cake but I still wondered what really lay beneath. I’m glad I insisted on my apology, grateful I found the courage to express it and that I left it at the place she drew her boundary, hoping one day it would land where I had intended - when and if she was ready.

Have you experienced being a stepmom? A ‘blended’ family? How was it for you? Would you date someone with children or is this a hard line for you? I know these have been incredibly sensitive and often taboo subjects for me but I wanted to hold space for us to discuss because I have a feeling I might not be alone.

Lots of love

Jessica xxx

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