To think MN is horrible about blended families?

You're very fixated on your belief that the initial breakup is hugely more traumatising than any subsequent blending, and you keep trying to turn the discussion that way, but it's not a theory that I think has any validity.

Edit: Ah, just remembered you're a stepparent. Just another example of wanting desperately to think you and your husband didn't do a selfish thing.

• MeowCatPleaseMeowBack Another statistic I've learned from the stepparenting topic is that 100% of women receiving child maintenance have false nails and multiple holidays a year.

They don’t work either or only a couple of hours a day. The man is still paying for her house of course as well, unless she has a council house typically.*

And don't forget - he doesn't get to see the kids because the ex is controlling, and absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the kids don't want to see him because they've worked out for themselves he's a bellend.

And @MeowCatPleaseMeowBack

That’s not true on a blanket level though.

On here alone, there are lots of examples of families where this has worked amazingly well. For you (if that is your experience) it didn’t and that’s sad but not something that is helpful to project onto everyone else’s situation. Lots of examples where people have said how their blended family was amazing and their upbringing in that setting was positive.

I can think, off the top of my head, of a number of people who wished their parent had formed a new relationship and miss the family dynamic when it was just them and a lone parent or a few siblings and a lone parent.

I can also think of a huge number who were more affected by the initial break up than anything else. Who describe being utterly traumatised by that. Some went on to resolve some of that trauma in blended families.

I say all this as someone who’s worked with hundreds of young adults who are struggling with their mental health. Not because of personal experience, although my personal experience reflects the fact also that none of this is a one size fits all.

To the pp who said people don't break up families unless they are desperately unhappy...except for the many many, mostly men, who have affairs and do exactly that. And then spin the script that they were unhappy for years, despite the other party having no idea, despite having regular sex, going on holidays, celebrating anniversaries and participating in family life. They then move in with ow within weeks or months at best, sometimes taking themselves a considerable distance away from their kids in the process. Hard to see how that can be construed as in their best interests.

They don’t work either or only a couple of hours a day. The man is still paying for her house of course as well, unless she has a council house typically.

Blended families occur because the adults want to be in a relationship. The kids either get lucky, or are collateral damage to this.

YABU simply because my new pet hate is people not being able to use the word 'screaming' properly; you've immediately lost your argument.

Another statistic I've learned from the stepparenting topic is that 100% of women receiving child maintenance have false nails and multiple holidays a year.

I also find the number of cheating ex-wives to be a statistical abnormality on the SP forum.

I’m also often surprised these women, happy to destroy their DC lives are also desperate to ‘control’ the DC.

I cannot imagine why they’d care.

What strikes me is that everyone feels that they are doing the best for their kids. Whether that’s staying together when things aren’t perfect, splitting up, staying single, remarrying a child free spouse or one with pre-existing kids, having no more kids or having further kids.

This is incorrect and kind of the point of the answers on this thread. (Which has gone woefully wrong from ops pov). The one sector that aren't doing the best for the kids is blending of families. They are doing what's best for themselves, the complete opposite of the other situations is Lyly e detailef which do do not hat they feel the s best for the kids. The best case scenario is that they might get used to it.

There is a bit of a rose tinted view of staying in a relationship which is desperately unhappy to 'keep the family together' or of being a single parent (particularly without much of a support network).

People do not generally (not saying never but generally) end healthy relationships where they have children. People leave when they (and often their children) are mistreated and often to protect their children from awful environments.

I was in a financially, emotionally (and occasionally physically) abusive marriage. I hid it all from my children. They would tell you they were happier when their dad and I were together, despite the fact that they they really dislike spending time with him on his own. The truth is I spent my whole life organising them so they didn't trigger their dad and have him kick off. No friends over (theirs or mine). Never making what anyone else likes for tea. Never putting what anyone else wants on the TV. They don't remember all of that. Taking them for a 'surprise sleepover at nana's' when he came back from the pub, vomited and shat everywhere and passed out in the bathroom so nobody could use it. As they have got older (late teens) I am more open with them about why things ended.

When I was a single parent of 3, with no village to speak of (parents elderly and ill), none of my children ever got to do things on a 1 to 1 basis. If I was sick/ down there was noone to hold the fort and prevent that from effecting them (despite the superhuman effort that single parents have to put in when these things happen).

I met my DP 3 years after I split from their dad. We dated for a year before I introduced him to the kids. It was another 3 years before we moved in together as we wouldn't do that until we could move to a house with plenty of space for all the kids.

He is a loving supportive parent figure to them and me to my SC. Before we moved in together we talked about potential challenges and how we would deal with things.

There have been times when there have been various tensions between the children, in much the same way as I did in my bio family as a child and teen.

We set an example of a mutually supportive, loving and considerate relationship that my children would never otherwise have had.

Is the current blended family situation perfect? No. But no less so than the alternatives.

And it's fucking shitty for people in happy marriages to act as though people who get divorced do so on a whim with no thought for their kids and that all step parents are selfish individuals only interested in shagging their partner (not an insult ever leveled at married couples, although I see plenty of parents prioritising their spouse over their joint children).

It's just life, and people mostly trying their best.

@Willyoujustbequiet , I feel the same way

One size doesn't fit all.

Some blended families work well and are healthy but I don't mind admitting I'm horrified at the selfish attitude of some 2nd wives on the step parenting board. Some are brazen and have no business living with children. I'm almost glad my ex is a deadbeat so I'll never have to deal with this.

Doing their best would not lead to all these children talking about their unhappiness with the arrangements they were given. Isn’t this all in the results?

What does family mean? Doesn’t it mean in part that the happiness of children as well as the basics?

What strikes me is that everyone feels that they are doing the best for their kids.

That's a sweet thought but patently not true. Most people aren't silly enough to think blending families is the best for their children, they just think their desire to cohabit is worth the detriment to their children. They just pretend it wasn't a highly selfish act so they can sweep away the guilt.

What strikes me is that everyone feels that they are doing the best for their kids. Whether that’s staying together when things aren’t perfect, splitting up, staying single, remarrying a child free spouse or one with pre-existing kids, having no more kids or having further kids.

Everyone feels that their choices as parents are the correct ones because that’s why they make that choice. I imagine it’s very rare for an involved parent to think ‘Fuckem as long as I’m happy’ even if that’s what a child or ex spouse thinks they’ve done.

Another thing that strikes me is the league table we see here of acceptable reasons to be a single parent or to remarry, or to marry someone with kids.

Ultimately it’s all judgement based on our own experiences. We can’t discount anyone whose experiences differ from ours and it’s not fair to project our own baggage onto other people’s situations.

Of course that’s far easier said than done, but maybe if people just paused before writing / speaking and thought about what is motivating them to say something things might improve.

Yes, I too know people in similar family set ups. My son, 45 this week, has a couple of friends with 'blended' families that have gone horrendously wrong with the children really suffering.

On the plus side, my husband's cousin, divorced with two children, remarried when her eldest was 13 or 14 and that was a great success, her children adored their stepfather and he cared for them as if they were his own, as well as being very involved and co-parenting his biological children (his ex-wife had a bad press, I don't know the truth of that, who ever really does?).

I also know a woman who married a divorced man with one daughter, had two children of her own and loved her husband's daughter, who now has a child whom she also loves, and is great friends with husband's ex-wife. Therefore it can work but takes very special qualities from the individuals concerned.

I wouldn't do it, I'd be too afraid of letting children down and maybe becoming sick with worry.

There's no need to marry someone with kids or to bring a new partner into your life if you have dependent kids. You can wait until they are off hand.

I have a few friends who say they loathed being brought up in these sort of families.

first the trauma of a relationship break up, and losing a parent, then strangers arriving to live in their home. It affects lives down the line.

That’s exactly what I think.

I also agree with the poster who said their Dc feel like “ visitors” at their father’s new home. I am so often struck how that comes across in stepmum posts: the SDC are out of line because they are behaving like real Dc in their own home. This is portrayed as “ demanding” or “ungrateful” because deep down the new partner expects them to behave like visitors in “ her” home.

Yes I think it’s the ex and his new partner who normally push the bitter ex wife thing. Normally when you delve in, she is just putting perfectly reasonable lines in the sand around access etc, but it all gets twisted into “ it’s because she’s can’t move on and wants what I have that she won’t just sit in the background and let us do as we wish.”

Most of us posting are adults talking about our experiences as children.

I hope you’re actually empathetic in real life.

I agree with the others that it is the EOW dad and the bitter ex narrative is that is the real issue; then the blended family is really set up on a competitive narrative with the ex wife in which the new partner competes. This is normally because the man involved makes it a competition owing to the divorce; EOW is a reflection on him, which means there is a kind of relational aggression under the surface in the happy new family story.

The child must then fit the story; this is the basic adult need. The woman works overtime to cater to her new husbands needs, The husband has the marriage he always wanted, where everything circles around him, and the children are but players.

Absolutely this. I think my ex is genuinely much happier now with the ow and after the initial shock, I also think we're better off apart BUT I resent the hell out of his pathetic contribution to "parenting" now and his appalling inability to hide from our now teen children that they are not his top priority..they're about fifth after himself, his current wife, his stepchild and work. My kids go and he insists they are a "family" but they're not. They tell me they feel like visitors, in the way, that their presence just seems to stress him out. Sad really.

I am in a long term relationship but we don't and won't co habit until my kids are grown. We're very close and we all value that.

The big difference though @Illpickthatup - is the intention.
In a bio family situation, everyone sets off assuming it's all going to be marvellous. You have your dc with the best of intentions.
In blended families, the dc are already there. So you push forward invariably selfishly with your own relationship despite being well aware that chances are the dc aren't going to be happy.

My parents are still together, 45 years. They are happily married and always had a happy healthy marriage when I was growing up. However, I hated living with 3 brothers. We all fought like cat and dog. Would do horrible things to each other, they trashed my room once and tore down all my posters. I stayed home while my family went on holiday to Canada because I didn't want to spend 2 weeks with my annoying brother's. I used to be jealous of my friends who were only children or who had sisters.

People on MN always advocate for couples splitting up if the stepkids don't get on but I know plenty of bio siblings who don't get on either.