[Yvonne Kelly]

Your feelings are never wrong, they’re just what you’re feeling. I expect that you felt insulted because you couldn’t believe that he could doubt you and your commitment to him and his kids after all that you had done for and with them. I can understand that his comments came as a shock and gave you some doubts as to whether the two of you are on the same page in relation to this marriage. However, let’s go back to his comments. Even though you felt insulted by what he said, that does not mean that the words were spoken with the intent to insult you or to make you feel bad. The best intended words often provoke the worst feelings because of the way they are said and then interpreted.



From what you’ve told me, both of your positions are legitimate and the fact that you are seeing different things differently, does not make this an impossible situation. First of all, Bill is operating out of a position of fear, wondering how things are going to be after you’re married and what the problems might be that will create trouble in the marriage and possibly lead to you leaving him. Ironically, he is not so off the mark in terms of the things that are giving him some concern. Many women, after marrying a man who has children, widowed or divorced, often find themselves wondering what they have gotten themselves into and where the next exit is. This is more common than you may think. Things are fairly low key with Bill and you and the kids right now but the situation and the relationships will intensify once you make your relationship more permanent. Also, either intuitively or because he’s done some reading on the subject or talked to other people in step situations, Bill has just enough understanding about the conflict of loyalties that are so common in stepfamilies, that he is fearful that he will find himself right in the middle of his kids and you and this could be the case. Biological parents often feel torn between their spouse and their children, the bond they feel between their children and the need to have a special relationship with their new partner.



You haven’t mentioned any issues in the family that have created this dilemma between you up until now, but again these issues sometimes don’t surface until you are into the marriage. The issues don’t have to be huge to have an impact, and are usually inevitable. Bill already expects that there will be issues and is asking you right now to always keep the waters calm. It sounds like he wants a guarantee that you will do everything you can to keep things happy and running smoothly, - he obviously doesn’t want any conflict. He also wants a guarantee that you won’t leave when the going gets tough. He’s been left before to be responsible for everything and is afraid this could happen again, and to make it worse, he can’t go anywhere – he will always be responsible. On top of that I don’t think he can bare thinking about being responsible for your happiness, which means keeping you as well as everyone else happy when the going gets tough, as he’s had to do up until now. So I think his fears are well-founded because he knows or sees or senses that there may be difficulties and he’s probably right because this would be perfectly normal in any family, let alone a stepfamily. However, by expressing his fears in this way he’s unwittingly alienated you and is putting a lot of pressure on you to make promises that things are always going to be okay. You can’t do that; all you can promise is that you will always work with him to find the best resolutions to any of the issues that come up. By lumping you together with the kids in his taking care of everyone statment, he has also put you in a one down position and I can certainly understand how this would make you feel.



Are his comments a red flag for you? You obviously think so and perhaps this is making you doubt your future together. I believe however, that interestingly enough, these red flags for you might be the very thing that saves your relationship. Although he may not have communicated it in the right way, Bill has raised the very issues that the two of you should be grappling with prior to getting married and attempting to create a stepfamily together. Frankly I would be more concerned if he simply expected that everything was going to be okay because then when issues did arise, this would come as a shock to him and you would most certainly be the one to take the blame. The fact that this is coming out now is SO, SO IMPORTANT. You will face issues as a stepfamily that you can’t possibly even anticipate right now. You are facing the double jeopardy of becoming a new wife and instant mother (stepmother) all at once, without having the experience of having your own children prior as some form or preparation. You are still in the honeymoon phase even though you’ve been dating for two years, because you are not living together, and not taking full responsibility alongside your partner for his children as you will be once married. That’s when the real negotiations will begin. Even though they are for the most part adult children, they are children that have a history with this man, their father, and will always be his children. There will be things the two of you won’t see eye to eye on with respect to them and you will need to be prepared to work through these things together and that demands being able to see and empathize with the other person’s position and point of view within the context of the step situation.



You both have different positions in this and are not surprisingly, wanting to protect yourselves. He doesn’t want to be left alone again, is probably exhausted from raising these children by himself, is somewhat afraid of committing to someone without guarantees, and doesn’t want to live in the middle conflict that involves his new partner and his children. You are an independent woman who is willing to enter into this situation with all of its unknowns, but are not aware of the issues and dynamics that are so common in stepfamilies and how would you be? You want him to trust you and your good intentions and believe because you have demonstrated a commitment already, that he should not doubt you. He shouldn’t doubt you and I don’t think he was trying to hurt your feelings, but he has a point to be made that things may not always be as simple as they are now. You both need to enter into this situation knowing that the demands will be real and the best guarantee for succeeding in this relationship and this family, is to be realistic and to educate yourself about what it means to be a stepfamily and how to create a meaningful, honest partnership that will allow you to do just that.



If you care for each other and I sense that you do, you owe it to yourselves to explore the issues here and to learn as much as you can about stepfamilies, and preferably before saying “I do.” There is nothing here that suggests you can’t or shouldn’t marry but you will do yourselves a tremendous favour if you do the preparatory work ahead of time to ensure that you are entering into this relationship with a real understanding of each other and the challenges before you. Two books I would recommend: “Stepparenting: Everything You Neeed to Know to Make it Work” by Jeannette Lofas, and “The Enlightened Stepmother – Revolutionizing the Role” by Perdita Kirkness Norwood.

You can make this work if you are willing to do the work. Keep an open mind and open heart and best of luck to both of you.