Living in a Step-Family Without Getting Stepped on by Kevin Leman

Author:Kevin Leman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2013-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Men Are

Microwaves,

Women Are

Crock-Pots

One of the major principles I try to communicate to couples who come to me when their marriage starts getting bumpy is this:

Respect the way your partner sees life.

It sounds simple enough, but for some reason it’s not. Perhaps it’s a lot harder than it looks because seeing behind your partner’s eyes involves discovering your partner’s needs and then being willing to try to meet them. Meeting each other’s needs is difficult enough in a first marriage, but in a second or third marriage it becomes even harder. Why? Because the partners are so busy trying to cope with all the needs of the children in their newly blended family, it’s too easy to overlook the most important needs of all—their own.

And why are the needs of the husband and wife the most important in a blended family? What about all the children that have been brought together, all of their pain, hurt, anger, guilt, and other baggage? They are important—very important—but I still maintain that your needs and your mate’s are absolutely primary. That’s because you can make a stable, organized, loving home for the children in your blended family only when you have a strong, stable marriage relationship.

Be aware; in fact, beware: The typical stepfamily is a mortal enemy of a second marriage. Your kids (and your spouse’s) will be out to test your relationship and, in many cases, they may even try to destroy it. Those are strong words, and you may be thinking, Leman is exaggerating—again.

I wish I were. You may be one of the lucky ones who is living in a stepfamily without ever getting stepped on; if so, you are rare. The facts are that in the typical stepfamily, the new marriage stands as a reminder to all the children of the failure of two other marriages that came before. As one blended family mom told me, “When you remarry and you both have kids, you aren’t just a mom and a dad. Now you’re a father and a stepmother, a mother and a stepfather. The kids never let you forget that.”

Exactly. Blended family children have had to give up their biological nuclear family for something that, in their minds at least, is second best—a binuclear stepfamily. It doesn’t matter that their first family was full of tension, stress, arguing, fighting, or abuse. In their minds, it was their home, where Mom and Dad lived with them. Even if one parent, or possibly both, did not treat the children all that well, it doesn’t matter. To paraphrase the old cliché: Blood is always thickest.

Many couples realize all this when they get married—at least, they tell me they do. They understand that the children will not necessarily be that pleased. They are aware, in some cases, that the children will be downright hostile. Nevertheless, the couple is sure that they can make it work, that they can achieve the ideal of a healthy blended family. But in most stepfamilies, this ideal never becomes reality.

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