If you have met someone and you hope that after reading this post you will leave convinced that it is easy to build a new family with their children and yours , I am sorry to be the opposite. Of course it is worth it , of course it is feasible, but it involves avoiding stones on the way and the occasional tear that leads you even to think of throwing in the towel.
But that’s my experience in creating a new assembled family. Yours can run smoothly. There is no doubt that each of us is different and we do not face the new challenges of life in the same way. In my case, the risk was worth the effort and today we are a large family, perfect? I do not believe in that term, but we are a family and that is already a lot.
Open your mind and heart
When a relationship ends, either because love ends or because one of the two members dies (my experience), the idea of meeting someone becomes a very distant and impossible idea. But the challenge is even greater if you also have small children who occupy all your time and you are so sad that it is difficult to get up every morning.
That was my reality when the father of my children passed away. The least thing that crossed my mind was “replace him.” I had enough to keep going, work, take care of my children and make sure they notice the loss of their father as little as possible!
But without looking for him, as the best things in our lives happen, he arrived. We knew each other from the playground, through mutual friends, even when the two of us still had a partner. And there we continue to see each other when he got divorced and I managed to lift my head off the ground and look straight ahead.
I consider myself a privileged person. There are people who go through this life without knowing love and I have been fortunate that they love me not only once, but twice, and also two wonderful people who have been and are wonderful parents to my children.
My oldest daughter knew Juan from a very young age and it seemed that she felt very comfortable with him and laughed a lot at his side. In fact, several parents of the park made plans together: we went together with them to the movies, to exhibitions or to eat out. And on some occasion the little one had also been in his care while he went to the supermarket to buy something.
But everything changed when I wanted to explain to Kenya that we had started to see each other alone. He began to scream, to say that he hated him that he already had a father and that he did not want another. You have to understand that he was in the middle of pre-adolescence, at a difficult age in itself. Fortunately, the next day they talked and as an adult he explained that he did not pretend to be her father at all, that we did not know how the relationship was going to evolve, but that for now little was going to change.
From there, everything precipitated. I don’t know if the same thing happened to the other mothers of single-parent families, but I didn’t have the time or options to “have a traditional courtship”. Every day I had to take the children to school, pick them up, drop them off after school, support them with their homework, baths, lunches, dinners … and without family support in Madrid, since my parents live abroad.
So right away we decided to jump into the pool and have him come and live with us, when he had never been to sleep with my children at home. It is true that everything was very fast, but I decided to turn a deaf ear to the criticism that called me crazy, selfish, insensitive, that I did not think about children … My life was mine and no one could live it for me.
Their children became part of our life
We were beginning a very different stage in our life, so it was time to explain to her two children and to my two the changes that were coming. Her daughter Miryan was older and lived with her mother, so she was even glad that we were together.
Juan also spoke with his ex-wife to inform her of our decision and ask her to observe possible changes in attitude in her children. Because Fer, also a teenager, was very attached to his father. For him it was also difficult because he felt displaced from the exclusive time with his father. So, since he went to a school close to home and I worked at home, we decided that he would come every day to eat and then stay to do his homework.
To make our children feel comfortable, we renovated the house : we created a new bedroom for Juan and me, to separate it from the room where his father used to sleep, and we decorated his new bedrooms, including Fer, in Yago’s room ( who was then just 5 years old), with her own closet space and study nook. Miryan could sleep in the room with Kenya, if she wanted.
It was his brother who began to spend the entire day at home and to sleep more and more often. They had joint custody, so the child decided who he wanted to be with at all times and it seemed that he felt comfortable in the new family we were creating.
To my surprise, my children opened the doors of their house to the new members without problem: Fer became one of them and came with us on vacations, meetings and family parties, weekends in town …
My children began to refer to him as their “stepbrother” , but never as a derogatory term, although it took them longer to grant the title of “stepfather” to Juan.
For my nieces, he was their cousin and my friends immediately understood that he had one more son who went with us everywhere. Literal: everywhere.
With him I lived through his academic problems, his first loves and disappointments and, on average, anguished conversations because he did not feel well, he did not like his life, because his father spent a lot of time with my young son “as if he were his father” when “ it was just his. “
And jealousy did not only exist with the little one. Who said it was going to be easy? Although by age they were integrated into the same gang in the town, although on vacation outside of Spain they made plans together by affinity and, although we sensed that they loved each other, the relationship between them was not easy.
My fault? Can be. When Juan, Miryan and Fer came into our lives, we parents already had a way of educating our children, different economic realities, and they did not coincide. Logical! And Juan’s children didn’t understand why mine seemed to enjoy more opportunities. How to explain to them that while some have a mother and father who educate them together , others only have a mother who thinks that education is the most important legacy she can leave her children, instead of giving them technology.
“You are nobody to tell me what to do”
My daughter also did not understand why if she got an 8 in a subject we would recriminate her that she had not studied enough and that if “her stepbrother” got a 5, we would applaud her. Or because they only went on vacation with us and Fer left twice, because he also went out with his mother.
But perhaps the hardest conflicts took place because of the dreaded adolescence. Who is surprised by the phrase “you are nobody to tell me what to do” ? Indeed, many of us give it point blank to our parents and many others have had to hear it from our children.
Well when he tries to make you see reason, when he is also not your father, the issue is even more complicated. Because, of course, Juan was not his father and, Kenya reminded him that he was nobody to order him.
Juan’s tears were falling because he did not know how to approach her. He assured him a thousand times that he did not intend to replace his father , but that we were a family and we had to respect some rules, that he loved him and that he cared about his well-being, that he was happy. That their father watched over them from heaven (my children believed in God) and he wanted to do so from earth.
So we went through a very complicated time: with Fer coming in and out of the house at will, leaving us with a huge emptiness when he decided to go with his mother to live and dislodging our whole life when he returned “to stay” .
For her part, Miryan came from the beginning on weekends to eat with her boyfriend, when her father did not have a work shift, and from time to time the two of them would be alone to have breakfast during the week and thus talk about their things. She already lives alone with her partner and we try to continue seeing each other at least twice a month.
As for Iago, he was a baby when his father passed away, so he was the one who best accepted the new situation. Suddenly he stopped being the weird class kid who had no father and soon incorporated Juan into his routine. Although she has never called him dad, she does see and treat him as such. For Juan, both he and his sister are his children, and he speaks of them with love and pride.
Fer is also his older brother one hundred percent, in whom he is reflected, whom he wants to resemble. So when he is not with us or seems to forget us, he suffers a lot, because he misses him.
His father and I also suffered from his absence. He has returned to live with his mother, he has stopped coming home every day, and he spends times from having us in his life to moving away. For me he is my oldest son and, as such, it hurts that he treats you with indifference and he forgets that I have bathed him, take care when he has been sick, cried and laughed with him …
Even so, I think that between all of us we have created a beautiful and great family that, like everyone else, has disagreements and lives quieter stages and other more conflictive ones.
Even today the same photos of Arturo, the father of my children, that there were when he passed away are still in the living room. We have only been incorporating others as the family has grown. And all of us who appear in the images are part of our family, the one that we have built together, with difficulties, but always with great enthusiasm. Our house is always full of people, and I love it.
I hope that my experience has helped you to understand a reality that does not have to be the same as yours, but that it makes you think that it is worth trying, giving your new family a chance (or many). You do not agree?
Photos | iStock
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