When women date men with children from a previous marriage, we often romanticize the future. We will get married, have a beautiful family of loving, adoring, adorable children who call us “Mom” and are thankful for all we do but leave often enough (or visit rarely enough) to enjoy romantic weekends away with our new husbands.
This is pretty much opposite of reality for most blended families. The bonding and relationships with our new stepchildren is one of the biggest areas new stepmoms find themselves taken aback.
Very seldom do stepchildren latch onto new stepparents, particularly stepmothers, with loving adoration. Often the stepmother is a source of hostility, resentment and jealousy for children. This is particularly true if the marriage evolved very quickly, if the marriage accompanied any large changes in custody or parenting time or if the children spend little time with their biological mother. Adolescent girls are also notoriously protective of their fathers and reluctant to share. Jealousy issues between stepdaughters and their new stepmoms are quite common.
But most women are at least a bit prepared for feels of angst that their stepchildren might experience. However, few are prepared for the difficulty that many stepparents have bonding or loving their new stepchildren! In fact, few of us even consider the possibility that we will consider our stepchildren anything less than equal in love to our biological children. It can come as a huge shock, a source of disappointment, frustration, alienation and major stress personally and in the marriage. It’s time to out this dirty little secret: not all stepmothers will instantly love their new stepchildren! And it is OK!!
The more pressure new stepparents put on themselves to feel emotions and connections that aren’t naturally present, the more unlikely these emotions and connections will be to develop over time. There are very few situations in life where love comes instantly. It is ok to give yourself permission to grow into love at your own pace. You will do yourself and your new stepchild a huge favor to allow natural, instead of forced, progression.
You can encourage natural bonding to occur by allowing freedom of expression and feelings – happy and sad, good and bad, comfortable and uncomfortable. Share your time and yourself and soon your new stepchild will reciprocate and the love will blossom on its own.
Also remember that new families gain but they also lose. Children often feel the very real loss of the last remnants of hope for reconciliation when a new stepparent comes into the picture. This loss must be respected and mourned. Likewise, stepparents should respect their own need to mourn the loss of a family dynamic that they hoped to marry into, as unrealistic as it always was. Until we say goodbye to what we hoped for, we can’t embrace what we have.
Most of all rid yourself of the guilt that you are a bad stepparent or a disappointing spouse. It will come. It just takes time.