It felt like a real family
One in 10 Kiwi families are blended, and stepfamilies are increasingly common. But, as Eleanor Black reports, it can cause heartbreak when these families try to ‘un-blend’.
Like most love stories, it started with a flutter of excitement and high hopes. Anna*, a smart, articulate single mother, met Ben* when her daughter Bella* was nine. Bella’s father had died before she was born, so Ben quickly took on the role of parent and protector.
‘‘He did very well,’’ says Anna. ‘‘He put in a lot of effort to bond with her and treat her well.’’
The family grew; a baby boy arrived, they all moved into a bigger home, then another baby boy joined them. For six years they operated as a tight unit. Two parents, three children: school runs, shared holidays; sporting activities followed by smoothies at the mall.
‘‘It felt like a real family,’’ says Bella, now 20. ‘‘I really liked having little brothers, I love them to pieces. He would call me his stepdaughter when he introduced me to people – but he told me he loved me.’’
You can probably guess where this is going: A carefully blended family, held together by hard work and promises, is then ‘‘unblended’’. People are terribly hurt and that hurt reverberates for many years.
It is estimated that one in three marriages in New Zealand is a second or subsequent marriage, and one in 10 families are blended. It often works; there are examples of functional stepfamilies everywhere.
Experts say it’s helpful to be realistic about what it means to combine families with different cultures and histories. It’s also important not to force emotional bonds.
‘‘Instant love is not something that happens with a blended family – it can take years for those feelings to develop,’’ says Adele Cornish, a blended family relationship coach, and herself a member of a blended family for 26 years.
‘‘Stepparents can go through a lot of guilt thinking, ‘I should love this child’. Just because you don’t feel love doesn’t mean you can’t act in a loving manner, so you behave in a loving and responsive way.’’
But what happens when a stepparent walks away after six years of model behaviour, having repeatedly professed their love, and then all but disappears?
When Bella was 15, the family dynamic soured. Her mum and stepfather went to counselling, but it didn’t work out. Ben moved into a house down the road and soon had a girlfriend.
‘‘It was not an amicable split,’’ says Anna. ‘‘He left me, he was the one happily moving on. He left in November and by February the whole thing had collapsed.’’
To Bella, he said all the right things: I love you, nothing will change, we will still be family. But after school, he would pick up Bella’s little brothers and take them home with him while Bella was left on her own.
A week or two would go by between impersonal, brief texts from him: ‘‘How’s school?’’ When he did invite Bella round it wasn’t ‘‘quality time’’, she says. ‘‘We watched the weird, arty movies he liked. By then he was hardly talking to me. I told him I felt neglected and betrayed. He said: ‘I’m sorry you feel like that.’
‘‘I was so hurt by his clear rejection of me, that his love was conditional on him being in a relationship with my mum and had nothing to do with me. He was the dad I didn’t have.’’
Clinical psychologist Jacqui Maguire says it would be devastating for any child to see a father figure leave the family, and even more hurtful if there were a demarcation between the way he treated his biological children and stepchildren, as described by Anna and Bella.
‘‘Children have a universal need to be loved, and feel seen and accepted, and that they belong,’’ says Maguire. ‘‘They are very vulnerable and sensitive to that.’’
Moreover, young people are due respect and the chance to share their feelings. ‘‘You have to front up. You’re the adult, and they’re the child. I think sometimes adults need support with that. It’s tricky.’’
Anna says there was nothing spiteful in Ben’s behaviour. He probably didn’t know how to act. There are no accepted social rules around what to do when your blended family breaks up – but most people are unsurprised when stepparents move on.
‘‘If they were biological children we would be appalled if people just walked away,’’ says Anna.
Given her experience, Anna has met and spoken to other unblended families and found similarities: Forgotten birthdays, messages transmitted from stepparent to stepchild through a biological child, the stepchild being left out of family photos and suddenly dropped by their stepgrandparents.
Anna didn’t want her daughter to grow up thinking it was normal for family members to suddenly disappear, but despite the counselling Bella has had through the years, she finds it difficult to trust.
‘‘It was so devastating to have someone choose not to love me any more and have no regard for me,’’ says Bella. ‘‘I probably sound quite cynical and pessimistic, but from my viewpoint, stepparents only love the children when they’re together.
‘‘I find it harder to believe people when they tell me how they feel about me because I have seen how quickly people can say, ‘I love you’ and feel differently a year later.’’
Maguire says it is important to note that Ben may be dealing with grief in his own way. ‘‘His attachment style could be avoidant, meaning his survival instinct in times of stress is to shut off and shut down.’’
It might not be that he doesn’t care, but that he doesn’t know how to express his feelings in a difficult situation.
‘‘We have to assume most people in this world are not malicious and looking to harm people,’’ says Maguire.
The ongoing effect this messy separation will have on all parties is dependent on the ‘‘script’’ they carry in their minds, she says. While Bella was left feeling unlovable and leavable – and that will always be a part of her story – her future feelings will depend on what she tells herself about that experience.
Cornish encourages couples in the early stages of infatuation to make sure they know each other really well, before they jump into a commitment that requires combining children from two different families.
‘‘It’s couples with really unrealistic expectations who are most at risk,’’ she says. ‘‘They are least resilient.’’
It is also important to think about how you will react when there are disagreements or tensions between your biological children and your stepchildren.
‘‘You do have a subconscious bias towards your own children, but just by being aware of it can help you take a step back, take a moment to stop and gather the information you need,’’ says Cornish. For Bella, there will be no reconciliations, no more attempts to communicate with her former stepfather. Awkwardly, they have bumped into each other a few times in the past five years, and made stilted attempts at conversation. ‘‘I think he knows he let me down, and it was a shitty thing he did.’’
There is nothing left of the familial bond that once existed. Recently one of her little brothers asked: ‘‘Do you know my dad?’’
‘‘You have to front up. You’re the adult, and they’re the child. I think sometimes adults need support with that. It’s tricky.’’ Jacqui Maguire Clinical psychologist