Stepchildren: How I When
Kamin Mohammadi fell for Bernardo, he came with a lot of baggage that she’s had to navigate over the years…
When my friend introduced me to Bernardo, I already knew he had three children. ‘Don’t get involved!’ my friend hissed dramatically.
That was 14 years ago – and it’s safe to say, I didn’t take her advice. In fact, four years ago, we got married.
The complication my friend was referring to, though, was that Bernardo has not just one, but ex-wives, and his son lived with him full-time while his two daughters came to stay alternate weekends. Perhaps I am a glutton for punishment taking on a double divorcee and a single father to boot but, in reality, what really mattered to me back then was the love that flourished between us – the rest was, I thought, incidental.
According to research, one in three of us is involved in a step-family situation. ‘Blended family’ is what we call these arrangements now, a term describing the mix of half-siblings and step-siblings and even stepchildren from a previous relationship.
Common it may be, but the inescapable truth is that when you get involved with
two
someone who is a parent, it’s never just the two of you. Forget Princess Di’s famous ‘there were three of us in this marriage’ – I had a small army populating mine.
At first, I didn’t take his ‘baggage’ into too much consideration – despite the heady days of a new and exciting relationship being marked by school runs and planning the week around his son’s activities.
But a year later Bernardo wanted me to move in with him and his son, explaining the girls would visit. Until that moment, I had felt the breaking up of his families was still a deep and private pain, so I respected this, and the weekends he had the girls, I disappeared like a secret mistress.
When he asked me to meet them, nearly a year into our relationship, it was a turning point.
In the years since, I’ve learnt about the difficulties of forming a bond with the stepchildren – and it can be complex – especially navigating the shadow that falls behind them, The Mother.
A source of deep influence over her children, she controls the relationship with the step-mum whether by benign acceptance, naked opposition, or, the more common mix of contradictory feelings in between. Even if you never meet The Mother, you can tell from the moods of the
‘As a step-mum, you can enjoy your stepchildren without having to deeply their involve yourself in all problems. Leave that to their biological mum!’
children what she is thinking. Often her words come out of their mouths – in the early days it seemed that the second ex was talking about me at home as the youngest girl repeated her verbatim. Once she commented with disdain on my Facebook profile photo: ‘Argh, too much make up!’
As time wore on, I got used to comments on my looks and fashion sense all being brought home - albeit probably innocently - by mimicking minions.
It’s disconcerting having someone you don’t really know and didn’t choose as such a strong presence in your life. It’s an uncomfortable relationship – distant yet intimate. And whether the mother is absent (as my step-son’s mum was) or much-too-present (as my step-daughters’ mother), you often pay the price.
My constant mantra became ‘the children didn’t choose this’.
Every time I felt slighted,
I would remind myself that they simply wanted to protect their mother from her ongoing jealousy and insecurity about my presence in their lives. So I told the children I was their friend and their mum was their mum and that both were OK. Eventually, they grew comfortable with that.
I didn’t become the official step-mother till we got married four years ago and the years before were the hardest. What, actually, was my role? I made mine up as I went along – something between a fun aunt and scary matron.
I have spoken to women who lived decades with a man, only to be frozen out after splitting up, never to see his children again, as if they had not spent years cooking family meals and changing nappies and helping co-parent.
The thought terrified me – all this unacknowledged love, all the nurturing just disappearing as if it never existed. As if you never existed.
Being a step-mother requires a special courage – the willingness to love people who can never really belong to you. As the years have passed, I have learnt how to love my stepchildren madly but not care, to be involved yet detached. It has been my survival strategy, and my closeness to my step-kids is testament that it has worked.
Once, when I was despairing of it all, a wise woman said to me: ‘step-mothering is a long game’. A decade and a half down the line, I understand that. My step-daughters are now young women. My step-son grows broader and more like his father every day. And I continue to love them with all my heart, but harbour just enough detachment to let them get on with their lives without interference. Something that maybe some biological parents could learn from us step-mums!
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned’
● Kamin Mohammadi is the author of
Bella Figura: How to Live, Love and Eat the Italian Way (Bloomsbury)
We know Britain is a nation of animal lovers but, a series of surveys have recently revealed how much we adore our pets.
Research from pet care brand Webbox revealed that nearly half (43 per cent) of pet owners admit to loving their cat or dog more than their partner, with 27 per cent preferring to cuddle up on the sofa and watch a film with their animal instead of their other half. Ouch! Although we guess there is less chance of your pup hogging the remote, of course...
‘My puppy, Riggins, is my pride and joy and my hubby knows our baby boy comes first every time,’ agrees deputy features editor, Louise Bulgin.
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Furthermore, another survey from Ryman discovered that more of us would rather relive the day we got our pet over the day we found out we were having a child. If that’s proof of the pecking order in your household, we don’t know what is.
Just how much do you love your pet?
Let us know!
Among the picture-perfect feeds we often see when we scroll on Instagram, it’s the small doses of reality that we find all the more refreshing. Enter Veronica Dearly, whose visual slogans and mantras have gained popularity thanks to their no-nonsense attitude. We’re sure many of us can relate to this particular one posted recently! Some of it can use colourful language, but we love Veronica’s outlook on life. Order merch from her too, at linkpop.com/ veronicadearly
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