In which I drag on for a very long time.

A comment was made recently that really got me going. Not that I have a problem with the commenter, it's the situation she is dealing with that has me upset.

When the husband and I realized we were getting serious one of the things I did was start researching step-parenting. I read books, I joined newsgroups, and I went back to the boyfriend-soon-to-be-husband with everything I'd learned for us to talk over during one of our endless phone conversations. And, as I got to know other stepparents (usually stepmothers) I began to see a pattern.

We're all familiar with the picture of the "ideal" family. There's Mom, Dad, kids, pets, grandparents, the whole kit and kaboodle. It's certainly a good thing to have, if possible. I would whole-heartedly agree that it's the absolute ideal, the way to go if it's at all possible. It's certainly what we've been taught to aspire to. There aren't many kids out there, after all, saying to themselves, "Gee, I want to be a stepparent when I grow up!"

Blended families are hard. Two people, who couldn't get along well enough to keep their marriage/relationship together, now have to get along in raising children when all sorts of other complications have entered the picture. Coming into a divided family as a stepparent isn't any easier.

Let's look at the experience of a new stepmother. To my husband I'm the woman of his dreams, but to his ex I'm just a stranger who's suddenly been handed the keys to her child's life. She doesn't get along with her ex to begin with, and now she's expected to trust his choice of a stepmother to her child?

The stepchildren, meanwhile, are having to cope with some very painful truths. Mom and Dad aren't getting back together again, because I'm in the way. Again, Dad likes me, but they haven't had a choice in the matter. They have to learn to live with me, no matter what they think.

Meanwhile, I might have had some dreams of my own, that aren't going to be happening now. If this is my first marriage, then I have to cope with the fact that my firsts are all "been there, done that" for my husband. We may or may not have gotten much of a honeymoon, depending on his visitation/custodial situation. If he's paying child support, our financial situation might be severely compromised. If they want to, it's very easy for the kids and ex to make my new married life a waking nightmare. And if this is my second marriage, maybe with my own ex and children added to the mix, the logistical and financial complications can get really crazy.

The craziness is the problem. When life gets complicated, it's only natural to want it to be simpler. Unfortunately, it's so easy when you're in a blended family to dream about the simplicity of being a traditional family. If you're honest with yourself, it's not too much of a problem. You recognize your feelings, let yourself feel wistful or wallow in self-pity a little, then move on. If you don't realize what you're going through, though, you can walk right into a big 'ol pit. If you still don't recognize or acknowledge what's happening, it's going to get ugly.

A friend of mine is divorced. She and her ex have both remarried. My friend has taught their daughter to call her new husband, "Daddy." The ex's new wife sent my friend a package of old pictures. She'd cut my friend out of every single one. Kira's ex's girlfriend won't let the ex have anything to do with his children. Boil these two situations down to their essentials and you've got the same thing happening. Everyone's trying to force their blended family into a traditional family mold.

That's what I saw in the stepparenting support groups I participated in, and I got so disgusted after a while I finally quit them all. I saw the group members using one of three ways of dealing with this life. Group A tried to create a traditional family by trying to get custody of the child, by attacking the bioparent, ignoring the bioparent and trying to cut the bioparent out of the child's life. They wanted to pretend this was their child.

Group B tended more toward the traditional wicked stepparent model, ignoring the child, attacking the child in discussions with their spouse and in the worst cases, actively trying to eliminate the child in one way or another. They wanted to pretend the child never existed.

If you'd told them this was what they were doing, they would have been very angry and indignant. They didn't realize what they were doing - which is why they were in a position where they were doing those things. They saw themselves as good people, dealing with an impossibly difficult situation, trying all alone to make things work. They saw themselves as victims.

To a certain extent, they're right. But, in focusing on how hard their situation was, they were forgetting to look closely at how hard it was for the other people there, too. And that's the only way to survive this, in my opinion. Everytime I start feeling sorry for myself, thinking too much about how complicated and blasted difficult everything is, I start losing my perspective and I get off-balance. Off-balance, I start a pretty quick drift toward Group A or B. It's a constant struggle to keep out of those camps, to hold fast to my ideals. I want to be in Group C, the very small group of miniscule membership, whose members cope with the sorrows of a blended family while recognizing the special joys that are part of it, who concentrate on making it work instead of wishing it away.

I'm a long way from perfect. I've had way too many times of fantasizing about getting a phone call that the teen's mother has been in a tragic car accident. Then there are those days that I try to figure out exactly how much longer we have until he goes off to college. I fight those feelings by putting myself into their shoes, mother and son, reminding myself that this is just as hard for them.

It drives me crazy when I run across committed members of Groups A and B. I understand where they're coming from. I think this essay makes that pretty clear. It's just so irresponsible. I made a choice to marry a man with a past. The husband and his ex made choices that led to their break-up. The teen, and all the kids in these families, haven't had any choice at all. The teen doesn't even get to choose where he lives.

In the end, it doesn't matter what I or the teen's parents feel. If we are to do any kind of good job, be any kind of responsible parents at all, we have to put our feelings and desires on the back burner and do what's best for him. I couldn't live with myself any other way.