The Hardships of a Blended Family

On filial relationships, translated…

My husband and I both had a marriage before we met, we both brought along a daughter each.  Marriage is the merging of two families, it’s naturally uneasy, and second marriages are combining FOUR families together, even harder.  Normally, my husband and I got along quite well, and yet, on the weekends, as our daughters came home, then, it’d become like, a warzone, and I’d felt especially stressed out.

My husband’s daughter is fifteen this year, just entered into high school, we’re only sixteen years apart; she’d refused to call me “mom”, and always called me “aunty”.  But how I’d hoped, that she could just, open up, and at least, be a friend with me, instead of seeing me as someone who’d stole her dad away.

children from their previous marriage, now merging, as a big family, it’s no easy task, taht’s for sure!  Photo from online…

As I’d just married, I’d found my husband’s daughter had serious allergies to dusts, but he’d not paid any heed, as I saw his daughter getting ill because of her allergies, I’d felt bad for her; so every time before she arrived home, I’d always, cleaned up the house thoroughly, and changed her sheets to one that the dust mites wouldn’t stick to.  As she’d entered into her teenage years, I’d gone to the trusted Chinese herbal shops to buy her the medicines to help her get stronger, as winter rolled around last year, I’d found her to be in short-sleeve t-shirts, I’d shockingly discovered, that her winter clothes aren’t here, I’d urged my husband to buy more clothes for his own daughter.  I’d also constantly reminded how he needed to act like her father, to connect to her more.  Knowing that she’d eaten out a lot, whenever she’d come home, I’d made sure I’d cooked as much as I possibly can for her, hoped that she could get the nutrition she’d needed.

And just like so, a year had passed, although we can’t relate to each other like friends, but at least, we’d, connected better with one another, I’d loved hearing this young woman tell me about the encounters she’d had at school, or watching the shorts on YouTube with her, laugh together.  But this didn’t last long, because of a short ten-minute altercation, she’d started, rejecting me again, refused to come back to this home of ours; and my husband had multiple fights with me, and we’d talked of divorce too.

Actually, what hurt me the most wasn’t my arguments with my husband, but how the relationship between me and his daughter turned bad, that was a “whole year’s worth of love, care and concerns, getting taken by a short ten-minute conflict”.  It’d been two months now since we had our fall out, and she was only willing, to come back home to see my husband hurriedly when I wasn’t in.

like this???  Not my photograph…

Marriage, starting a family, that’s a huge commitment, especially for us, this was our second time, we’d lacked that imagined happily ever after of a marriage, we knew, that marriage meant living together through our days.  That if the days passed smoothly, then, our marriage would be well too.  But now, my husband’s daughter’s misunderstandings of me, had gotten too strong, and I can only leave it to time, hoping, that time will, take away all of these bad feelings that she felt towards me.

So, you can see how hard this stepmother was working, to get on her stepdaughter’s good side, and perhaps, it’s because of her being a stepmother, that, was why the stepdaughter got angry at her, and stopped connecting with her, because she isn’t her mother to begin with, and the teenager probably thought that she was only her father’s wife, instead of a mother to her.