Readers! It is now exactly seven days to the relaunch. Seven! Get ready to be bowled over because we have some seriously good posts, and some seriously big changes that we just cant wait to share with you. it is so exciting even Emilia just let out a little yelp of excitement. Or it could have been wind. Whatever.
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We recently posted Vivienne's piece about being the 'second wife' (or 'last wife' as I prefer to be known), and how it can sometimes be difficult to get past the fact that this is not the first time your significant other has been through the process. There can be lots of little nagging reminders that at some point, he (or she) had another life, with someone else, and that is hard.
I'll tell you what must be even harder though? Having two huge great reminders in the form of two small children. And on top of that, there must be huge pressure to not only make a good impression on, and bond with, people who very often don't *want* to like you, just out of principle, but also to intelligently and carefully weave yourselves into their lives, whilst negotiating the tricky politics of merging families.
Helen writes really honestly about how bloody difficult it is, and after reading this I just wanted to applaud her for her bravery in admitting that 'hey, this is not easy, and certainly not ideal, but i love him so I *will* make this work'. A true AOW woman.
When I met D he had (very) recently separated from his first wife – and he had two small children (who lived with his ex). This was far from the fairytale scenario I had imagined for myself, but I knew very early on that he was the one for me, ‘baggage’ and all.
We had been together for about a year before I met the children – with the feelings about the separation still very raw, D wanted to be careful not to cause anyone undue upset, so I had a year to build myself up to the big introduction.
The thing is, I had no experience of children – and I mean none. At that time there were no nephews or nieces on the scene, I had no younger siblings or cousins, no friends with children and, to be totally honest I was a little bit scared of children. I had no idea how to act with them – while other people seemed to have an innate knowledge of how to make a child laugh, how to comfort them, how to talk to them, how to engage with them, I was scared stiff and had absolutely no idea of just how to *be* with them.
People said to me ‘don’t talk down to them’ (really? but they’re five and two-and-a-half – I can’t exactly ask them what they think of the global economy!) and ‘treat them like little adults’ and ‘just be natural and wait for them to come to you’. I now realise that this was all sage advice, but none of it felt like any help whatsoever and none of it was any comfort to me.
Looking back now, I find it bizarre that I was scared (proper butterflies, sweaty palms nervous) about meeting these two little people, but that is really the way it was. Our first meeting was not a roaring success – there was no sudden enlightenment and miraculous discovery of all the right things to say/do and the right way to be with them and I shed a fair few tears after our first meeting in disappointment at my complete inadequacy in the child-magnetism department.
I can’t say it got hugely easier.
As I got to know them better, some of the things fell into place but a barrel load of other issues were raised – how to act with them in front of their doting grandparents/uncles/ friends of the family who had known them all their lives and had a much stronger connection with them than me. How to discipline them (should I even attempt it?), especially in front of other people. What to say if strangers mistakenly thought I was their mother.
We soon started to have them come to stay with us (at my house) every other weekend. I tried really hard to embrace it, but before too long I started to dread the weekends of their visits – when they came to stay I found that I couldn’t relax, I couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep or a weekend lie-in, I couldn’t go shopping, I couldn’t visit friends, I couldn’t watch tv (unless it was cartoons or kids’ tv), there were too many interruptions to read a book, and there was no point even in doing household chores as there would be more cleaning up to do at the end of the weekend. I felt like a prisoner in my own home. D would say to me on a Thursday “great, it’s nearly the weekend!” and I would just feel a heavy sinking feeling – I couldn’t look on weekends with the kids as “real” weekends. (I realise that all of this sounds horribly, horribly selfish, especially to anybody who has children of their own, but I was finding it extremely hard to adjust to a situation that I hadn’t (really) been prepared for.)
I found it difficult living in an adult environment for 85% of the time and then suddenly having my world (and house) turned upside down in a whirl of kids’ toys, mess and noise - and then, *just* as I was starting to get used to it and relax a little, they’d be gone again.
Just to throw an extra element into the mix, D told me fairly early on that he didn’t think he could cope with having any more children - much as he loves his kids, he didn’t find fatherhood came naturally to him, either. Now, although I hadn’t always dreamt of having children, I did always assume that at some point I would have a family – and to have that taken away was quite a shock. I was (and still am) certain that D is more important to me than having children, but feelings are not logic-driven and it’s not as straightforward as being able to say “I know he is more important to me than having children, therefore I will feel no regret or sadness about it”. I suspect that deep in the recesses of my mind this has not made my relationship with his children any easier, but I really hope that it doesn’t colour the way I am with them.
