After I'm married we will be what I is called a "blended" family. I already consider us a family - blended or not, as we have been living together for about 5 years now. My fiance will be come my son's official step-dad when we get married. For us this is not a "real" issue, because all of us (fiance, son & myself) consider him to be my son's step-dad. But it will be nice for him to officially claim the title. My son's father has never been supportive of my fiance's and son's relationship - if anything, he has tried to make it harder on my son. There are many issues that can arise from this type of situation, most of them we have dealt with in the past. Things like my son's father not being happy about my fiance being in my son's life and things like that.
There are many issues that we seem to have as my son goes back and forth between his father's house and home, but I think that is to be expected. Especially when there are 2 very different people doing the parenting.
The issues that I think are real and important, seem to be the ones that I never really expected to happen. One of those is when my fiance's brother & his wife had a baby. This in it's self is not the issue, in fact it was a very happy event that we were all looking forward to. The issue is when that child's grandparents (my fiance's parents) start saying that the baby is their "only" grandchild.
I thought that my soon-to-be in-laws all thought of my son as their grandchild. He has been around for over 5 years now, and there have been times when they have referred to themselves as his grandparents, but now I see facebook postings and comments are made about how this new baby is their "only" grandchild. Another time the comment was made that my son wouldn't be their "grandchild" until my fiance and I were married.
For probably about 2-3 years now, my son has really looked at these people at his grandparents. It did take some time before he really thought of them as that, rather than my fiance's parents. Now he hears these comments about the new baby being their only grandchild and how he isn't their grandchild until the wedding. I would have thought they would be more considerate of the situation, especially since my fiance's parent are divorced and both remarried.
What can you do about this situation besides just accept it and move on? Then I start thinking of things that might make this a bigger issue. What about when we have children together - are they going to make the same comments? If so, will they realize how much they hurt my son?
My parents divorced when I was about 11-12 years old. My father proceeded to have a whole new family with his new girlfriend (eventual wife). When he did this, there was a large separation between those children and my sister/brother. The separation wasn't just age or mother - it was the way my father treated, acted and reacted to all of us. It was very apparent in the way he spoke that he was separating us. he would call my sister and I "the girls", where as the new children were call "my kids" or "my babies". That might not seem like much, but to a 14 year old girl whose father no longer lived with her, it was a huge separation between these families.
I don't want my son to ever feel that type of separation, but I don't know how to go about it. Hopefully as I have more children with my fiance, I will be able to see if my son feels this way or not.
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