When Bonus Child comes out in one specific dress — the one I think is so perfect, a jaw-dropper, both elegant and sexy — I tell her how amazing she looks in it.
“This is the dress,” I tell her excitedly. “You look amazing! You’ll be the best dressed person there.”
She goes back in to the change room with me thinking that we’ve found The Dress. She does seem to take a long time changing into different dresses, but I’m a woman so I know that it takes time to get in and out of dresses. I wait patiently with Boyfriend, who is aimlessly walking around the store. I’m sort of perplexed when she comes out looking a little disappointed.
“Mommy thinks it’s too short,” she says.
I’m sorry. What did she just say? I look around the store, wondering if her mother is there, hiding behind us. How did Boyfriend’s ex-wife know what the dress looked like on their daughter?
It turns out that Boyfriend’s daughter has been taking selfies of herself in all of the dresses she has been trying on in the change room and is sending them, via text, to her mother for her approval. Cleary, her mother’s taste differs from mine. And clearly she has the last say.
I am, quite frankly, heartbroken when I find this out, sad and let down because I thought this was the bonding moment that would get us back on track, especially after many months of feeling disengaged with everyone in my blended family. My fucking expectations got the best of me — again!
I initially try not to let on that I know I’m not really needed on this shopping trip, but, in one of my least proud moments, I sort of storm out of the store, telling Boyfriend that I’m taking a taxi back home, that I’m done shopping, that I wonder why I’m here at all. My sadness comes out as anger. I was expecting to have a great day shopping with Boyfriend and his daughter, because I thought that she cared and that she valued my opinion. I thought this dress-shopping excursion would bring us closer together, when all it really did was divide us, yet again.
“Why did she invite me in the first place if it all comes down to what your ex thinks is okay?” I cry to Boyfriend, that evening, my heart still crushed.
I feel incredibly guilty for leaving the store, and incredibly filled with rage. My stupid, stupid expectations! Like I said, far from my proudest moment in my blended family. Boyfriend is angry with me for storming off, saying he had to defend my actions to his daughter, who probably felt torn between my opinion and what her mother wanted.
“Can you put yourself into my shoes, just this once?” I ask him, sobbing. “Do you know what it feels like to get so excited about something, only to be disappointed again?”
Of course, Boyfriend tells me, yet again, that my expectations are too high, which makes me even angrier. I’m surprised that Boyfriend hasn’t learned this yet. It’s sort of like being told to “just get over it.” I want to scream, “Has it ever worked for you in the past when you’ve told me to lower my expectations? Has that ever ended well for either of us?”
But, because I am in tears over this — now hypersensitive to everything that happens in my blended family — Boyfriend hugs me and says he understands why I feel the way I do, while at the same time telling me I shouldn’t feel the way I do. I hate when people speak out of both sides of their mouths, which is what Boyfriend is doing.
Maybe Bonus Child had really wanted my opinion, even though she knew that it had to be approved by her mother. Maybe she felt caught between my opinion and her mother’s opinion. I’m mad because of the situation. But I’m not mad at Bonus Child. She didn’t choose to be in a blended family. I have never once heard any child say, “I want to grow up and be in a blended family.” Not. Once. Have you?
I do get to attend Bonus Child’s graduation, her last year of high school. I bring flowers. This is just one of many graduations I’ll attend for his children over the years, but this is the most important one, it being her last before she heads off to college. We are seated in a gym full of proud parents, and it’s hot and sticky and there’s no air conditioning. Because of our blended family, Bonus Child had to ask for more than the allotted four tickets the school allows for every family. Cleary, the school system has not caught up with the times. Bonus Child needs tickets for not only her parents and for her grandparents on both sides, but also for me and Rowan. She needs double the tickets allotted for each family because we all want to see her graduate. But there were a few days, after she asked the school for more tickets, that she wasn’t sure they’d be able to accommodate everyone. And, if she couldn’t get more tickets, guess who’d be the ones not going? Me and my daughter. Fortunately, she does get more tickets, and I’m both excited and a little nervous, as if it was my own biological daughter who was going to walk across the stage and accept that diploma.
Boyfriend and I, with his mother and my daughter, sit near the back, and I tell Boyfriend to take the aisle seat so he can get a photo of his daughter walking toward the stage. Boyfriend’s ex-wife is seated a few rows ahead of us. It’s always awkward for me when I have to be in the same room as her. This time it’s no different.
I not-so-fondly remember the time we brought Baby Holt to one of Boyfriend’s kid’s graduations. Bonus Child rushed up to hold her little brother and brought him over to her mom to show him off. When Ex-Wife reached out her hands to take my son, I totally raced over to grab my baby from her clutches. Who is she to hold my baby? Was that move immature? Sure. Human? Yes. Baby Holt is my baby. Plus, we barely acknowledge each other.
Afterwards, photographs are taken, and, yes, Boyfriend takes a photo of me and Bonus Child, which is awkward for both me and Bonus Child, as her mother stands watching us.
When I ask one of my friends, who most definitely doesn’t get along with her husband’s ex-wife, how she manages to remain mature when she’s in the same room with her husband’s ex, she says, “It took a few years. Now we get along, within reason,” she tells me. “The truest thing about a blended family is that saying, ‘You’re marrying the ex.’ I realized, and maybe I should have realized this even earlier, that if I was going to have a happy, easy family life, I was going to have to find a way to get her to trust me. I wouldn’t say we’re best friends now, but we are friendly and respectful. It’s been hugely helpful in opening up lines of communication after what was a very painful divorce for both my husband and her,” she says.
Boyfriend’s ex and I don’t exactly get along, mostly because I hear the stories that Boyfriend has told me about her, and of course I’m going to side with Boyfriend and believe what he tells me. When it comes to his ex-wife, I don’t think, “Wait. There are always three sides to every story. His truth. Her truth. And the real truth.” Plus, not only did she act completely indifferent to me when I made the call to her years earlier to come over and check out my house, but she has made it difficult for Boyfriend’s children and my children to bond, especially in the early years, the most critical ones.
When we first blended households, I told Boyfriend, on more than one occasion, that it was important for his children to meet other children their age in the neighbourhood, because I knew that for them to really feel at home and want to continue coming to the city to stay with us, they needed friends to hang out with in our area. There are a lot of children the same age as Boyfriend’s children who live in the area. And when we first started blending, we tried to get the girls to do things together. We didn’t force them to bond, but we tried to direct and encourage them.
One year, early on after blending households, with my encouragement, Boyfriend signed his two children up for a play that I’d also signed my daughter to be in as an extracurricular activity. Rehearsals were every Wednesday night for an hour and a half. Boyfriend got into a fight with his ex about this. Since rehearsals were every Wednesday night in the city, she thought that he should pay for the cost of his two children being in this play, since they didn’t happen on “her” days and they happened in the city, and she refused to drive them so far.
Because I’m in love with Boyfriend, o
f course I think she’s a cow — Boyfriend’s description, not mine — for refusing to help pay, even though their divorce agreement states that they each have to chip in for their kids’ extracurricular activities. I think, in all of our years blending, Boyfriend’s ex has only picked up their children from my house maybe twice. Likewise, I can count on my one hand the number of times I’ve gone with Boyfriend to pick up his girls. (I used to love it when his eldest would get in the car and change into an outfit her mother didn’t agree with.)
When it came to the actual performance, I actually did reach out to Boyfriend’s ex to ask her how many tickets she’d need, and I offered to buy them for her and said she could pay me back later. It was fantastic to see all the children on stage, but because Rowan’s father and grandparents also came and we are all seated together, I was later reprimanded for sitting beside my ex and not Boyfriend.
Over the years of blending, I’ve never really figured out how to feel totally at ease when Boyfriend and Rowan’s father are in the same room. Sure, they are civil together, much more civil than I am with Boyfriend’s ex. But they’ll never be best friends either. While Boyfriend is definitely friendlier with my ex, I can tell my ex doesn’t exactly want to be pals with Boyfriend. I know. I know. I have heard of women, who, after blending households, actually talk to their ex’s new wife, to deal with logistics, and actually become friends. Mind you, I have never met anyone like this, but like I said, I’ve heard stories. I kind of wish that I had that relationship with Boyfriend’s ex, but it’s at the point like when you don’t return someone’s phone call, keep meaning to, and then it just becomes too awkward to make that phone call, and so you don’t, and that feeling haunts you for years. My window of opportunity for becoming friends with Boyfriend’s ex has long since closed.
Still, his daughters’ participation in the play is not the first time Boyfriend and his ex have gotten into fights over who pays for what or such when we try to get our children to bond. I did lose it on her, once, over email, when she didn’t let one of their children come to our son’s birthday party because she was on a soccer team at the time and Boyfriend’s ex insisted she couldn’t miss a practice. Or at least that’s what I was told by Boyfriend, which led me to email her a not-so-nice note saying, sarcastically, that she was so “classy” for making her daughter miss her own brother’s birthday party.
“Clearly, you have no idea what transpired,” she wrote back. “It was her decision to hold her commitments with her rep soccer team.” She went on to write that Boyfriend had this chat with his daughter earlier in the day, so Boyfriend knew what his daughter wanted. Furthermore, she went on, it was Boyfriend who had reached out to her to see if she would take their daughter for the night and take her to soccer. Had Boyfriend left out part of the story? After a bit of nasty back and forth, she sarcastically ended the email train with, “Good luck to you! You’ll need it.”
Back then, I had no idea what she was talking about. Boyfriend was perfect! He treated me like a queen! But there is something to be said for listening to your partner’s ex, especially if they were together for years. You forget that they also know your partner well. They had been married for twelve years, after all, longer than I’d known him, so in a way she knew Boyfriend better than I did, and she knew what his personality was like. She was definitely sending me a warning, but like everything in the early years when it came to Boyfriend, I had no idea why she would tell me both “good luck,” and that I’d “need it.” Yes, I wished that I could have had a crystal ball.
· FOURTEEN ·
Every summer my daughter attends an overnight camp for one month. When I told Boyfriend how amazing this camp was and that I thought all the girls should spend a month there together, he agreed wholeheartedly. This, too, was early on, our first summer together as a blended family. Not only would it have been a great chance for our girls to spend a month together, at a camp that offers everything from golf to tennis to yoga to salad bars, but it would also have given Boyfriend’s daughters a chance to meet other people their age, because many of the campers live around our area.
But Boyfriend’s ex adamantly disagreed and didn’t even bother to entertain the thought of her two daughters going to the overnight camp my daughter had attended for a couple of years. I’m not sure if it was because she wanted control, or that she thought the camp was too pricey. I wanted the girls to bond so badly at the beginning that I even sent her an email saying that I’d chip in for the cost of their two girls to attend the camp with my daughter. What better way for them to connect, and meet new friends in the neighbourhood, than to spend a month away together at this camp? But Ex-Wife wouldn’t budge. She and Boyfriend argued over this, but to no avail. So while my daughter did, and continues to, go off to her overnight camp, Boyfriend’s girls headed to a camp in an entirely different city, which made absolutely no sense to me or Boyfriend.
Lost was a great opportunity for the girls to connect and network over the summer; now, not only would they not be together at camp, they wouldn’t see each other for nearly two months, as my daughter spends the second month of summer with her father in a different city. Yeah, it’s a non-issue in a typical household, but in a blended one, especially in the early days, its impact can’t be understated. Momentum is everything when it comes to relationships, and Boyfriend’s ex-wife had put a complete halt on the momentum of our children clicking by planting her feet in the sand.
“Why does she want them to go there? It makes no sense. They can meet friends who live around us if they go to the same camp as Rowan,” I said to Boyfriend.
“I agree. But she’s not budging on this,” he responded. I asked him why he didn’t fight harder since he, too, said he thought it was a great idea.
“She’s not going to budge,” he tells me again, after I ask if he has tried to talk to her about it. “Trust me. I know what she’s like.”
So, Boyfriend, and by extension me, lost that fight. Our girls have never spent a summer bonding and have gone months without seeing each other. It pisses me off that she’s got in the way of our girls becoming close. Why she refused to bend on this will remain one of life’s great mysteries. It’s a nice overnight camp. It’s not fucking jail. But I’m pissed, too, because I’ve always wondered why Boyfriend never fought harder. Why did he just give up? Why didn’t he really try, knowing it was something I truly believed would help bond our kids, while also knowing they’d have a fabulous time? After all, he’s their parent, too, and should have equal say in what his children do. Maybe that was another red flag that blending our families wouldn’t be as easy as we had believed.
“This pisses me off too,” admits one of my friends, who married a man with a daughter, and then went on to have another daughter with him. “I never knew just how difficult it would be having my entire family life tied to another person who my husband used to be married to and frankly, doesn’t even like very much. Every holiday, every plan has to be put past her,” she says. “I never knew that it would be such an issue when we got married. We have many, many fights about it.”
I just wanted our girls to blend, or at least have the chance to blend. Really, was that too much to ask?
Bonus Children love the camp their mother insists they go to, but the window of them meeting people around where we live closed before it really opened, and it was Boyfriend’s ex who slammed it with a solid kick, or that’s what I was led to believe. Why was Boyfriend allowing his ex to make the final decision when he knew how important it was for me, and how good it would have been for all the girls, to be together for a month? Was it always going to be this way?
After the play and the camp argument, Boyfriend’s children never again tried, nor really had the opportunity, to make friends with other people in our neighbourhood.
So, yes, I blame it on his ex, but I also blame Boyfriend for giving up on the fight. I get that he may have often felt, and still feels, in the middle of me and his daughters, but why should he feel in the middl
e of his ex-wife and me? I am, after all, his present and his future. My daughter is his present and his future. And Boyfriend’s kids are my present and my future. In a non-blended family, no outsider dictates how you raise your children.
After years of blending, Bonus Children still don’t have any friends where we live, so when they are with us, they are with us, twenty-four/seven, and this means that they need to be entertained by us every time they are here. Usually, Boyfriend will take them to malls. They are mall rats. I hate malls, so I often bow out of their excursions, not only because I get “mall headache,” but because I find it incredibly boring and can’t play the charade that I’m enjoying myself. I can’t hold back my feelings of resentment that, in order for us to be together, it always has to be at a mall. That, and I can’t stand how, every weekend they are with us, he buys them clothes, because that’s what you do at a mall. When you’ve blended families, you can only watch from the sidelines as Dad Guilt plays out, because dads in blended families will rarely, if ever, admit they suffer from Dad Guilt or even be aware that they have guilt. It’s like their lack of ability to see a doctor or ask for directions. They basically have to be forced to acknowledge that they are sick or lost, or both! Sigh.
“I try to be sympathetic about my husband’s Dad Guilt,” a friend tells me. “It literally eats him alive. But, yeah, when he comes home with his son with a new mountain bike or an Xbox they bought together on the spur of the moment, it does make me want to scream! What about the two children we have together? Don’t they deserve the same sort of gifts?”
Blissfully Blended Bullshit Page 17