- In 2021, I was in a relationship that fulfilled me.
- I had someone to share dinners with and snuggle with, which felt good after a divorce.
Two years ago, I had a man in my life whom I loved so fully that I could, maybe for the first time, truly imagine loving a person forever. For a fleeting moment, I had a partner to make dinner with and to snuggle with on the couch. A few years after my divorce, it felt good to have someone making me laugh, someone to lean on. I even had a picture in my mind of the big house we'd move to in the country — us, our dogs, my kids.
He loved me right back. But the thing that was lacking was his connection to the people I got out of bed every day for.
At first he was warm and kind to my kids. I have this memory of the first night he met them: He was sweet to my 10-year-old daughter, who mostly ignored him, but my son, at 6, was intrigued. They played in the backyard together, along with two boys who lived down the street. When I looked out the window, everyone was smiling. I thought to myself, "This is a good thing." It filled me with a sense of calm joy, which I wasn't used to.
But it couldn't stay so light and simple.
He had no connection with my children
He had no real attachment to my kids. Likewise, they had no real attachment to him. He was just mom's new friend who sometimes came over for dinner, which sometimes he cooked. Sometimes he and my son played video games, and he often made us all laugh. But as time went on and a giant responsibility loomed, I felt his anxiety grow.
I understood where that feeling came from. My kids were young and full of questions or dilemmas. At the time, my son was also full of big emotions and meltdowns. Even I was struggling to give him boundaries and the right amount of gentleness. The challenges felt constant and overwhelming even for me, though I had been parenting for a decade.
While he had always liked to drink, I watched as he slugged more quickly when the kids were around. He seemed to be using alcohol to drown them out, to quiet the noise, to be able to exist alongside us. As a mom who was also filling my glass to the brim, I understood the impulse. At the same time, I knew it was too much. While he wasn't causing a ruckus or being violent or passing out, I knew he was looking for an escape. He didn't say it, at least not then, but the potential of being a stepdad was overwhelming.
I knew from talking to parents who'd remarried that it can take a lot of time, patience, and therapy to make blended families stick. But the more time my partner spent with us, the more I understood he wouldn't be able to love my kids the way I needed him to. I didn't need him to be perfect; I just needed someone who had the emotional bandwidth to be happy to be not only with me but with my kids 50% of the time.
I sensed how unsettled he was. The emotions he tried to quell were spilling out onto us all.
We didn't know how to live all together
I started to feel little wedges forming between us — him and my kids, me and him, and, most painfully, me and my two kids. My son was often lashing out. My daughter was spending more and more time in her room. My partner was often quiet and grumpy. I felt like I was tiptoeing around my own home, trying not to piss anyone off while also trying to play peacekeeper. He and my son would bicker, and I didn't know whose side to take because no one was really wrong. None of us knew how to live with each other.
The situation is not an anomaly. People fall in love all the time and then realize it can't work for this reason or that one. But it's painful to know that you were so close to something wonderful but that it just couldn't be. Worse is that you can't even demonize it, because loving someone else's kids is hard — it's damn near impossible, and it is absolutely not something every person has the capacity to do. Moreover, I saw how desperately he tried.
I knew I had to let him go, and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Still, just as he couldn't settle in, I knew I couldn't settle for raising my kids in a home that always felt askew. But five years after my divorce, finding someone who has the space for both my kids and me feels like a perilous search filled with devastating reminders of close but not enough — of almost.
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