Blended Families

Photo; Courtesy

“I think I was very naïve about what marrying a man with children would entail. I thought the children would immediately like me and we would be one big, happy family but I was so wrong. It takes a lot of time and effort to get to the point where your step-children can tolerate you, let alone like you. Then sometimes, just when you think you have made progress, they do something that reminds you they will never love you like their mother. I have learned to lower my expectations. No one is ever really prepared to deal with being a step-parent,” says Wendy Malinda, the founder of Living In Step Africa, an organization that coaches women and men dating or married to people with children from previous relationships.

“Sometimes when you are young, you fall in love and think you have met your soulmate and you start building a life together only to grow older and realize that the perfect union is not so perfect,” this is what Wendy explains happened between her husband and his ex. Although he and the mother of his children never got married, they had two children. They drifted apart after some years and they went their own way.