When to walk away from a blended family

What's the last straw that determines when you should walk away from the family you're trying to blend? When should you call it quits? What happens when you're all out of stepparenting tricks, you've done everything you can think of to blend your family, and still nothing's gotten better? What if you're caught between a high-conflict narc ex on one side and a stepkid who hates you on the other, and none of that's likely to change?

Do you keep trying?

What if there is not one cell left in your body that's capable of trying anymore? Not just "done" but "DONE."— in all caps, bold text, very firm period at the end kind of done.

What then?

Stay and stepparent? Or leave and stay sane?

Back when Dan & I were still only dating, there was this morning where we'd just finished the conversation that made me realize there was no future with him that didn't involve his toxic ex being wayyyy too much a part of our life. It finally hit home that this amazing guy came with non-optional baggage that I wasn't sure I was capable of handling.

My daughter adored this guy. I was nuts about him. But he'd never be ours, not really. We'd always be 3rd and 4th place (at best!) after his ex and his kid. Still, 3rd or 4th place with him was better than nothing.

Wasn't it?

Wasn't leftover Dan better than no Dan?

That morning, he & I both felt wrung out after talking in circles for hours. Dan was getting ready to meet friends for climbing and I was lying on the bed crying— the kind of low-grade, constant crying where tears just leak out of your eyes and you can't stop them. We were quiet, because we'd both run out of things to say. We had no answers. Even my ultra-obsessive, think-every-little-thing-right-into-the-ground brain could not solve this pickle. I felt empty and hopeless; I didn't want to give up on us or this blended family we were trying to build... but also, we sure didn't feel like a family and I didn't see how we could keep moving forward.

I'd come to the shitty conclusion that a future with Dan felt nonexistent and futile.

Dan knew it too.

"Well, honey. I don't know what to say," he sighed. "I know this is hard."

Understatement of the year, my friend.

I stayed silent, watching him, eyes still leaking into my pillow.

He looked at me a minute, then started doing this crazy... chicken dance. Wearing nothing but his absurdly tight cobalt-blue spandex under-layer leggings. Elbows and knees flailing. Never breaking eye contact.

"Dan. What the hell are you... are you doing a chicken dance?"

"Yep honey! Chicken dance." He kept flailing around.

I didn't quite laugh, but I did stop crying. Nothing quite improved, but my mind felt lighter. Inexplicably, the chicken dance was enough. To get us through that day, anyway.

When you can't blend your family without a fight

I’m a scrapper. Always have been. Show me unbeatable odds, and I try that much harder. Tell me no, and I want to prove it’s a yes. And my determination has never been put more to the test than when I met Dan, and we tried cramming our two mismatched families together into one. Oh, there’s resistance? I’ll push my end harder. More resistance? H A R D E R.

I checked out every single book (there weren’t many) on blended families from my local library looking for better ways to fight. Know what every single one said? Walk away. Take a step back from stepparenting. Let things happen naturally. Don’t take it all so personally.

Walk away from this chance at a real family, the only thing I’d ever known for sure I wanted? Not give this stepparenting thing every ounce of my energy when these relationships are all that matter to me?

Horseshit.

I returned the books immediately, and pulled myself back into the ring.

Only after being beaten bloody by several more rounds of court battles and years of constant reminders that the ideal family I imagined would never, never, never become reality did I finally raise an exhausted white flag and take that step back after all.

It wasn't until after I disengaged that I learned walking away is not the same thing as giving up. Knowing when to walk away didn't mean I didn't care, or that I agreed with whatever stupid unfair circumstances were so hard for me to not keep railing against. Knowing when to walk away was an acknowledgement that there were aspects of blended family life I could not change no matter how furiously I hurled myself against them.

If I had to name a time that me pounding an argument into the ground actually brought someone else around to my point of view— well, I couldn’t. And if I had to name a time that knowing when to walk away brought clear benefits to my life— I can list a jillion, starting with the fact that blended family life no longer feels like a daily battlefield.

Knowing when to hold your ground, when to stand up for what matters most, and being willing to fight for those truths— these things are important. But picking your battles wisely is just as important. Learning how to let go instead of getting sucked into wars you cannot win is critical if you're in this for the long haul.

How do you know if you are in this for the long haul, though?

Is the price of admission too damn high?

Eventually, Dan learned to parent his daughter. Eventually, he learned to set decent boundaries with his toxic ex. And eventually, I changed my perspective too— I let go of the unrealistic vision of the family I thought we'd have, and learned how to enjoy us as we are. Complications and all.

Se eventually, we were able to create a life together that didn't feel like leftovers.

As stepparents, we all have our reasons why we're putting up with an unbelievable amount of bullshit from our partners, our stepkids, their exes. All that baggage is the price of admission. This is the required cost for the ride we're choosing to ride: this life, with this partner. For most of us, the price of admission is so much higher than we realized. Maybe too steep to sustain long-term— and if that's you, then maybe it is time to call it quits. Because we cannot separate our partners from the complications of blended family life.

For me, the price of admission to blend this family cost me in every possible way: mentally, emotionally, financially. A nightmare roller coaster that's been longer and more awful and more exquisitely painful and damaging than I had any idea stepparenting could or would be.

And yet— I've also loved more deeply than I knew was possible, broken open in amazing ways, and grown exponentially.

It's taken longer than I expected, but today I can say that I love our quirky little family... which no longer feels like some pieced-together Frankenstein version of a "real" family. And I love my marriage, which is diamond-solid after everything Dan & I have survived together. The choice I made to stay with Dan was not easy, but it brought us here. And I really really like it here.

I can't tell you how long I questioned whether I should walk away from trying to blend this family. A solid decade at least, I'd guess. (Not exaggerating.) Yet somehow I never did. I kept seeing the teeny tiny wins along the way, each optimistic bright little kernel. Strung all together, those moments led me through that long dark tunnel like reassuring fireflies. Even when that darkness was really fucking dark, even on my days when I felt utterly without hope, some nudge would come along to light my way forward again.

So here's to our chicken dances and whatever gets us through today. Because when you've given yourself empty, when you're stick-a-fork-in-me-I'm-done trying, when you no longer know whether stepparenting is even worth it... it actually is okay to stop trying for a minute, and give yourself a break instead. This isn't some warm-up sprint— we are swimming the 400-yard butterfly here, folks, and if you don't time your strokes just right and pace yourself sensibly, you're gonna end up waterlogged, defeated, and exhausted.

This is stepparenting: trying, failing, recovering, resting, then trying again. Hope followed by disappointment followed by despair— and still finding the courage to hope again. Accepting that there are times to walk away and times to throw down, and it's like 10:1 in favor of times to walk away. Most of all, successful stepparenting is deciding we will find the joy anyway, dammit. And on those days when joyfulness feels impossible, being willing to say we're done trying today, and letting that be okay. Maybe tomorrow you'll feel like trying again.

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