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Blending families can be quite tricky. We imagine things are even more complicated and chaotic when you’re trying to blend after cheating on your ex-spouse with your new spouse. Unfortunately, one 42-year-old Reddit user is learning this lesson the hard way, so he turned to the Internet for advice.

The poster, who we’ll call “Steve” for the sake of this article, was married to his ex-wife for 10 years. Their marriage promptly ended when Steve’s extramarital affair with his boss’ daughter resulted in a pregnancy. He later married his mistress, who is now 28. Steve explains:

I was married to my first wife for just over 10 years. I’m a professional tradesman and won a national level award and was given a trip to Orlando by my company. For some God only knows reason, the person they chose to send with me was the boss’ daughter, who was 22 at the time…

Well, because I am a piece of human garbage with no character, not only did I sleep with her, but she got pregnant.

Of course my wife promptly left me taking the three kids with her, she has since met a really great widower who I thank God and Jesus that he is in my first kids’ life. My boss, being the southern Pentecostal blow hard that he is, demanded that I make an honest woman of his daughter, so we got married.

Steve and his new wife currently have two children together, but his she’s having a difficult time getting along with her three stepchildren, who are 11, 10 and 8.

My daughter (middle) is a great kid in her own right, but she has a tongue like a whip and has absolutely no tolerance for bullsh-t. She decided early on that my wife had two places in her world, the pay-no-mind list or my-life-is-only-to-make-your-life-hard. She convinced her brothers that the should never call my new wife “Mom” rather by a very insulting “Pammy.”

This wasn’t [too] big of a deal because my wife would usually go to her parents or her friends when my kids came over but now that my two younger kids are getting old enough to know what’s going on, and they too have started to call my wife “Pammy” (they both adore my daughter). Well, this has sent my wife into near rages that not only is she not respected by her step kids, but that her own children are already showing signs of not respecting her.

Apparently, the breaking point for everyone was when Steve’s current wife took all of the children out for a playdate, but instead of allowing the three stepchildren to play, she scolded them about being disrespectful.

Without my knowledge, and when I was in another state, she said she was going to take all the kids to Chuck E. Cheese for a late bday party, which she did but what really happened is the younger two ran around the arcade with a sitter while she and her father sat the three older kids in a corner of the restaurant and harassed them for not being respectful and talked to them about what the Bible said about respecting parents. She then told them [straight] out that they had to start calling her “mommy”, or they were not allowed to come over.

My daughter instantly got on their phone with their step dad, and had it not been for his level head there would have been an all out cat fight in the middle of the [omitted] City Chuck E. Cheese. He took the three older kids home, and they have not been back over since.

Steve is still employed by his father-in-law and is wondering what he needs to do to fix this complicated situation.

I can never make older kids give in to my new wife after this was how she chose to handle the situation, yet I understand her point about needing to [be] respected by her own kids and understand how my daughter is not helping the situation. If I had a time machine I would go back and make massive changes but I can’t.

Thoughts?

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