. . . . . until they realized what they had done. Becoming a stepparent usually means a remarriage which I have heard described as the "triumph of hope over experience." If you're like me and a lot of other remarrieds and stepparents hope is what we cling to when we embark on the road called "stepparenting." And hope keeps us going through all the ups and downs. So, in my mind, hope is a good thing - for the most part. Unfortunately hope can also cloud our understanding of reality - the "experience" part. In this case, hope probably represents the vision of what WE believe our "family" should be like, instead of representing an ability to address reality and work constructively with OTHERS in our family to create a nurturing, supportive environment for all involved.

All of us carry around in our heads images of both what various aspects of our world "should be" as well as what various aspects of our world "actually are." These images include ourselves, our families, our work, life in general, and just about everything else we come in contact with. Our images of how our world "should be" are goals or expectations that we often believe we need to achieve in order to be happy. Thus, the discrepancy between our images of what our world "should be" and what we believe it "is" gives rise to frustration and disappointment due to unmet and unfilled expectations. Let me give you a brief example.

In my first stepfamily experience (yes, I have had two; one an abysmal failure and a second which has been very pleasant and fulfilling - for the most part - for 12 years so far). When I married my second husband (we will name him Joe for the sake of this article), he had custody of his three children and I had custody of my four children - better than the Brady Bunch! My second husband's ex-wife (don't you just love all these contortions we have to go through to describe our "family"?) had been absent from the children's lives for at least 5 years. As a result I "imaged" them to be "deprived of a mother's love." Into that void I jumped - eagerly, expecting to love them unconditionally, as I did my own children, and expecting to be loved and appreciated in return. Well, most of you can probably guess what my "real" experience was. I didn't love them (at least not at the beginning), and they certainly didn't love me. The reasons why they didn't love me and why I didn't love them can be the subject of another article.

But the fact remained that we didn't love each other. My image - my fantasy was unrealistic, and I became anxious and depressed over the reality of my experience. Letting go of these images, these fantasies that we have, and coming to terms with the reality of our experience often feels like giving up "hope." Many of the people I see in my private practice have enormous difficulty doing that until they begin to understand that giving up our fantasies - and our unrealistic expectations - does not have to mean giving up hope. What it does mean is that we put our hope into perspective. We accept what is real about our experience, we work with our family members to create realistic expectations, and then we work together to create the family environment that works for all of us. In her book, "Becoming a Stepfamily", Patricia Papernow discusses the various stages that stepfamilies often experience. The first stage is the "fantasy stage." During this stage family members are more often than not, on their best behavior. Most, if not all, family members believe they will love one another. Most, if not all, envision one big happy family living happily ever after. The fantasy stage is follwed by the "confusion stage," during which tension grows, happiness begins to slip away, differences begin to emerge. And most of us begin to believe that we have made a terrible mistake instead of understanding that we are experiencing a normal transition time in our stepfamily experience.

Living happily every after is entirely possible in a stepfamily. But it doesn't come magically with the living out of our fantasies. Instead it comes with understanding the reality of our family experience and working together through the various ups and downs - and letting go of those "images in our heads."

© 2000 Stepfamily Network Inc.