So how do you keep your marriage front and center even when you suddenly have children knocking on your door, interrupting private moments? No matter if you have your stepkids full- or part-time, you’re going to need to make sure you and your husband spend time together developing your partnership. In a first marriage, a couple typically has several years to work on becoming a team before a baby comes along to test their bond.
You get no such time to feel confident in your relationship with your mate before you’re launched into the thick of things. Your bond is immediately tested, before you’ve had a chance to define what it is. So it’s crucial that a new couple consciously decide to make time together.
“Marriage is very difficult and you have to work on it every day,” says Eleanor, the former New York City chef who moved to the Midwest. Her husband, Marty, has two sons from a previous marriage, and he and Eleanor have one son together.
“I try to make sure that we are still a couple and not just parents. That we have private jokes. Learning how to be married was harder than adjusting to the stepkids.” As a single woman in a big city, Eleanor went where she wanted when she wanted. But she found that Marty was protective of her and didn’t want her doing things such as walking alone at night. “He’d say, ‘You can’t go out in the dark,’ and I’d say, ‘What?’ Then he’d tell me I should act like a married woman. I had to go from being a party girl to a calmed-down married girl. I learned I had to work at our marriage every day or it wouldn’t work.”
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