Blended families are often presented as a wonderful idyllic situation, with love tying two families together and making them one.

In reality, it’s never going to be that seamless, especially when kids are involved.

New sibling rivalries, a change of living situation, a new parent in their lives and maybe even a new home?

Unless handled very well, all this instability will have lasting effects.

And that’s what the couple in this story found out, when they tried to give their teenage children autonomy about how the family situation would look.

Read on to find out why they came to regret it.

AITA for refusing to be a stepfather to my fiancée’s children?

I am a 47 year old man with two children, one son (Jack, 20) and one daughter (Ella, 13) from my late wife.

My wife died while giving birth to our daughter due to some complications during the process.

Jack was seven when my daughter was born, and I immediately had him in therapy to help with the grief of losing his mother because I didn’t want him to blame his sister.

It worked very well because my son loves his baby sister to bits and has never, not even in an argument, held my wife’s death over her.

Let’s see how the siblings are contending with growing up without their mom.

Before I started dating I asked my children if they were okay with it. I gave them as much time as much time as they wanted to think about it with no pressure.

They said they were okay with it after having secret meetings in their rooms and making little plans and stuff, which I thought was very cute.

I’ve been with my fiancée for three years in total, and we’ve been engaged for six months.

She moved into my house after I proposed with her two children, a seventeen-year-old and a fourteen-year-old girl, because my house was much bigger and had more room.

Read on to find out how these parents are helping their children navigate the blended family.

As the relationship got serious, I suggested we sit down and ask the children if they wanted a stepparent or just a parent’s spouse type relationship going forward.

Both set of children were set on the parent’s spouse relationship, which my fiancée and I both respected.

We both also decided that we would be taking care of our respective children, financially, socially etc.

This didn’t mean not helping each other occasionally, but we were each responsible for our own children. Neither of us wanted any more children, and I got a vasectomy to prevent any accidental pregnancies.

But despite a smooth start, the arrangement eventually ran into cpmplications.

This worked okay for the first few months of us living together. My fiancée was responsible for the food, laundry, school etc. of her children, while I was responsible for the same for my children.

My fiancé has a 9-to-5 job while I run my own business, so I do often have more free time compared to her.

The main issues started on Jack’s 20th birthday, which was a month ago. I got him a brand new car of his choice with modifications and stuff. He was stuck having to drive his sister to ballet practice, but he sucked it up for his dream car.

Everything was okay at the birthday dinner, but later when it was just me and my fiancée in our bedroom she said we needed to talk.

Let’s see what was so important that they had to discuss it right away.

Apparently her children want me to be their step father now, because they’ve seen how much I love my own children.

They want to join me my children on the trips we take around the world, and they want to get cool gifts too.

Now I would’ve been okay with this, but the way she worded it just rubbed me the wrong way. She was only talking about the trips and the gifts, nothing more.

She didn’t say anything about getting to know each other better. It was just trips and gifts.

And there were plenty of reasons why he took issue with this.

Now the trips I take with my kids are to visit their maternal family around the world. They live in three countries, and I’ve always made sure that my children have had a close relationship with all of them.

As for the gifts, my children mostly only get gifts on birthdays, at Christmas, or if they’ve achieved one of the goals set for them in school or extra curriculars – like when Ella won a ballet competition last year and I got her a new phone, stuff like that.

I told my fiancée flat out that it looked like her children only wanted me as a stepfather to get gifts and be invited on trips. I said while I understood they were children, it was her job to correct them and tell them that forming relationships just to use people isn’t a nice thing to do.

I would’ve been happy to form a relationship with them, but the fact that their motives was only expensive gifts was absolutely disgusting, especially since she was encouraging it.

Read on to find out how his fiancée responded.

She tried backtracking by saying that they are children and young, and how they didn’t know better. She also tried using how she doesn’t make as much as me and can’t spoil them like I can to guilt me.

But I wouldn’t budge, because in my opinion, she’s the one that’s supposed to tell them the better. She’s supposed to teach them how wrong this mindset is. Besides we had a prior agreement.

My fiancé has tried bringing this up again, but I refuse to change my mind. I’ve also talked to my children who have said that they would not really be happy if my fiancée’s children called me dad.

So that’s only made me a little more firm in my decision. My children have always come first to me and always will.

But he’s starting to have second thoughts about his choices.

However with how pushy my fiancée is being, I’ve started to doubt if maybe I’m the one in the wrong.

I’m wondering if I’m being stubborn for no reason.

Am I wrong for refusing to be a stepfather to my fiancée’s children?

AITA?

It’s no wonder that he’s upset about this, since his fiancée’s children explicitly said that they didn’t want him to be their stepfather, only to change their minds when they saw how generous he was with his children.

He’s undoubtedly feeling used, like the kids don’t want him for him, they just want him for his money. Understandably so, because they’re living under the same roof as the other two kids, but being treated very differently.

And while their attitude isn’t nice, it’s a normal teenage response to the blatant inequality that they can see in their lives. It’s no wonder that they want what the other kids have, it’s just a shame that their parents have effectively decide that’s not how this is going to work.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit thought about this.

This person thought that while his intentions were good, the execution was terrible.

And others empathised with the kids and the messy situation they’d ended up in.

Meanwhile, this Redditor, who’d been in a similar situation, encouraged putting the relationship on ice.

It’s clear that things aren’t going to work out well as they are, with resentment building up between the kids.

If their family situation is going to succeed, these two parents need to present a united front, with equality between all four kids, rather than the current ‘his family’ and ‘her family’ scenario.

This isn’t a blended family, this is a mess.

And the kids are going to pay the price.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.