Relationships - part eleventy million

According to an Open University study by Dr Jacqui Gabb, married couples without children are happier than married couples with children. My first reaction? no shit Sherlock.

I have plenty children and I love them, sometimes it's properly difficult to remember why I love them and they seem to want to try stuff to make me see if I can stop loving them but I'm averse to change, I still love them. Despite their best efforts (I'm looking at you Beautiful Baby daughter, winner of the gold medal gobshite Olympics 2011, 2012& 2013)

And as I like to have a ponder and a speculate, I wonder how many of these couples are step parents? This has been the hardest thing of all for me personally. To me, step parenting is all of the work without all of the reward.

I love my husband with a passion previously reserved for David Tennant and fruit and nut toblerones. He is quite frankly the person I can spend endless amounts of time with and never get bored, but trying to balance the demands of the children we have and the influences of ex's and have time to be a couple has been like walking a tightrope whilst juggling fire over a pit of tigers who haven't been fed for a month. Man alive, it's properly tricky.

I am fairly new to the step parenting thing, courtesy of my beautiful husband I now have a stepson, he was 4 when I first met him and he is now nearly 8. He is a delightful child, despite the influence of my delinquent children. I have an easy gig with The Boy Wonder, a really easy gig, he's always cheerful to be with us and he copes really well with living in 2 households that have vastly different norms and routines. He also doesn't live with us full time, which helps with the easy gig, I can be a good step parent when I only have to do it part time.

However my husband does live with a stepchild full time and my mercies, she is not the easiest child in the world to live with, she would try the patience of ALL of the saints. For this alone, he should get a medal. Never mind that he inherited 3 teenagers that I had made earlier. Most normal humans (read sane) would have run a mile.

I have been a parent for almost 22 years (how the hell did that happen, clearly I'm only about 29!) and in that 22 years I have had the benefit of 3 children trying to tap dance all over my last nerve. All 3 of them have at times, made it their mission to dement me. However in that decades long battle of wits, I have learned a thing or 3, I can spot a lie a MILE away, I am quite aware of all their cunning little tricks.

However my husband hasn't had the benefits of all those years of parenting, he got mine almost fully formed with all the problems that the teenage years can bring, up till then he just had to have a ferocious knowledge of Lego Star Wars and an inexhaustible patience for building Lego models and playing X box/wii games. Which, to be honest, weren't a great deal of help to my most troubled child (BBD, not that I need to put that in, if you've even only ever been to this blog once before!)

However both of us have to live with children we have had to learn to love, that unconditional love isn't there as it is with our own children.

He hasn't had the benefit of my children when they were cute and adorable now he just has to try and figure out how to love a teenager/s who see it as their mission in life to eat us out of house and home, make as much mess as humanly possible, doing absolutely nothing to help around the house and still managing to make him feel that he has ruined their life by breathing in a house we bought and have provided for their comfort and easy life. Not easy.

I feel glad to be nearing the end of my intense input kind of parenting, I'm tired of it (gimme a break, nearly 22 feckin years.) I feel like I am 22 miles into a marathon and I've been made to go back and run again from mile 8. I have returned to a phase of my life I thought I had left forever, the park years, cold and very boring for me. With The Boy Wonder, lovely though he is, I have seen it all before and it didn't always interest me that much then.

My kids have opinions and views on the world that my husband doesn't share. The Boy Wonder sometimes comes out with views and opinions that get me up to 90. We all have to love and live with each other. The influences of the children's other parent also can cause no end of problems.

Would my husband and I be happier if we didn't have children?, for me that would be a yes (at this moment in time) but I'm still mighty glad I had them, not sure what he would say. I think our life would definitely be easier, less conflict, less stress, more free time, more money and more autonomy.

It is a work in progress, we will keep trying. They all grow up and leave home eventually, right?

The Beautiful Son says no

I've put up a picture of my very cool dude with his long hair as it won't be long before he has his annual haircut, yep, that's right, at the beginning of the school summer holidays he gets shorn like a sheep, none of us want him to, he's gorgeous with his long hair but his choice.


It has been a strange month chez auntiegwen. No one's relationships have been running smoothly and the tension and tears have been omnipresent. Feel very sorry for my poor boy living with 3 hormonal females !!

The Beautiful Son is very popular with the local young ladies, he's funny and kind and used to talking to girls. He has no girlfriend, he has no want of a girlfriend and even though he's asked out regularly he's just not interested yet. He is in his last year at middle school and there is a leavers prom, now this is a big deal for lots of kids. Would my son be interested ? That would be a big fat no, he's not going. Is my son being asked right, left and centre to accompany some very nice young girls ? That would be a yes.

So my son has to keep saying no to people and some of them have cried, some have texted him constantly and girl A's mates berated him for "talking to other girls" and making girl A cry ! His every movement is being watched via cyberspace and real life.

He came in the other day and said to his sisters and I "No wonder none of you girls can get a boyfriend, you're all bloody mental !"

What advice can I offer him ? None, it'll probably only get worse.