My stepchildren don’t want me in their lives

Dear Agatha, I got married to a married man four years ago. I don’t know what happened between him and his wife but he agreed to marry me with my three children from a previous marriage. But from the day we got married, his children never liked me. From their attitude, it was clear that my children and I weren’t wanted in that house. Whenever my children wanted to watch a particular film, they would insist on watching another channel. When I also shared food, they will complain I wasn’t giving them enough; that my children’s share was more than theirs. In the beginning, I tried to ignore them but it got to a point I couldn’t take it anymore. Besides, my children too couldn’t tolerate being told what to do and how to live anymore in the house. My eldest daughter, who naturally is temperamental, took on the eldest of my stepchildren. The children naturally queued behind their own sibling. Out of anger, I also took sides with my children, warning my stepchildren that from that point, it was going to be tit-for-tat. Going down memory lane, I knew it was wrong but I wasn’t thinking straight that day. My husband was away when this incident happened but his children told him everything that happened including the position I took. Rather than listen to my side of the story and the reason for the position I took, he called my children to warn them against fighting his children in the house. That really got me angry. I felt very hurt and humiliated. From that point, I devised a means of relating with his children. I ensured that my children got the best of everything. After a while the children stopped complaining especially when the eldest went back to school. The other two, being twins left for the university at the same time. I noticed they weren’t coming home regularly as before. They would come, spend only a night and leave again. I didn’t bother to ask even though I knew I should. Since none of his family members supported his decision to marry me, I wasn’t expecting them to visit so was not surprised when none of his people ever came to visit us; not even the birth of my daughter brought any of them to the house. Their attitude didn’t bother me one bit. I noticed too that my husband’s attitude started to change towards me. Without explaining why, he stopped paying my children’s school fees. Whenever I went to him for their school fees, he would always give me a reason for his inability to pay. I soon got tired of going to him. Even when the children stopped going to school, he didn’t bother. But, whenever I wanted anything for his child, he would give me without complaining. Now his children are insisting that their mother comes back to the house. What more, his family members are also in support of his former wife coming back. Please help me. I don’t want to lose my home. All my overtures to his children have failed as they insist on their mother coming back to their father. He paid my bride price. What do I do? He married the other woman in court and weren’t formally divorced. Modupe. Dear Modupe, As long as he didn’t formally divorce his wife, you are married to another woman’s husband whether he paid your bride price or not. By right, the house belongs to her. And now that she and her husband appear to have sorted out their differences, you cannot stop her from coming back. It is you that has to decide what you want to do; either to stay or quit the house. But you can be rest assured that whatever decision you take must go down well with the first wife and her children. Although you cannot be blamed for marrying this man given the fact that he was without a wife when you both met; but from your narration, you are to blame for the things happening to you now. You didn’t behave as a woman who wanted to last long in this house or desired happiness for the people you met in the house. If you did, you wouldn’t have started with fighting the children in the family. In the first place, you and your children came to upset the routine of the children in their home. You came with your children to destabilise their relationship with their father. If they behaved in ways you didn’t like, more than anyone else, you should have understood their feelings and disappointment at the whole development. Having you in their lives was bad enough; coming with three children couldn’t have been tea party for them. Before you came, they had their father and everything in the house to themselves. Nobody told them what channels to watch or not to watch. You shouldn’t have gotten yourself involved in the battle of supremacy by the children. You should have allowed all of them sort out their differences in their own way by telling your children to respect the wishes of your stepchildren. A wise woman would have done everything to make her husband’s children happy by showing them true love; the kind they needed at that time to be happy. Encouraging your children to come and destabilise these children in their father’s house was a very wrong move, one that portrayed you to these children and their father as a wicked stepmother. If their father took you in with three children and was paying their school fees, what would it have cost you to be nice, accommodating and supportive of his children? Having accepted you and your children into his home and life, he expected you too to be a mother to his children; not fight or deny them of their rights in their father’s house. If things were that easy and simple, you wouldn’t have brought them to live with you in another man’s house or allowed him to pay their fees. Taking on the responsibility to care for your children was his way of telling you to be a mother too to his children. The moment you failed to do that, you destroyed not just his reason for marrying you but also that of looking after your children. The moment you umpired a fight between your children and his children in the way you did, you killed the dream that could have been between the two of you. You also unwittingly made him rethink his options especially as they will affect the future of his children. If you can encourage your children to fight his children in his house, then there is no telling what you will do to his children should anything happen to him. Sincerely, your actions told him all he needed to know about the kind of person you really are. Therefore, the decision to reconcile with his former wife may not be as a result of pressure from his children or family members but from your own haste to eliminate his children. No man wants to sleep with fire on his roof. Frankly, there is nothing you can do at this point beyond discussing his decision concerning you and your baby in the latest development. The native law marriage is the easiest to dissolve. It is a matter of going to your family to tell them he is no longer interested and to demand for the bride price he paid on you. When you had the chance to endear yourself to the children, you didn’t. There is no way they will align with you against their mother. When issues get complicated like this, the best approach is to be prepared for the worst: you being asked to go. If there is a way you can get to your ex, get in contact with him to train his children. It is his right to train his children. Good luck.