Thanks Katie for this post and the link to your blog post which was insightful and showed great resilience and understanding on your part.

My situation is similar except that it’s my child who’s the angry one. My partner has made mistakes with him but has worked this out and is now much more the supportive one. He tries to help me see my son’s side of things and encourages me to be patient and loving.

Unfortunately my son still refuses to be a part of our lives or mix with my partner’s family. I think some of this is just being a typical teen but what hurts is thinking that I am building a new life that I love, my partner’s family are accepting of me, but my son isn’t a part of that.

I’d be interested to know how your partner copes with the loss of his daughter. Do you think she will come back to you both one day? How does he reconcile himself to the thought that she might not?

I’m in a recently blended family situation. We’re not living together because we don’t want to move our children from their respective high schools, but we ‘blend’ regularly. It’s been fine apart from the relationship between my partner and my younger son, who’s 15. My son gets on very well with my partner’s two youngest – the only ones still living with him – but clashes with my partner. This has upset me because I feel responsible, especially for my son of course.

I’d be interested to know what your situation is Katie, and any others with insight into blended family issues.