Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
We’re the Vallottons, and we’re passionate about people! Every human was created for fulfilling connections in relationship and family, but it’s not always what comes easiest! We know this because of our wide range of personal experiences as well as years of working with people. So we’re going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health.
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Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons
134. Blending Families: Grieving What You Thought It Would Be
Blending a family isn’t just about making schedules work or learning each other’s habits. It’s about entering into an already-formed culture — one that existed before you. For the stepparent, that often means grieving what you imagined family life would look like, while choosing to restrain yourself from immediately reshaping the environment into “yours.”
In this episode, Jason and Lauren Vallotton talk candidly about:
- Why grief is a normal and healthy part of the step-parenting journey
- The tension between honoring the existing family culture and slowly helping build a new one
- The unspoken expectations that every stepparent carries — and what to do with them
- Why building a new “normal” takes years (Ron Deal says seven, and it often feels true!)
- Encouragement for couples to stay connected in the long process of blending
If you’re in the thick of a blended family dynamic, you are not crazy and you are not alone. Healing, belonging, and love can grow in the middle of the mess — but it takes time, patience, and a lot of grace.
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We're the paladins.
SPEAKER_01:And we are passionate about people.
SPEAKER_00:Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.
SPEAKER_01:But that's not always what comes easiest.
SPEAKER_00:We know this because of our wide range of personal experience as well as our years of working with people.
SPEAKER_01:So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family, and parenting to encourage, entertain, and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health. Hey guys, I want to take a quick moment to talk about something really exciting: our Patreon account. So, okay, as you know, Jay and I, we love creating this podcast, don't we, babe? It's honestly one of our favorite things to do. It's such a fun project. Um, we love sharing honest conversations about relationships and parenting and faith, and we love specifically uh helping married couples. But here's the thing this the podcast, actually having this podcast, which we love, is a free resource to people. It takes time and it takes heart and energy and resources, and that's where Patreon comes in. So by joining our Patreon, you guys, you're not only helping keep dates, mates, and babies with Valentins going strong, but you have the opportunity to actually become a part of our team, become a part of a closer-knit community. Um, some of you are such dedicated listeners. And with becoming a part of our Patreon community, you would get access to bonus content, some behind-the-scenes updates, and maybe even some exclusive QA stuff that we're gonna plan for the year. So if this podcast has ever encouraged you, helped you grow, um, made you laugh, made you cry, all of the above, consider joining our Patreon community. Um, you can find the link in the show notes. I'm gonna link it today in the bottom of our show notes. But basically, you would just go to patreon.com forward slash datesmates babies, and you'll find us there. And we are just launching this in 2025. So be the first to become part of the community. We'd love to see you over there. Uh, and and we'll be touching bass with with those of you that head that direction. So thanks for being here with us every week, you guys. You're the reason that we do what we do. We are so grateful for your support. Hey everybody, welcome back to dates, mates, and babies with the valetins. We are switching things up a little bit topically today, and we're gonna be talking about blending families, specifically some things that pertain to stepparents. And, you know, blending a family is not just about making schedules work or learning each other's habits. We know this. It's about entering into an already formed culture that existed before you as the step parent. So for the step parent, that often means grieving what you imagine family life might look like and even restraining yourself sometimes uh from immediately reshaping the environment into yours, ultimately to protect your family as you grow together. But this can be really challenging. We want to talk about that today.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, listen, if you are not a blended family, this podcast is still gonna help you out a ton. But if you have um friends that have a blended family, this will be absolutely key for them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. You know, when we have conversations with people who are stepping into a blended family situation or individuals who have become stepparents, uh, you know, whether or not they had kids of their own beforehand, there are some really common roadblocks to connection in family or beyond connection, roadblocks to actually thriving inside of your new blended family unit. And there are some real common threads that step parents would relate to with one another. And one of them is this right here, this idea that when we first step into blending families, there's often a lot to grieve. And that feels wrong at first. And we need to kind of dismantle some of the thoughts around that really quick and give step parents out there a load of permission.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's true. You don't really uh associate step parenting and grieving all on the same line. Like in in some ways, it feels wrong if no one's ever talked to you about it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But and even parenting, I'll say this for all those parents out there, you could not have been a step parent, you can not be blending a family and come and like have kids and have to grieve what you thought it was gonna be, what you wanted it to be, what you really desired it. And so that's kind of the dynamic, right? Is when you blend a family, you have this idea in your head.
SPEAKER_01:Right. You wouldn't have said yes to blending a family if you didn't have an idea in your head of what it was gonna look like, right?
SPEAKER_00:And and you have and each person has real desires that are so incredibly important. You know, we have desires from when we're children of what we want our family to feel like in these hopes and these dreams. And then oftentimes the the challenge with blending a family is like you, babe, you came into my already set culture.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:You step into my culture, my kids are whatever the age they are.
SPEAKER_01:Oldest was 12, youngest was five, six.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and for everyone, it it it there's a it differs. Yeah, right. But you come into this culture that's already going. And what often happens is you're received different when you're dating than you are when you're married. So that creates a lot of expectation. Like when you're dating, the kids can be really open and really friendly and and really inviting, or vice versa. But then when you get married, like the things that you dreamed would happen are starting to not feel the same as you dreamed because it's so different to live day by day, yeah, and and to do life together than it is for you to come over or for the kids to experience you on fun days, or you know, because you're having to like step into what does it look like for me to parent, and what does it look like for me to uh I think discipline, and what's it look like for me to have an opinion and to show up in this world? It's not just about the kids, but you're coming into a culture now that already has a shape, it already very much has a framework, and the things that you really hope life would feel like, a lot of other people have say in that besides just you and your spouse.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And, you know, when we were in the early years of blending our family, me becoming a stepparent, I found myself saying this a lot. I would say, you know, I feel like I went in eyes wide open. There was not one part of me that didn't think it was gonna be hard to do what I chose to do, to step into an already existing culture, to, you know, partner with you in helping to raise three kids who were not, you know, babies or toddlers. These are like full-grown children who have a real set of expectations and lots of opinions and beautiful normals and desires and all of it. So there wasn't a part of me that thought it wasn't gonna be hard. I actually knew it was gonna be hard. And that was sobering, and that's why it took me a while to decide if I wanted to do it or not. But here's the truth: you actually don't know what the hard is going to feel like until you're in the middle of it. So, you know, we got married, we got back from our honeymoon, and we started, we had a whole summer to build family together until the first school year started. And I would say it wasn't until the school year started where I became, I came really face to face with just what a daily rhythm is like in our in our household and what a daily rhythm is that I want. You know, like what's the difference between what we have and what I desire? What's the difference between what I expected and what is reality? And you don't actually know that until you're in the middle of it. And so, you know, I found myself telling somebody the other day in a conversation who had uh recently blended a family. I said, you know, it would be really inappropriate to grieve before your wedding. Like all the things that you were hopefully basically I'm saying this. Hopefully you're going into your marriage with lots of hope, lots of vision, lots of excitement. What happens in any family unit, but especially in a blended family situation, is once you're actually on the other side of that marriage covenant day and you're walking day in and day out with your new spouse and your new stepchildren, you find out really fast what are the expectations you had that are actually not reality. And I would say, you know, Jason started out by saying this. I would say any area of life, whether you are in a blended family situation, whether you are not married, whether you have kids or grandchildren, all of it, areas in life where we experience a missed expectation, that is an opportunity to grieve. It could be very short, it could be very simple, it could be very sweet. But whenever we have a missed expectation or a measure of disappointment or a measure of like sadness over something that we've either lost or realized or whatever it might be, grieving is actually part of how we reconcile reality without the desire in our hearts. And that grieving process is actually that process that we would call processing pain. We've talked about this on the podcast in other episodes and yeah, but but the process of actually working through any sort of pain is important. So in a blended family situation, when you start coming up on realizing, like, wow, okay, I'm actually struggling in this dynamic specifically because of what I thought it was going to be like versus what it is. That doesn't make it bad. That's normal. That would be the most normal experience in a blended family situation, would be to come up on areas where you had certain expectations and they're it's it's playing out very differently than you expected.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That'd be very relatable for blended families.
SPEAKER_00:I think this is this is the stuff that we as parents stuff down and we often don't want to talk about because there's a lot of guilt, there's a lot of fear around it. I remember when we were when we were uh our first year of marriage, babe, when we like we got back from the honeymoon, everything seemed to be going great, and then you started saying this thing, like I don't feel like being mom today. And I remember like the first couple times I was just like, whatever, you know. But then the more you like every once in a while, you just like ah, I don't feel like being mom today. And I remember like it started to like really hit me. I'd go and I'd talk to my dad, like, this is what she's saying. It was so scary to me of like, you're it you're telling me that you don't feel like being mom. And I'm inside, I'm going, like, did I lie to her? Did I coax her into marrying me? Did I hide how hard this was? Did I, is it not as fun as she thought it would be? And so one day I remember talking to you and being like, Hey, I'm I don't know how I said it, but I communicated, I'm feeling really afraid, or I feel really angry too, because like I feel like I had this one chance to find a wife who'd want to help me parent these kids, and you don't want to be a mom. And you said something to me. I it I wasn't accusatory, but but I had that's what I was feeling. Yeah, you said to me, Do you feel like being a dad every day? I didn't it hadn't even dawned on me. I had been a dad up until that point for 13 years, yeah, and I said to you, like, well, no. And she was like, Yeah, sometimes I don't feel like being mom. And I was like, Oh my gosh. And then starting to realize, like, you had a life that was so different than mine coming into marriage.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:You you didn't get to warm up to a train, you didn't like get behind this train and start to push it and feel like the momentum of the train and then hop on it and like decide how fast it was going. You didn't get to decide how fast this train was going. You decided to jump on a train that was going, and now you're having to adjust to it. And the things that I didn't even think about anymore were right in front of you every day.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You are now having to get dressed inside of a room with a door closed. You're having to, you know, like you're adjusting to all those things that you never had to, you're sharing food in a way that you never had to share food. You're being asked questions uh uh in in a different way than you've been asked questions and pulled on and tugged on, and you had this idea of what it was gonna feel like, and and I had this idea of what it was gonna feel like, and not that it wasn't that, the problem was it was so much more. Yeah, so there were deeply connecting times with the kids, and then there were dear, deeply frustrating times with the kids, yeah, and painful times, and you just can't you don't ever lay in bed and think, you know, when I get married, I'm gonna have really frustrating times with my like you don't dream of those things and prepare yourself, those are things that happen. But for me, as the as your husband, yeah, I had to change the way and and change my expectation of of where I thought you would be.
SPEAKER_01:Totally.
SPEAKER_00:Like you're grabbing a hold of this idea that man, this is hard, this is challenging. I don't feel like doing it today. I don't want to be pulled on, I don't want to answer all these questions. We had to drive across town and drop kids off at three different places. And I had to make space in my mind for what you were going through as well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It wasn't just you having to grieve this new, like, you're not getting, you lost a lot of the freedoms that you had when you married me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And you're grieving those and the difference and in the change, but I'm also having to go like, wow, I'm making a lot of space inside of what I thought it would be.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:What I thought you were gonna go through.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And face my fears of that.
SPEAKER_01:There's just so much unknown. And until you're again, until you're in the middle of it, you don't know what it's gonna, what's going to be hard about it. It will be lots of work, it will be hard. You just don't know what the hard will be or what it will feel like till you're in the middle of it. And I would say two things. I just want to normalize the struggle of blending a family. I want to normalize the feelings of being trapped for the new step parent, for the biological parent, for the children. This is a radical adjustment. A radical adjustment. You are taking two families or two entities that at least one of which most likely is in the middle of like a broken covenant situation, whether it's through divorce or death or whatever has happened in the story of this family, there's pain involved, yeah, for sure. And when you try to, when you build new covenant and you join together two families from that kind of an angle, from that space, there's it is a radical adjustment. And so as a stepparent, I found two main areas to be the most challenging right away. One was the level of responsibility I felt that I had never felt before inside of a context where I had less than 50% control. So let's talk about that for a minute. You go from being like a single free agent, I like responsibility. I'm not afraid of responsibility. I actually crush responsibility. Like I can handle it. I I like executing responsibilities. I am not afraid of taking responsibility. But all of a sudden I went from being like single free agent Lauren to overnight, I feel the weight of responsibility to help parent these kids to create a safe place for them, to foster connection inside of our family, to protect their relationship with their biological parent, to make room for that person in my life. All of these dynamics, I'm feeling so much responsibility. And I am one of three parental figures in these children's life. And I've been around the least amount of time, I have the least history and the least say about how this all goes down. Totally. That's a very scary feeling, oftentimes, for a stepparent to feel responsible for something you cannot control.
SPEAKER_00:Can I add one thing right there?
SPEAKER_01:You just oof God, I don't want to lose my train of thought.
SPEAKER_00:Don't lose it.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00:It's you're responsible, but you also don't necessarily have permission in the kids' lives yet.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's it's wild. Like it's, and I'm saying emotional responsibility. I mean, there's a reality of like, yeah, sure, I'm the adult in the home. There's a responsibility that comes with that. I need to be, you know, I need to pay attention to where they're at. I need to make sure they're not like under the sink with chemicals. Obviously, there's like practical responsibilities, but I'm talking about the emotional weight that comes with covenant. You feel it when you're newly married, even when you don't have kids, there's a there's a responsibility that you have for saying yes. Well, it's like, I mean, a hundred X when you have kids in the in the mix. There's an emotional weight, a responsibility. It's beautiful, it's appropriate that comes with with becoming a step parent. But, and so that that is something that you have to like when when I'm telling you things like, I don't want to be a mom today, it's that. It's like, whoa, this responsibility, this weight, this is heavy. I don't have the muscles for this yet. Like I have to build, I have to build the muscles. I have to build capacity for this kind of responsibility. Overnight I took it on. I'm not strong enough for it yet. I am sweating. It's like being the girl who's never been to the gym a day in your life. And the first week you go, you think you're gonna die every day because you've never used that muscle. Like, hello, of course, it's hard. Of course. And you have to, you know, what person doesn't go to the gym in that context and think about quitting?
SPEAKER_00:It's new parent. This is new parent.
SPEAKER_01:It's a new parent. It's anything that you do for the first time that's really hard. Okay. So that deserves uh an acknowledgement. That deserves, you know, processing through the pain of that. That deserves a a moment of grief. If you have to like grieve the freedom that you've laid down in order to take on this family, all worth it, all beautiful, but it has to be acknowledged. The other hard thing. So this is the second thing. The second hardest thing that I found was this. I was stepping into a family culture that already existed. And in order to protect the family unit, I had to go slow and I had to expect very little when it came to me coming in and changing anything about that existing family culture. I had to be okay with doing it your way for a pretty long time when it came to certain things that felt like big rocks. And I would say, you know, maybe we could take the next 10 minutes and just kind of like talk about building a new normal and how a blended family scenario is really about building a new cultural normal. And for the step parent, that is very, very challenging.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Whether you want to or not, you're building a new normal. And I don't know that uh why I say that is you either build it intentionally or you you end up in this unin unintentionally built world that either is or isn't great. Because you you've taken out a component and you've added a component. You've taken out the the other spouse and you've added a new spouse, right? That has opinions, feelings, dreams, needs.
SPEAKER_01:Or you've taken out the past, like it used to just be you and the kids, and now it's this, it's it's dad, the kids, and this new woman.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Uh I mean the best way to build a new normal is with a lot of vision and intentionality, right? Like what, what do we want the the values, the the the core values, where do we want to take our kids? What are the things we want to instill in them? What do we want our relationship to be like? What do we actually where are our kids at right now and where are we at right now? Yeah. And starting to ask some of those real questions and at first just evaluating, assessing like where are we at and where are our kids at?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Where are we at financially? Where are we at emotionally? Um, where where are we at? And so we did that a lot. I mean, just we had lots of conversations about where our kids were at, what we felt like would be best for them, how to help. And you're right, you didn't have yet, you didn't have a lot of permission with the kids to just jump in right away and to start discipline.
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_00:Or to go, hey, this is what this is how I want the house cleaned.
SPEAKER_01:The truth is, I actually think the kids were willing to give me permission, it still wouldn't have been appropriate. No, it wouldn't have been helpful, it wouldn't have been realistic for me to actually come in with a whole set of like, and here's how we're gonna do it. Ready for me to roll this out, team? No. That's luckily you had the foresight. We had vision for how we were going to approach building a new normal in our family. And I we did not do it perfectly, but we sure did do it with intentionality.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I don't know that we're gonna get into all the brass tacks of that, but John Maxwell has this different level of leadership, city uh leadership that he talks about. And the first level is positional, right? You married me, you're now uh in a place of authority, and so now you can tell the kids what to do if you want to. Yeah. Um, the next level of uh authority or leadership, I should say, is permissional. You gain a place of permission in the kids' lives. They want to talk to you because you're safe, you're nurturing, you're caring, and therefore they want to open up to you, not because you're mom, but because of what type of mom you are to them. And so that's a lot of what we focused on. And in so what we did a lot was I would hear what your desires were as far as even little things like we want the kids to take their plates to the the sink.
SPEAKER_01:We want the kids to start learning how to put their plate in the dishwasher instead of leave it in the sink. That was one of the first things that we actually did and implemented.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I couldn't remember where we were, what step we were on. But the things that that I I ran the house a certain way, and but you had desires that were that were different than what I had. And so if I first had to buy into yours, uh-huh, make them valuable to me, and then start to go, hey kids, this is what we're gonna do. And I wasn't like, this is what mom's telling us. It was like it had to be my leading with your input for a while. Yes, and as you built more uh permission in the kids' lives, yeah, then I started to and you started to uh assert right your thoughts and opinions and into the kids and direct. And so, you know, but it wasn't, I think the important thing was it wasn't like you were completely powerless in this world. You had so much say with me. And I was so willing to start to build this life that we have talked about and thought about, and and you know, there's negotiation back and forth with you and I about how we wanted to it to look. And but ultimately it started, it starts with a real assessment and a real picture and some real thoughts about what you want, and then some creativity and intentionality to how are we gonna get there?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I I think you know, that's uh how to build a new normal inside of a blended family context is probably a whole nother episode. I would say, like, if we were gonna land the plane anywhere for this conversation, I would say when blending a family, you will discover very quickly the the existing culture and what rubs you the wrong way about that. And you will have to address with your spouse, you will have to call it what it is, you'll have to identify it. What is this culture and what is our vision for moving forward? And for now, what do we need to do in order to build connection inside of this new family? And for the step parent specifically, it will take uh it will take some time and it will require, I think, you to grieve sometimes uh the difference between what you had dreamed of, what you had hoped for, and then what is. And you the you will be able to be the most present and the most available for connection if you're intentionally processing those griefs as you go. Yeah. So that would probably be the invitation. And I want to say this there, the Ron Deal is the name of, he's one of the top voices on step families out there. He leads family life blended and he wrote a book called The Smart Step Family. It has, you know, helped thousands and thousands of couples navigate remarriage and blending families with hope and practical wisdom. He doesn't talk a lot about the emotional health side of things, but there's a lot of practical things in there. And he says the average step family takes five to seven years to combine, some longer. So we're saying like five to seven years is what it would take to create a new normal. Where you're like, this is us.
SPEAKER_00:It's real.
SPEAKER_01:And that rings true to me. Like I can remember being like, I felt like we were newlyweds till we were five years married.
SPEAKER_00:Can I can I say something though?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I would say for a new parent, like you and I just having Edie and Liam, yeah, it takes three to five years to create what you want your life to look like.
SPEAKER_01:Totally.
SPEAKER_00:I so I I'm I don't want to scare people and go like, oh my gosh, we're gonna have five, three to five or five to seven years of hell. And like this is the bonding process.
SPEAKER_01:No, yeah, it's bonding.
SPEAKER_00:This is part of what it's establishing, yeah, creates an incredible life. And and what makes you so attached to one another is you care so much about your life that you put everything in order and you create space and you learn the same language. I mean, how long would it take you to get fluent in Spanish? How long would it take you to get fluent in Japanese? How long, right? You're learning, you're learning the culture, you're learning the different nuances and the sounds, and we often, because there's not a lot of training on this, we don't often think about what you're actually doing, right? You are creating a brand new culture out of an already existing one. Absolutely, and that takes a while, but guys, it is totally worth it.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So listen, if you guys, if you're in the thick of it, if you're in a fan, a blended family, we're like, we are with you, we've done it. This is our 14th year of marriage, Lauren and I. And it's been awesome. The road has been so hard and so rocky, and yet so rewarding and incredible and so much fun. And so if you're in the thick of it, uh be patient with yourself. Give yourself lots of room to grieve so that you can create that new normal. Because if you don't grieve, grieving allows you to create. Okay, I have to wipe out the old and grieve and let go of what I thought and wanted and wished it was going to be so that I can grab a hold of, have vision, be intentional with now what I want to build. That's what the grieving process done does for us.
SPEAKER_02:So absolutely, guys.
SPEAKER_00:Please share this with someone who has a blended family and um and bless them with it. We hope that you guys have an incredible rest of your week. We will see you next week.