Case Study – Inequality and Unfairness in a Blended Family 

• This is a family with three children from three different relationships which makes the situation for each child different and means the assumption of equality isn’t necessarily correct as it would be for three children from the same relationship. The situation for Anne is clearly different to the situation for Rick and both are clearly different to the next child. Inequality is a problem and the differences carried by such inequality must be carefully managed.
• You are both decent intelligent, thoughtful, loving and emotionally stable people. Your children will almost certainly reflect and inherit these characteristics, especially if you create a family structure that embraces and reflects these truly noble characteristics. 
• Amanda, you carry a degree of inflexibility you share which mother which naturally rises to the surface when the situation between the two of you becomes profoundly unfair over the parenting of Anne. You are harshly judged by Steven for such inflexibility when it appears, primarily because Steven feels extremely hurt and wounded for Anne by you and your inflexibility to a degree that is more or longer wounded than is perhaps appropriate You also carry an unequal burden of the parenting in this family which makes the appearance of such inflexibility quite unfair from your point of view. These conditions don’t produce the best of you notwithstanding the fact that under such circumstances you work harder and harder to do the very best you can in parenting all these children.
• Kris disrupts your relationship and this family and is toxic to your collective emotional well-being. She does this directly though Steven and less directly through Anne. In that way she can emotionally dig deep into Sarah. Oddly, this will keep her, and Amanda connected which means Amanda can never be indifferent to her whilst you are so connected. People are connected because they are, not because they want to be. You exist in the same space as her, through Steven and through Anne and you breathe the same psychological air, you breathe in the toxins she exhales. This does damage. Kris commands enough authority in this entire situation to be able to do this. It is as if momentarily she is still married to Steven and can perturb him in any moment and get a rise out of him. Kris has the authority to intrude with no congruent responsibility for her intrusions into your life together and your family. Family life and the couple relationship in the 21st century is like that. I’m strongly recommending you exorcise Kris, that you get her out of the marital bed, that you get her out of your day to day family life. That will require a deep discussion between you about this and who has the authority to carry this responsibility forward. My guess is that this responsibility for Kris more falls to Steven than Sarah, a direct antidote to the inequality between you over responsibility for parenting. Sarah, you will need to adopt the mask of indifference when it comes to Kris. 
• Anne is Anne. Anne is not Kris. Anne does not import Kris into this family.  Kris is more like a form of parasite that can attach itself to any other form of life in order to sustain itself. Kris attaches herself to Steven and Anne in different ways to suck the goodness and life out of this family. Identifying Anne with Kris will damage Anne and strengthen Kris‘s hold over this family. Disconnect Anne‘s behaviour from Kris. Cultivate indifference!
• I strongly recommend you each take strenuous action to limit the conflict between you. I suggest the moment a difference appears between you; you both immediately switch your watches to your right wrists for the duration of the dispute. Move the watches back only when the dispute is over. Remember Kris is at the heart of each difference that becomes a dispute. You may want to call this the Kris move. Don’t let Anne know that.
• Love is love. Love is a powerful experience. Love changes you and that’s why you are here speaking to me, because the promises you made to each other are threatened by all this frustration over parenting. Love persuades you to make a commitment to each other, the commitment you make to each other is in common with every other couple, whether it is love or an arranged marriage. It is a commitment by each person is to ensure that living with you remains ‘fair’, that you love the other so much that you commit yourself to ensuring that the situation does not degenerate into a long term unfairness, that you won’t allow that other person’s love and devotion and commitment to you and this relationship and family to degenerate into long term unfairness,  that the accommodation they make by loving you and being in this relationship will not be exploited and turned into a perpetual unfairness. What’s happening here between you is that commitment and promise is constantly under threat. The two of you are perplexed and frightened, bewildered and this brings each of your weaknesses out on show for the other to see in technicolour. When unfairness stalks you love evaporates. A strong relationship and a strong family require the strength of fairness at its core to protect the ephemeral and fragile nature of love. Love is like a fluky breeze at times.
• I hope this essay on your lives right now is helpful. You are both good and decent people. You each love powerfully with your whole heart. Protecting this love and the relationship from the toxic effect of unfairness is at the heart of the commitment you made to each other and to all three children who sail with you. Unfairness is naturally occurring between you and is imported from external parties who do not have goodwill toward you and this love and this family about to be five.