Blended Families

Families can come in all different forms. Many families are blended, step families, adopted/foster, and many more. Everyone has the goal to marry their soulmate, have kids, and have the perfect life. Unfortunately life happens and things happen and tragedy may occur. A tragedy that could leave holes in the family, such as a death of a parent/spouse. Divorce can leave a hole in the family as well. Divorce is more and more of a common thing that happens to families. Is it possible for someone to get remarried after such a hole has been created? ABSOLUTELY! Everyone deserves the chance to be happy. I once had a friend who started dating a guy who later told her that he had been married and divorced. They got divorced before they even had kids. My friend struggled to continue to date him, just because he had been married and divorced. This was a really sad situation to me because I believe that everyone deserves to be forgiven of their imperfections and if they are good person than they should receive that compassion. I also understand how that would raise red flags against someone, but it's important to have an open conversation and communication to see if it were possible to work past that. When getting remarried and kids are involved it can always become a little more trickier. In class we talked about how Disney portrays the "step-mom" as the villain. The situation of blending families is already hard enough, but when there is more negative influence than positive it become that much harder. Every family deals with blending their own families differently. Some parents got remarried when the children were very young and it was easier to step in and become the parent figure. For other families they might have teen-agers and this might make the situation even harder to step in and be a parent. So how should people blend their families peacefully? There was great advice given in class that all heavy discipline should be handled by the birth parent. This is mostly because a child might be more willing to listen to their biological parent than their step-parent. The other advice is that the step-parent should act as the fantastic Aunt/Uncle. Now when I first heard this I didn’t know if completely agreed with the step-parent not really doing any disciplinary actions, but they can still be supportive of their spouse and more of a friend to the child. Also to help the blend be a peaceful blend, the parents need to communicate even more so than the biological parents did because they need to be for sure in line with one another as they are trying to blend their families.

In class we also had a very interesting discussion about emotional divorce. This is when the couple is still together and married, but emotionally they are both not invested anymore. They are staying in the relationship for their children. This can also be damaging and leave holes in a family. I knew of a woman who was debating on staying with her husband after he had cheated on her for the sake of her daughters. She didn’t if they would work out, but she wanted her daughters to have a healthy uprising with both parents. I then reminded her that, that won’t be a healthy situation for her daughters to grow up in either and that sometimes divorce is the answer. She was also concerned that no one would want to marry her because she was older with daughters. I try to reassure her that if it came down to her being divorced everything would work out. There are many others that are going through the same situation as her. Marriage makes people happy and everyone wants to have that happiness even if it is for the second time. No matter the family type we all need and strive to fulfill those roles and holes in our lives. I think it would do everyone well to keep that in mind of blended families. They are just like everyone else and even though they may might not be traditional they are still capable of loving and being one big happy family like the rest of us!