Ashley Willis
A friend of mine, Christina Weathersbee, recently wrote a beautifully honest post about the aftermath of divorce and striving to thrive as a new blended family. And, she has a special message for those who are at a crossroads of a marriage in crisis. Friends, please read this.
I am crazy about my husband. Absolutely smitten, head over heals in love with and crazy about this man! He loves me in a way that I have never been loved and never imagined was possible. I can not imagine my life without him. He is hands down, my favorite person in the whole world and I sincerely love being with him 24/7. That being said, I think I need to share the reality of a blended happily ever after.
Not long after I got married I had an aquaintance mention to me in passing that her marriage was struggling and that she just wanted to be happy and in love with her husband like Joey and I were. Her thinking seemed to bend toward the thought that divorcing her husband and finding a new husband could give her this happiness. I am not quite sure what I said to her, but I have really prayed about her comment and how to address things like that. I feel the need to share the reality behind my wonderful marriage; the stuff I don’t share on Facebook or announce in my day to day conversation because it isn’t encouraging and I am an encourager by nature.
I typically share all of the “yuck” in my life with my immediate family and close friends, but I think this mythical “blended happily ever after” must be explained. The starting point of this blog was that comment, but what really hit it home for me was when another young mom I know, who was also struggling in her marriage (note 1: all marriages struggle sometimes) said to me,
“even though you went through a yucky divorce, don’t you think it was all worth it since you now have Joey, who loves you so well and its a love like you have never known?”
I hesitated and was very deliberate in my answer to her before I replied. I looked at her, wanting to speak to her heart (a heart that wanted an easier, happier way than her current marriage) “not at all”, I said, “in fact, if there was ANY way that my first marriage could have worked THAT would have been best for me and goodness knows it is what would have been best for my children.”
I later talked this over with Joey and we both agree. However, thats not how our stories worked, we both had failed marriages, we both went through marriage counseling and marriage seminars during those struggling marriages. We both sincerely wanted those marriages to succeed and sadly they didn’t. The ending of those marriages wasn’t a “welcome change in an attempt to find a better spouse”, they were heartbreaking beyond what one can imagine.
Seriously, we both agree that divorce was the most painful thing we have gone through. That being said, I want to give a very clear picture of what a blended family (albeit a happy one) really looks like from the inside because if you aren’t in one, you really have no idea. I know it looks all fun and happy, and we sincerely are, but it is SO MUCH work!
Lets start with the dating. First of all, I had no desire to date and the process of Joey pursuing me was nothing short of a challenge. Joey had to be very intentional and very cautious because I was extremely guarded and very cynical about “love”. I know that all of this varies by situation but IF you are coming from a divorce, you WILL have baggage, and probably lots of it, you hear me? NO matter the reason your marriage failed, there is never a completely innocent party and there is typically hurt involved on so many levels. So, Joey worked hard to gain my trust, to convince me to spend time with him, to give him a chance to pursue me and then to allow him to meet my children(for me that was another HUGE deal).
Sometimes it looks like people who are dating are having a blast, but lets just be real here, dating really isn’t that much fun especially when you have been having get togethers with all of your married couple friends and kids for years and suddenly you find yourself alone in “single land” where you don’t really fit into the typical “20 and single” group, you cant go out on weeknights because your kids have school, you have a real grown up job and little people hanging on you all of the time which makes phone calls really difficult too. Its for the birds y’all, not my idea of fun in the least. So, we survived that part, met each others exes and things seemed to be going smooth.
While I was absolutely smitten with Joey, our marriage and living together brought up a whole new set of issues to deal with. We had the baggage again, all of my insecurities from my failed marriage, his insecurities from his failed marriage, and you can heap all of our children’s baggage right on top of that.
In our first year of marriage I think we had sit down “heart to hearts” every other day as we worked through the emotions and lies that we battled against. There are schedules so confusing that you need attorneys to help you arrange them (even after they’ve been written out) and you have to work with both exes to try to line anything up. Wanna take a simple vacation? not that easy in blended family land. You cant just schedule one and go on your merry way. Friends invite you on an out of town trip? you cant just say yep, that sounds awesome! First,(lets just pretend work schedules aren’t even an issue) you have to make sure its a time that you have your kids because yet another stinky thing is that you have your kid(s) only half of the weekends and summer time that you did before… meaning that you cant always make your friends birthday cook out, the annual family christmas dinner, and you only get to see them every OTHER year for Christmas morning, Easter morning etc.
Now, if its a weekend that you have your kids (and hopefully you have your kids on the same schedule as your new spouse, thats another thing you get to work through), then you have to make sure you get back at the right time from the trip and if you need an extra 24 hours to get back from the trip, you have to get the okay for that… not from one ex, but from two most likely and between the two other families, someone is likely to have something that conflicts. Y’all, I am tired just writing all of it. It is a day to day effort on all fronts to keep our family all organized.
Parenting is an initial challenge too. You have two parents who may have parented very differently coming together to form one whole family. Initially we tried the, you “parent” your kid and Ill “parent” mine strategy… and while that is all good starting out, we found that it was a huge mess for us, it created two mini families instead of one big happy family like we desired. Just a simple example, example, if one kid is used to eating only peanut butter sandwiches for every meal and the others are expected to eat broccoli, brace your self, it will take a LOT of work to get all of your kids on the same “compromised” page that the parents agree on.
Thankfully, our kids are all young and things are pretty smooth on that end for now, but sometimes little things still pop up because discipline and life in general are different when they are with their other parents. There are issues that we face at least once or twice a month that a non blended family would not have to deal with; drop offs and pick ups galore, discussions about who pays for what, who signs whom up for what, who decides which summer camp, which sport, which doctor, where someones shirt is and the list doesn’t end.
Often the decisions that we make for our family have to take into consideration two other families and it can be really tiring. That being said, we are tired, but once we got the groundwork laid and made a point to make OUR family priority, learned that Joey and I stick together on everything no matter what, things got much easier to weather. Blended families take so much more work than a typical family (in my opinion) but when we are intentional in the way that we treat one another, knowing the others deepest hurts and insecurities, things work out. We work really hard to build one another up, to encourage one another and to stick together on everything.
I have no doubt in my mind that Joey is my biggest fan, my best friend and my number one supporter. He has my back no matter what and he knows without hesitation, that I am that for him. Maybe the marriage counseling we attended and books we read in our previous marriages has helped us in our marriage and maybe we learned what things aren’t quite worth fighting over or hurting your spouse over. I can honestly say that while it is a lot of work, the payoff in our relationship is priceless. To have the chance to love and be loved so well is one of the greatest blessings I will ever experience. <3
About the Author: Christina Weathersbee is a wife, mom of three, photographer, and blogger. You can read her blogs and see her amazing portraits at Strawberry Blonde Photography.
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Be blessed!
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