Food for Thought

The other night as I spent the night unable to sleep I used the quiet time while all others in the house were asleep to do some research on the computer. I was on the Focus on the Family site where they have numerous articles about the modern blended families that are so present in our modern society. I must say I was shocked by some of what I read, humored by some, and left scratching my head and saying wow that's my life on yet other things.

I was shocked by the realization that my marriage falls in the category that has a 73% chance statistically of failing. As I read further into it I began the scrathcing of my head and saying wow, as many of the little things mentioned are daily tidbits in my own life. Now talk about not sleeping! Whew.

In one segment they talked about the term blending and what that actually means. They used the example of putting all the foods into the blender and mixing them up at once, translating to me as the part where you get married to one person and all the others in their lives and those in your life being tossed into the blender and anticpating that all will mesh together into one fine smooth lump, and everyone will be happy. Yes sadly that is the hope of most of us when we remarry. We somehow think any mistakes made in the past have prepared us to have a great remarriage and all will have the fairy tale happily ever after ending we grew up believing in.

Then they used the example of putting things one at a time into a crock pot and allowing the foods over time to blend nicely together, given the time to simmer and cook and blend. That tranlated to me as yikes we are going to spend our lives simmering, and stewing in the hopes that all comes out happily together at the end of the process. Yet as I think more on it, the crock pot is a much better comparison than the blender, where we get thrown in together, chopped up and there we are. At least with the crock pot we have the advantage of being put in individually as our own enity, allowed to slowly cook with others and come out one happy stew.

The simmering part is one of the phrases that caught me as really resembling my own blending here. We seem to constantly have someone simmering, and either they eventually reach a full boil and bubble over, or they just continue to slow cook with the boil being hidden beneath the surface. A great deal of the simmering process in our unit is that very often there is no real communication. In an attempt top keep peace, we tend to make things appear to be much more humorous than they really are. In trying to keep everyone smiling and blended peacefully, we begin a discussions and as soon as one or another has decided they don't want to deal with it conversation is over, and leading to more of the simmering just below the surface. If this is at all usual in the married again world I can better understand why that figure for failing is at 73%.

Now our house consists of a lot of male persons, a lot more than most houses and we all know that the males gruffly say their two cents worth and the conversation is over, or they don't contribute to the talk process at all. If we force them to talk about things it creates another problem with attitude, and they go back into the denial process that anything could really be not quite right after all. We have a wild combination of both here at our blender, and a variety of age levels in which it is evident, young teen, to young men, to grown men. The silly stuff they have a lot to say about, but the real issues result in head nodding and at a later point saying I didn't hear that. I also notice they have this blank sad puppy dog stare if you talk seriously to them and the result of that is the quilt you feel,( very much a female trait) at the idea of rocking the boat, so you stop talking, and allow those feelings to simmer in that family crock pot, stewing away any hurt thoughts, angry thoughts, selfish thoughts, allowing them to simmer and simmer but never totally bubble up to boil.

The other thing that is very evident in our house are the extra walls, the ones we bang into all the time, but can not see. They are the invisible walls which keep our unit divided as that relish dish I mentioned before. We have the us section, the me section, the my kids section, the your kids section, the your extended family section, the my extended family section, and the the sections that include one or the other with any one or the other sections. We are like a giant experiment dish, and the focus is keep all from blending at all costs to prevent from boiling. We probably should come with a warning label! Mix, shake, or put in same place at same time may be hazardous to your family harmony. And trust me on this we have definetly seen the proof of the truth in this. Even in these times of trial mixture, the seperateness of the unit is highly visible, as mine goes one way, his goes another, he hangs with his and trickles over to the mine to try and keep peace, and I finally remove myself from the not being spoken to, and the anxiety one can get from being surrounded by contempt for oneself, and I have been known to take a nice long walk where I actually have been gone for a really long time before anybody even noticed. Maybe I am simmering, yea probably. But the walls are there, they can't be seen but they absolutely can be felt.

Two families, two completley different families, simmering in the crock pot of life, because two grown people decided to merge all these people together into one great dish, whether they wanted to be merged or not, no wonder that number is at 73%. Those two people are so completely outnumbered by the signifcants in their own individual lives and the realizations that no matter how long they try and simmer these different fruits of life the probabilty of their actually blending into one happy mixture is probably less than the 27% chance they have of making it. WOW!!

So the process continues, and two people hope for the best, each one allowing the feelings to simmer and not boil over, stir it up a little, put the lid back on it and hope that one day they will beat those odds and actually somehow stay together and that all the significants will discover it isn't so bad to allow the blending process to happen.

What does this have to do with me? Well we have the yours and the mine daily in our lives. We have the us, and the stress of trying to be a family, but we are constantly three families trying to be one, and including all in one thing has turned out so hurtful and disastrous in the past that we no longer even really try. That creates the simmering in our own personal relationship, consiting of two, where one or the other of us feels the need to walk on eggshells at all times, or to conviently not mention aspects of our days. 73 % of these remarriages will fail, 27% will be strong enough to survive. I wonder what the percentage is of those who just give up. At times I feel like I am too stubborn to fall in to that 73% and at other times I feel like if I just go ahead and allow myself to fall in that 73% I may find myself hurt less, smiling more, more free to feel useful, happy, and fulfilled as a person.

So as our life continues to simmer in our family crock pot perhaps we will become more tender, more combined as a whole and who knows maybe even beat the odds.