Divorce, remarriage, and blended families.

 Hello everyone!

I learned some things this week about divorce, remarriage, and blended families that I had never heard of before. I come from a family where both parents have stayed married throughout my life. I understand that this is not always the case. If anything it is more common for families to be blended in some form. 

I wanted to share some of the information that I learned about divorce this week. Divorce can come as a result of many things. Couples can often just be unsatisfied with their marriage, and infidelity can be a cause which I believe also includes pornography addictions. When it comes down to it, divorce happens because two people are unable to see themselves continuing in the situation that they were in currently. But many people don't even consider the effect that this divorce may have on themselves and their children. Something that I found interesting was that infidelity is not the most common reason for divorce. Often times people who have had infidelity in their relationships strive to work through those problems. Some couples and families will become even closer and more satisfied with their marriages after something like that happens. This is no reason to be unfaithful because you believe that it could make a marriage closer. That does not work that way. When infidelity has happened in a marriage, and each person becomes intentional about saving the marriage in spite of the infidelity, this is when the marriage will have the potential to become something better than it was originally. The focus of the marriage becomes one of the most important things. People are willing to sacrifice and communicate and become closer to one another and through time they are able to transition from a very unsatisfactory marriage to one that is very satisfactory and amazing. 

Not all marriages stay together and families are not always mom dad and kids. There are many blended families in this world. I learned some guidelines that were given for people who are creating a blended family with kids and a new parent. First, this family should accept that it will at least take 2 years to develop normalcy in this new family system. This is often due to building trusting relationships with time and through experiencing events together like Christmas and birthdays. The next guidelines are that the birth parent should handle all the heavy disciplining of the children. This is really for the benefit of the relationship between the new parent and the children. It also says that the new parent should act as a fantastic aunt or uncle initially. This allows for the child and the new parent to develop a good friendship while still allowing the parent to communicate and set boundaries of a parent. Each family will be different and children may need different things from the new and birth parents but these are good basic guidelines to format the first few years of creating a blended family.  

The last point that I would like to describe from what I learned is that marriage is a hard and unnatural thing. My professor stated that he has seen many times, young couples who are trying to get a divorce because they say that the marriage was just not as fun as they expected it to be. It is important to understand that a good marriage takes work and may not always be what we initially expect. Marriage is unnatural. It puts us into situations that we have never been in before and we will need to work through those uncomfortable situations with our spouse. These uncomfortable moments may be the things that help us to create the best marriages. We are connecting with someone else and working through hard times together and relying on one another. Counsel one another and actively choose to create a good and satisfactory marriage.