Divorce, Re-Marriage, & Aging Families

I was married for 15 years and then we got divorced. I was a single mom for about a year, and then got re-married. Through my second marriage, I am learning to recognize how I need to change in order to best commit to our covenant marriage. We need to constantly discuss and communicate which is huge in any relationship. I am taking the knowledge from my last marriage and trying to improve on being a better wife and mom. It takes constant hard work to have a marriage including covenant marriage work. A covenant marriage is a way to add stability and satisfaction to marital relationships. We need to constantly include God in our lives, he knows us the best.

                There are some difficult decisions made when a couple is getting divorced such as the division of property and who will get custody of kids (if they are kids in the marriage). In my situation, we split down the middle and what I didn’t take I got in monetary value. As for our kids, we have half custody which gets complicated. They go back and forth every other week which makes rules, boundaries, and guidelines different as we parent differently. In our family we co-parent, so they have 2 sets of parents as their dad and I both re-married.

                What I found interesting and on point were problems that cause divorce. These were: communication problems, lack of emotional support, emotional & physical abuse, falling out of love or growing apart, unsatisfactory intimacy, constant conflict, financial problems, falling in love with someone else, boredom with marriage, alcohol or other drugs, and incompatibility. My ex and I had several of these issues, which caused ours. Like they say it takes two to tango, help or break the marriage.

                What personally hurt for me was the Principle of Circulatory how children can have more physical and emotional health problems. They tend to rate themselves lower in social competence, there are higher levels of conflict, how boys take longer to adjust (we have 3 boys between us), and they can get more aggressive. Makes me wonder as a mom if I am doing enough for them or what I could be doing better. I do see some if not quite a few of these in my boys.

                Since we have both remarried, that brings in a new set of changes. When you do remarry you can have unresolved emotional issues which I am personally working on 15 years of issues. Both myself and my husband are doing counseling together so we can be tuned with each other and we are able to work on difficult issues that come up. We both want our marriage to be better than the last one. We are also learning to trust each other as we have both been hurt in the past from former marriages. In our blended family we have 4 boys altogether which brings in the topic also of finances. If we want to see his son, we pay for the expenses as well as the expenses of my boys when they stay with us.

                What isn’t reassuring though is that in the Total Family Systems, “the first two years are turbulent.” As we are approaching our first year of marriage this month, we have seen difficult times come up with school, work, and kids. The stepfamily is built upon loss, which can make things hard especially when a child tells the stepparent that they aren’t their actual parent, so they don’t have to listen. When dating after divorce the ideal is at least 2 years, if not longer that way you see each other through all seasons and discuss how you will combine families, traditions, and raising kids.

                We have seen less cohesion and more stress but are trying to do what we can to have stability in our home and to raise our kids in love and righteousness. It can be hard to be in a blended family, but I am working on changing my perspective on how I can be a better person, wife, and mom overall. We were sent here to be tried and tested, and I know that I am married to a husband who really loves me.