Blissfully Blended Bullshit

by Rebecca Eckler

  “Call me if you can, please. I need advice!” my male friend messages me.

  I hate giving advice, but I am curious to know what guidance he’s looking for. I do know that, only days earlier, his child-free girlfriend had moved in with him, into a new house that he had purchased for both of them and the two children he has part-time. I also know, even though his girlfriend makes a good living, he never asks her to pay for rent and professes he never will, mostly because he can afford the house on his own and is more traditional. He’s happy being the provider. It feeds his ego.

  “KK,” I message back. “I’m calling you now.”

  And so I call him, not because I think I have any words of wisdom, but because I’m just plain nosy and want to hear what bullshit has led to him reaching out to me.

  “What’s up?” I ask, after he picks up the phone after one ring. Clearly, he’s been waiting by his phone, as desperate as if he were waiting for results from a doctor after having a biopsy … but it’s a weekend.

  “My girlfriend is getting upset with my kids over the stupidest things,” he tells me. “Is this normal?”

  I snort. Normal? What the fuck is normal in a blended family?

  “Didn’t she move in, like, less than seventy-two hours ago?” I ask, trying not to laugh.

  “Yeah, but last night she got upset because she was trying to watch some reality show on television and couldn’t hear because my kids were being too loud and they were annoying her by jumping on the couch,” he says.

  As absurd as it may sound, I do kind of get where his girlfriend is coming from, even if I don’t agree with her execution, which apparently involved screaming at him to tell his kids to be quiet. I simply think that his girlfriend wasn’t prepared for all the life changes that would come her way after moving in with my friend, especially when his two boys stay with them. It is a pretty big upheaval to go from single and in charge of your surroundings, and watching a TV show in peace, to being one member of a family circus that includes two rowdy boys she isn’t related to who have no interest in her addiction to reality shows. I feel for her and for him, both equally and for different reasons. Clearly, if his girlfriend was upset because she couldn’t hear her show and was taking it out on her boyfriend, she is woefully unprepared for what life will be like in their house in the days, weeks, and years to come. Clearly, my friend, who is already lamenting about his hot-off-the-press blended family, is not adjusting so well either, being also woefully naive about the bullshit that pops up in a blended family. Before they blended, he probably had no idea how important it was for her to hear every single word of a show on television.

  “Well,” I tell him. “Your children should always come first. Child love is unconditional! Couple love is not.” Boy, am I fucking clever!

  I tell him, too, that he’d better set some boundaries from the start, which is advice I would have benefitted from hearing before I blended families. I actually do want to say, “What can I say? Blending families is so, so hard!” and leave it at that, because it really does sum it all up.

  Still, when I’ve given him some advice, or reassurance, and think that he’s feeling better about things, I can’t help but break some bad news. At least, it will be bad news for him.

  “Your girlfriend being upset about not being able to hear her show is not going to be your biggest hurdle. Not by a long shot,” I say.

  And so I tell him what my intuition is telling me. After all, if my male friend thinks that a battle over hearing the television is a big deal, I figure he better buckle up for the ride of a lifetime.

  “She’s going to want a baby. You know that, right? She’s, what, thirty-six?” I say. “Her clock is ticking.”

  “So? She says she doesn’t want kids,” he tells me. “We already discussed that.”

  Rookie!

  Sure, some women don’t ever want to have kids, a perfectly sane life choice. But based on my friends who married partners who already had children, and based on my own experience, I believe there is a great possibility his girlfriend, still in her child-bearing years, will eventually talk him into having another baby, a baby that would be theirs. Hers. Even if only so she won’t feel like an outsider when my male friend has his kids.

  “Do you want to make a bet?” I ask him. I’m so confident that his girlfriend is going to try to convince him to have another baby that I tell him I’m willing to place a thousand dollar bet.

  “I had a vasectomy,” he adds. Ha! As if that means anything. “I’m not getting it reversed. No way!”

  “Okay,” I tell him. But I can’t stop myself from reminding him that, months ago, after they had been dating for nearly two years, she gave him an ultimatum to marry him. And he proposed!

  “I’m not having another baby,” he says testily. “I don’t want any more children. She says she doesn’t want children. But what should I do when she flares up at the littlest things, when my kids are just being kids?”

  “Um, you should probably tell her that kids are, um, loud. That’s pretty much in their job description,” I say.

  Boy, I really am fucking clever!

  My friend has now taken to calling or texting me every few weeks or so to “check to see” how my relationship is doing. These calls piss me off, because I know he wants to hear that I’m miserable, or at least have something to complain about in my blended family, especially since he’s now in one and needs reassurance that he didn’t make a mistake. He taunts me with questions like, “Who paid the last hydro bill?”

  I tell him to go fuck himself, because I’m loyal to Boyfriend and I love Boyfriend. But still he continues to call and text, complaining about his girlfriend, who has what he describes as “fits of rage”, when she feels left out … which is every time his children are around.

  I know I’m not the best person for him to complain to, since I have had many of my own “fits of rage.”

  “I just can’t take the ups and downs when my children are with me,” he says.

  “But you made the choice to live with her!” I say. I feel bad for him, so I also add, “Don’t worry, you’ll all find your groove.” I’m not sure if this will be true, but, hey, I want to bolster his mood.

  One of the reasons no one knows what really happens when you blend is because couples in blended families don’t want to air their dirty laundry. Even I don’t share the entire truth of Boyfriend’s and my relationship, because I’m embarrassed over what we fight about. I don’t want other people knowing. Yet, at the same time, I want people to speak up about their truths and the harsh reality of blending.

  And so, my friend gets married. I’m not invited, but I see posts on social with photos of the wedding. I “like” their status updates.

  Two months later, also on social, I see that they have gotten a puppy, an almost surefire sign that his girlfriend is thinking about wanting a baby. Pretty much every couple I have ever met who gets a dog — a fur baby — together finds themselves pregnant within the year. It turns out they are no exception. I see the announcement, months later, that they are expecting. I want my thousand bucks!

  I want to tell both him and my virtual friend that it’s important to let yourself admit that blending families is hard. It’s like being an alcoholic: the first step is admitting you have a problem. Blending puts massive stress on your relationship, and if you don’t accept it, it will only make things worse. In blended families, more so than others, it’s really important for parents to acknowledge each other and show gratitude, because resentments crop up so easily over so many bullshit things, including not being able to hear a television show. Then again, I don’t follow my own goddamn advice, so why should anyone listen to me?

  My male friend stops calling and texting me. I’m pretty sure he just doesn’t want to admit that I was right. Or maybe, just maybe, they are blended and splendid? Or maybe he doesn’t want to give me the thousand dollars on the bet he lost.

  · TWELVE ·

  Brené Brown is a self-descri
bed research professor at the University of Houston, and she has spent the last twenty years studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen,” she quotes from novelist Anne Lamott.

  So, while my friend’s wife is expecting (a baby), I’ve had to tone down my expectations, for myself, of my family. Or at least I’m trying to tone down my expectations. I attempt to no longer expect anything, or at least to not feel disappointed, because expectations really are resentments waiting to happen. There’s one problem, though. I don’t know how to tone down my expectations. Expectations are abstract. They are not clearly defined or expressed. In fact, maybe I have vague expectations in my head that I have unsuccessfully tried to clarify, and thus have ended up disappointed.

  “What is so wrong with having expectations?” I yell at Boyfriend in the backyard, on more than one occasion, when, yet again, I feel hurt. Tonight, I’m on a rampage, admittedly taking my wrath out on Boyfriend. Maybe I do have higher expectations than the average person, but who wants to be average? Boyfriend, after all, fell in love with me and, like anyone in a new relationship, I came with expectations. To lower my expectations seems impossible, like I’d have to change my entire personality. Having high expectations is just who I am, and have always been, and I don’t know how to change me. And, anyway, what’s so wrong with being the type of person who sets goals and wants to achieve them? Trust me, if it was as easy as tapping my heels together, I would lower my expectations to not even having any at all, because it sure as hell would make life easier in my blended family. Note to self: Stop expecting.

  “I’m cancelling Mother’s Day forever,” I say to Boyfriend, as we stand in the backyard on my third or fourth Mother’s Day in a blended family and I’m in tears. We spent the majority of the day celebrating Boyfriend’s mother and my mother at a brunch at my house, and I’m exhausted. My daughter wrote me a wonderful, heartfelt card, saying how much she loves me. My parents and Boyfriend’s parents have given me cards and flowers. And, yes, Boyfriend has bought me a beautiful bracelet. And, yet, this year, it’s just not enough. Why? It’s now ten o’clock at night and I haven’t heard a peep from Boyfriend’s daughters, who of course are spending the day with their mother.

  “They probably are just busy with their mom and grandparents,” Boyfriend tells me.

  “Too busy to send even a one-line text?” I shoot back. His daughters, now teenagers, are normally stuck to their phones like barnacles, so I find it hard to believe they haven’t picked up their phones once today.

  I’m not sure what to expect from them, exactly, but I know that I have to lower my expectations when it comes to celebrations, be it my birthday, Mother’s Day, our anniversary, or pretty much any celebration. I get great joy celebrating other people, and I guess I expect the same back. Tsk tsk, me.

  I watch Boyfriend typing something into his phone, and within seconds, my phone beeps.

  “Happy Mother’s Day, Rebecca,” his eldest daughter texts, with a heart emoji. Ten seconds later, my phone beeps again.

  “Happy Mother’s Day, Rebecca!” his other daughter texts.

  I stare at him blankly.

  I’m not a fucking idiot. Clearly he just texted his girls, reminding them to text me. While I appreciate him having my back, I can’t help but wish he said to his children, “Maybe wait a bit?” so that it wasn’t exceedingly obvious that they didn’t do it of their own volition.

  When it comes to Father’s Day, I make sure that my daughter makes Boyfriend a card. She does so without question, and what she writes to him is so beautiful and thoughtful, it melts my heart. So why aren’t I getting the same kind of love back from Boyfriend’s children on Mother’s Day?

  The texts would have been great if I’d found them as soon as I woke up. But with just two hours before Mother’s Day ends, and in the wake of an obvious message from their father, the effort (if I can call it that) feels insincere. Probably because, let’s be fucking real, the fact that they needed to be told makes it exactly that.

  Maybe I have expectations because it wasn’t always like this. One Mother’s Day, I received a text from one of Boyfriend’s daughters at 10 a.m. It isn’t until much later, after blending, that it occurs to me that it wasn’t that they didn’t like me or didn’t think of me, but they probably had no idea what to say to me or whether they should say anything at all. They have their own mother, who they are extremely loyal to. I’m also reminded of my friend, the one who grew up with a wonderful stepfather and still found Father’s Day tricky because she didn’t want to give him a card that said “Dad” on it, since he wasn’t her dad. Maybe Boyfriend’s girls just don’t feel comfortable giving me a card that says “Mom” on it because I’m not their mom.

  “I think it takes a special person to be a step-parent,” my friend tells me when I say my Mother’s Day sucked because I was disappointed that Boyfriend’s daughters failed to acknowledge me. Obviously, I haven’t quite grasped how to lower my expectations. “You have to have an enormous amount of love and devotion to your partner and have a really big heart to really let the kids in. I always say my stepfather didn’t have to love me, but he chose to,” she says.

  Yet, these days, blended families aren’t necessarily any more dysfunctional than any other type of family makeup. Except for the fact that, in blended families, unlike traditional families, you definitely need to lower your expectations or else you’re fucked. No expectations equals no disappointments. I have learned, though, even if I don’t always show it, that I can’t blame other people when they disappoint me. I should blame myself for expecting too much. I also have learned that you never get any credit for lowering your expectations. The same thing happens with a couple after a breakup, and you actually give the engagement ring back when the other person asks for it. Has anyone, after a nasty breakup, gotten credit for giving the engagement ring back? Never have I heard of someone getting kudos when someone expects them to give the ring back and they actually do. Never once has Boyfriend, or anyone for that matter, said to me or acknowledged, “Geez, thanks so much Rebecca for lowering your expectations. I’m so very appreciative that you didn’t freak out, even though I know you feel shunned. Extra credit for you!”

  But, sometimes, just sometimes, when you’re in a blended family, you do get credit … from the person you least expect.

  I have a friend who also hates Mother’s Day, and she made the same mistake I did of not tempering her expectations when it came to her first Hallmark holiday in a blended family. She’s one of my best girlfriends, and she married a man who had two children from his first marriage. They would go on to have their own son, a child she so desperately wanted. On her first Mother’s Day as a mother of the biological child she had with her husband and a bonus parent to his children from his first marriage 50 percent of the time, my friend woke up, anticipating being celebrated. Yes, she did have high expectations for the day. (No, no, no! Expectations = disappointment!)

  When she woke up, her husband was not beside her in bed. She thought — or hoped, or expected — that her husband was in the kitchen preparing a surprise breakfast for her. But when she went downstairs, breathless and eager to see what her husband had planned for her on her first Mother’s Day, she couldn’t believe or understand what she saw. She saw … nothing.

  Her husband was nowhere to be seen, off on his daily morning jog. There was no card on the kitchen counter, no note telling her how much he appreciated her, no flowers, no small box with a piece of jewellery inside, and definitely no breakfast waiting for her. She had, she tells me, at the very least expected her husband to maybe go out and bring her back a coffee. Or she at least expected to wake up to hear her husband say to her, “Happy Mother’s Day.” But, nope. Her husband acted like Mother’s Day was just another Sunday. My friend was clearly upset, but she didn’t say anything to her husband when he got back home because she wanted to see how the day played out. She still had hope, or assumed, that he would do or sa
y something. And, so she waited … and waited.

  “I didn’t say anything, because truthfully? I was curious to see how long it would take before he realized that he hadn’t done anything for me,” she says. “I didn’t expect his kids to do anything for me. But I had cooked for his kids, cleaned up after his kids, drove his kids to activities. And, also, we had our own baby. How could he not acknowledge that? It was, in my head, my first real Mother’s Day, and all I could think was, ‘How can he forget me, the mother of one of his children?’ It was my first real Mother’s Day!” she repeats. Should she have lowered her expectations, to none at all, on her first Mother’s Day? How much less of an expectation could my friend possibly have, when she would have even been happy with a damn $5.99 Hallmark card?

  To make matters worse, it’s not like her husband didn’t know it was Mother’s Day. They had plans to go over to my friend’s mother’s house for brunch to celebrate her mother. That evening, they had plans to go visit her husband’s mother for dinner, to celebrate his mother. The one mother he seemed to have forgotten to celebrate was the mother he saw every single day — my friend, his wife and bio mother to one of his children!

  “I was so bitter and beyond offended that my husband didn’t even say ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ to me,” she continues. “But I kept a calm exterior, because I didn’t want to start a fight that would ruin the entire day.” To this day, I’m in awe of how she managed to hide her true feelings. I would have fucking lost my ever-loving mind if my husband totally didn’t do a thing for me on Mother’s Day.