Each of our kids had already endured one familial breakup. Were we ready to provide them stability and an example of enduring love? If not, why would we knowingly put them through sure trauma again? Nothing is certain in life, but Eric and I were all in. Not only were we all in, but we both had a consuming desire to demonstrate to our children the type of relationship we dreamed of for them, and neither of us felt like we had done so in our past lives. Scratch that. We absolutely knew we had not done so in our past lives.
So, we were madly in love and promised forever. Believed forever. Were confident in forever.
Still, this left a lot up to chance.
Pretend for a second that you married a touchy-feely HR consultant. Imagine that she had a penchant for things like mission, vision, and values statements. Picture her love of goal-setting and accountability. Some of you have mentally drawn up your divorce papers already.
Eric didn’t. He and I created a relationship operating agreement (ROA) for ourselves as a couple. I may or may not have promised years of sexual favors to secure his participation, but his attitude about the project was good. Now, this isn’t a relationship book. Well, it is, in a way. It is a book about our relationships with our children within a blended family. But it is not a couples’ relationship book, so I’ll spare you the gory details behind the ROA.
While we entered into our ROA to make our great relationship stronger, we did so knowing it would set the framework for co-parenting. Why? Because our kids were the most important things to each of us, besides one another. And since most second marriages break down over issues of stepparenting, money, or sex. Hell, many first marriages crash and burn on those issues. We had less than ideal co-parenting relationships with our exes, for sure.
So here’s how our ROA looks:
Our (Exceptionally Wonderful) Marriage
Mantra: Make it all small stuff.
Our relationship’s purpose is to create a loving, nurturing, safe environment that enables us to
make a positive, joyful difference in each other’s lives,
respect each other’s needs and differences,
encourage each other’s spiritual, emotional, and physical needs and development,
practice caring, open communication,
role-model loving relationships to our children,
and
work as partners when we parent and make major decisions.
Because we recognize that life is not always about the incredible highs, we are committed to these strategies:
Stop, breathe, and be calm.
Allow ourselves to cherish and be cherished.
Be positive. Assume a positive intent and give a positive response. Speak your mind as positively as possible.
Be reasonable. Am I being oversensitive? Am I dragging my own issues in unnecessarily?
Be considerate. Is there anything to gain from what I am about to say? Is this the right time to say it?
Be respectful. Don’t mope, don’t name-call, don’t yell, don’t be sarcastic.
Be open. Explain your intent.
Be present. Don’t walk away, physically or emotionally.
Be aware of time and energy. After 60 minutes, stop talking. Schedule another conversation for 24 hours later if there’s no resolution.
Make it safe to cry “calf rope.”
Be it. Do the behaviors you’re seeking in each other within an hour of the first conversation.
Be loving. Don’t go to bed angry or with things unresolved.
He asks of her:
Trust and have faith that I love you, enough that we don’t have to solve everything the second it happens.
Assume a positive intent.
Listen, don’t interrupt.
Don’t be sarcastic.
She asks of him:
Come back to me faster and don’t drag things out, because I need you.
Speak your mind assertively, and don’t be sarcastic.
Don’t assume the actions I take are always because of you.
Assume a positive intent.
We didn’t get this smart on our own. Both of us were trained to draft this type of agreement in our work lives, one of us more than the other. I specialize in working with hyper-competitive, confident-bordering-on-egomaniacal executives who are somewhat lacking in people skills, so I’ve spent years mediating, soothing, recalibrating, and at times walloping high-level business people into line. One of the best tools to get all the warring co-workers from different backgrounds to reach détente is an operating agreement. Even better? An operating agreement grounded in shared values, vision, and mission.
This worked so well for me with one of my problem executives that we ended up married. In fact, you just read our operating agreement.
Blendering Principle #2: Your mom was almost right: Do unto others as they would have done unto them.
So we addressed parenting, but more importantly, we addressed how we would handle ourselves in situations of higher stress and greater conflict. All of our commitments about behavior applied equally to the parenting context. Now, when a parent/stepparent decision point arose, we could act in accordance with pre-agreed principles.
Or we could try.
Execution got a little sloppy at times. When it did, we always had the agreement to return to, a touchstone, a refocusing point, a document which reminded us that for all we didn’t agree on, there was oh-so-much-more that we did.
We filtered our day-to-day co-parenting decisions through this model. Chores, allowances, length of skirts, cell phones—you name it, we used it. Even better, we used it when we designed our family structure and plan. Did I mention I believe in planning? I believe in plans. And I believe in modifying the plan within the context of agreed principles when new circumstances arise. We got the chance for a lot of planning and re-planning, right from the start.
When Eric and I first married, his eldest son Thomas had graduated from college and had a real job, Eric’s middle daughter Marie was entering college in the South, and his youngest daughter Liz lived with her mother on the East Coast. My Susanne was in elementary school, and my ADHD son Clark was in middle school; they split their time between their father and me. Our original parenting plan called for the two youngest kids to live mostly with us, for Liz to visit frequently, and for us to see Marie and Thomas as often as possible.
We envisioned all of our children, and someday their children, in our home as frequently as we could get them there. We bought a house in a great school district in Houston, with a veritable dormitory of four bedrooms upstairs and our master bedroom on the far side of the downstairs—because we love our kids even more from a distance. And how could we resist this house? It has a lush back yard with a three-level pond full of fat goldfish and koi that reminds us of the home we left behind on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Just as this is not a book about couples’ relationships, it is also not a book about divorce or custody battles. I could dish on those, but I won’t, because even though I’ve changed the names of all parties in this little tome to protect the innocent[, some things should and will remain private. They were painful. Isn’t that the case in all divorces? You don’t divorce because the relationship exceeded your expectations. You don’t divvy up with a light heart the time you will spend with children you cherish. Most of you don’t, anyway, and we sure didn’t.
So, for whatever reason, within four months of “I do,” Liz had taken up primary residence with us in Texas, and a year later Marie transferred to a university two hours away. I had never pictured myself taking a role of such primacy with two teenage stepdaughters. Teenage girls get a bad rap for good reason. It’s not the easiest time in their lives, or the easiest time for the people that love them, even with great girls like Liz and Marie. Yet this new arrangement fit the model we envisioned. We just needed to flex. A lot.
I held onto my husband’s hand for dear life and sucked in one deep, cleansing breath after another. We could do this. I co
uld do this. We would have no regrets or remorse, we would give our kids the best we could, and be damn happy doing it. Yeah!
And so, very carefully and very cautiously, we began to blender.
Click here to continue reading How To Screw Up Your Kids.
Excerpt from How to Screw Up Your Marriage (Successful Relationships)
Bring me a bucket.
When people tell me and my husband that we make them want to puke, we gaze into each other’s eyes and say, “Thank you!” Then we go home and make sweet, sweet love, while singing each other Marvin Gaye songs and weaving promise rings out of sea grass and clover.
It’s hard work, being this nauseating. The effort involved in all this damn smiling—you wouldn’t want to take it on, I promise. Totally exhausting. Add to this burden our perfect children and our perfect careers, and you’ve got the makings of chronic fatigue syndrome, at least.
As my youngest daughter would say, “Whatever.”
The first time an acquaintance told me, “Y’all are just so cute together it makes me want to puke,” I wasn’t sure how to take it. It sounded like a compliment, but it felt like a barb. I thought about her sterile marriage to a nice but unaffectionate man who didn’t seem to find her interesting, and about how she laughed about him behind his back. I analyzed the green look in her brown eyes; I’d seen it in other people’s eyes when I was with my husband. I concluded that, given the choice, I’d like to keep my relationship over hers, thank you very much. Also, while she seemed envious in a grudgingly admiring way, I’d never seen evidence that she worked to improve her own marriage. Not once. Did she think pukeworthiness just happened by accident, by a sprinkling of pixie dust? I don’t believe it does.
So, yep, I am the lucky princess with the fairytale marriage. But I’m willing to bet even Cinderella and Prince Charming had their issues. Unfortunately for my prince, I habitually and publicly confess my more interesting failings, which inevitably involve our relationship from time to time. I guess that in addition to being half of a couple who makes you want to puke, I have diarrhea of the mouth (and fingers), too. Totally irresistible, I know.
I wish I could make it sound more scintillating than it really is, maybe write about how Eric is a compulsive gambler and I am a gender-reassignment success story, and the neighbors have called the cops to break up our fights on three separate occasions. That would be exciting, but it wouldn’t be true.
The truth is boring. The truth is that we are as flawed as the next couple. I adore my almost-perfect husband, who puts up with me writing about him and being a gigantic pain in the ass. I love my normal, fallible kids and stepkids[1]. I love our messed-up, wacky life. But just because we adore and love each other, it doesn’t mean the rest comes easily.
While I have no scandalous revelations for you, I can share the secrets of how two highly emotional, self-absorbed, over-committed Type-A losers at marriage (we are both each other’s second spouse) manage our relationship into the true thing of beauty that it is.
And I do mean manage.
(Are you choking on that vomit yet? Stick around.)
If my day job counts, I am a so-called expert in human relations. As a hybrid employment attorney/human resources professional and consultant, I get paid to help grownups manage their workplace relationships. The HR principles I apply at work are, in theory, principles for humans anywhere—like humans in a marriage, even a second marriage like mine.
There’s a good reason doctors don’t usually treat family members: when it comes to our loved ones, our rational selves are replaced by emotional creatures. Things get personal. Things get messy. All the psychological training in the world couldn’t guarantee that someone (and by someone I mean me) will play fair.
Physician, heal thyself. HR Consultant, you too.
So it is with some embarrassment, and hopefully a bit of humility, that I will share our foibles and our feats. We understand how wrong we each got it on our first ride on the marriage-go-round, and we believe that through painful trial and error, we’ve finally gotten a grip on the brass ring. We know the statistics: over 40% of first marriages end in divorce and up to 67% of second do, too. The big issues—emotional intimacy, mutual support, compatibility, respect, sex, and money[2]—get even trickier when you add stepparenting, alimony, child support, ex-spouses, and the “It’s easier to say ‘I quit’ the second time” phenomenon. But we’re beating the odds, and we want you to, as well. And so we begin. Keep your Pepto-Bismol handy.
* * *
I’ll refer to family members, friends, and clients from time to time. Names have been changed to protect the innocent—which Eric and I are far from. ↵
And, these days, I'd have to say that technology, like social media and smartphones, makes these issues more immediate and drives up the intensity. ↵
There's nothing under the canoe, honey.
Above: This is how we roll.
My husband and I went on our honeymoon in Montana in June, which unbeknownst to us was still the dead of winter. (We hail from the Caribbean.) At the time, we were training for a Half Ironman triathlon,training for a Half Ironman triathlon, so we needed to find an upper-body strength and aerobic substitute for swimming during our two weeks of bliss. Without taking the weather into account, we’d decided that canoeing or kayaking would suffice.
So off we traipsed from Houston to Montana, where we stayed in an adorable bed-and-breakfast near Yellowstone, which we picked because the owner advertised healthy organic food. The beets, quinoa, and cauliflower kugel we were served for breakfast weren’t exactly what we’d hoped for, but we felt fantastic. And hungry. Very, very hungry.
Our “Surprise! We’re vegetarian!” B&B sat near a tundra lake. For those of you who have not seen a tundra lake, imagine a beautiful lake in a mountain clearing surrounded by tall evergreens. Picture deer drinking from crystalline waters, hear the ducks quacking greetings to each other as they cruise its glassy surface. Smell the pine needles in the air, fresh and earthy.
And then imagine the opposite.
A tundra lake is in the highlands, no doubt, but the similarity stops there: no trees, no windbreak, no calm surface, and no scenery. Instead, it’s an ice-chunk-filled, white-capped pit of black water extending straight down to hell, stuck smack dab in the middle of a rock-strewn wasteland. Other than that, it’s terrific.
Maybe it was because we were newlyweds, but somehow Eric intuited that I would love nothing more than to canoe this lake in forty-degree weather and thirty-five-mph winds, wearing sixty-seven layers of movement-restricting, water-absorbent clothing. Maybe it was because we were newlyweds, but I somehow assumed that because he knew of my dark water phobia and hatred of the cold (anything below seventy degrees), I was in good hands. My new husband assured me this lake was perfect for tandem canoeing.
So . . . we drove across the barren terrain to the lake. Eric was bouncy. I was unable to make my mouth form words other than “You expect me to get in that @#$%&&*$* canoe on that @#$%&&*$* lake?”
I promise he is smarter than this will sound. And that I am just as bitchy as I will sound. In my family, we call my behavior being the bell cow, as in “She who wears the bell leads the herd—and takes no shit from other cows.”
Eric answered, “Absolutely, honey. It’ll be great. Here, help me get the canoe in the water. I’d take it off the car myself, but with that wind, whew, it’s like a sail. Careful not to dump it over; it’s reallllly cold in there. Not like that, love. Where are you going? Did I say something wrong?”
I responded by slamming the car door. Anger gave way to tears that pricked the corners of my eyes. I stewed in my thoughts. I knew I had to try to canoe. I couldn’t quit before I started. We were training, and if I didn’t do it, Eric wouldn’t do it, and that wasn’t fair of me.
I exited the car. Eric was dragging the canoe out of the water and trying to avoid looking like a red flag waving in front of me.
Super-rationally, I asked, “What are you doin
g?”
He said, “Well, I’m not going to make you do this.”
“You’re not making me. I’m scared. I hate this. I’ll probably fall in and all you’ll find is my frozen carcass next summer. But I’m going to do it.”
My poor husband.
We paddled clockwise around the lake in the shallows, where the waves were lowest, and I fought for breath. I’m not sure if it was the constriction of all the clothing layers or actually hyperventilation, but either way, I panted like a three-hundred-pound marathoner. It would have scared off any animal life within five miles if you could have heard me over the wind. Suddenly, Eric shot me a wild-eyed look and started paddling furiously toward the center of the lake.
“You’re going the wrong way!” I protested.
“I can’t hear you,” he shouted back.
“Turn around!”
“I can’t turn around right now, I’m paddling.”
“Eric Hutchins, turn the canoe back toward the shore!”
And as quickly as his mad dash for the deep had started, it stopped. He angled the canoe for the shoreline.
“What in the hell was that all about?” I asked.
“Nothing, love. I just needed to get my heart rate up.”
I sensed the lie, but I couldn’t prove it. My own heart raced as if I had been the one sprint-paddling. For once, though, I kept my mouth shut.
The waves grew higher. We paddled and paddled for what felt like hours, but made little forward progress against the wicked-cold wind.
“Eric, I really want out of the canoe.”
“We’re halfway. Hang in there.”
“No. I want out right now. I’m scared. We’re going to tip over. I can’t breathe.”
Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) Page 33
