There are a lot of reasons people decide that divorce is the best decision for their family. There are a few statistics that people are not unaware of. When you hear about these statistics it may give you the little push you need to try harder in your marriage and not take the easy way out, divorce. First, the divorce rate is actually much lower than 50%. That number is thrown around a lot, but that means that in a given year half the people who got married would have had to get divorced too. There are reasons we feel like the divorce rate is huge right now, but it may not be quite as bad as we initially thought. Next, it has been proven that couples who could hold on for 5 years after the initial time they were thinking about divorce, 70% of them rate their marriage was better than before. Also, 70% of couples admitted 2 years after their divorce that they should have saved their marriage. A huge thing to be aware of is that separation will probably kill and ailing marriage, separation is not a cure. People often times claim to stay married for their children. When they stay married but continue hating each other they are continuing to do harm to their child. Divorce and remaining married while hating each other are not the only options! Thankfully with hard work, time, and effort you can improve your marriage that way you are not living with someone you hate! And finally, one of the most annoying things to me is when a couple, married for years, claims their reason for divorce is incompatibility… don’t you think that when your dating is the time to find out if you are incompatible rather than 5, 10, 15 years down the road? I call this an excuse for someone not willing to work on their marriage.
Now let’s talk about blended families. Some other words for this may be remarried, reconstituted, or stepfamilies. There are a variety of ways a family can be considered a blended family, but basically it is anything outside of a nuclear family, or a family that has 2 biological parents with their biological children. There are a lot of challenges that come with blended families. A nuclear family has pretty clear lines. The parents date, get married, have kids, and raise the kids together. Since both parents are there for the entire life of the child, they are able to learn and grow together as a couple and as a family. In a blended family there are more than 2 parents. There are the biological parents, then whoever they remarry. There may even be 4 parents. This can get difficult for the parents who are not the biological parents to create that same bond with the child, especially the older the kids are. This will impact the newly married parents as well as a child who is bouncing from home to home weekly, every other weekend, or never gets to see one of their parents. There will definitely be challenges that come along with blending a family.
Divorce is a touchy topic that is becoming all too familiar to us all. It seems to be the trend right now and everyone is doing it. I think if we take a step back and realize we will have our hard days, weeks, month, years, or even decades, but in the end if we decide to stay together it will be for the benefit of everyone. I also know that blended families are very common. There are ways for blended families to work. I think it’s important to recognize the difficulties that come with divorce and blending families, but that there is also hope in situations where this needs to happen.
Best of Family Relations 