Foundations

In a marriage, a normal everyday marriage before kids, the foundation of the family starts with the couple. The couple gets to know each other, gets married, and then decides to have children. In a world when people think about others and actually communicate and don’t try to trap others, the couple will communicate if they actually want to have kids or not. This is something they decide together. The woman doesn’t decide this for the man. During this communication things like discipline and expectations should be addressed. When kids come along the married couple become parents, but they remain a couple. They are the foundation of the family. The kids grow up and leave the house. This is the parent’s job, to raise the children to leave.

In a blended family there are already children involved. The couple is no longer the foundation of the family and it usually is not a pretty situation. There are usually hurt feelings and unresolved emotional attachments. Divorce is hard enough on a couple without kids (this I know because I am also on my second marriage but without kids). It takes time to get over what happened and to heal from the hurts of what happened in the marriage and the whole divorce proceedings. Then one of the parents gets involved with someone else and a new foundation is created. Now people will argue that the children have to be put first, the poor kids are hurting and don’t know what to do, but it is up to the adults to model a healthy relationship. This means the new couple, the new foundation, HAS to put the marriage first, because if they don’t the foundation will crumble just like it did in the first marriage.

If you want to think about divorce and the causes of divorce, no matter what happened the fact that the couple did not work together to keep the marriage a top priority can be seen as the reason the marriage failed. The man was an abuser; guess what, he didn’t put his marriage first because he beat up his wife. It was his own needs and ideas that were put first. The man was an adultery, same thing, the marriage wasn’t put first, his needs were put first (the same for women adulteress and abusers.) When ever you stop thinking about your partner and start thinking only about yourself or your kids or anything but putting your marriage first you are attacking the foundation of your family.

In my case my ex was an abuser. The divorce was half my fault because I put my own safety and well being before the marriage and he put his need to control me and put me down before the marriage. With hubby, from what I’ve heard and seen they both put their own needs before their marriage and hubby put the child before his wife. Now, we are working on repairing the foundation (our marriage) and it’s not easy and it’s not cheap (emotionally), but anything worth having is worth earning. Just my POV.