The Fine Art of Blending

I have spent the past several years defining myself. Who am I, and who do I want to be? What do I want, what do I need, what do I strive for... I have, over time, addressed all of these questions and found some sort of answer to them. I have embraced my single parenthood and worked hard to feel mostly happy and content with the circumstances of my life, and with myself. During that process, I became fiercely protective of my independence, my "me" time, and of the things that make me who I am. I created a life that worked for well for us. It was comfortable in that our little twosome could do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. It was smooth in that it was predictable and without major challenges.

Things have changed. Drastically.

It's not just me anymore. There's a man who wants to share his life with me. Keyword: share.  It's not MY life, or HIS life....it's OUR life. And I love the sound of that. I love the idea of it. It's what I wanted more than anything. But I'm going to be completely honest and tell you, I don't love the implementation of going from Mine to Ours.

I'm not talking about deciding who has the highest quality bath towels, or whose brand of toothpaste is the best, although those have been recent discussions. I'm not even referring to those quirky little habits you discover in a person when you live with them (He saves every single Ziploc bag for reuse. Every. Single. One.) I'm talking about the elephants in the room - the ones that effect our daily lives and our family values.

Each compromise feels like I'm giving away peices of myself that make me the person I am, the parent I am. I have never co-parented. I have never co-habited. Hell, I've never co- anything! I don't do co-. I do ME. And I especially don't do co- when it comes to my son. I want to, I do, but that means completely re-programming myself. That means unleanring 8 years of single parenting survival skills that I've clung to for sanity and success. It means giving up a lot.

Right now, we are at a point where it's necessary to discuss and plan and negotiate everything, because if we don't a volcano of misunderstood expectations erupts. Our kids get mixed messages. We get defensive. Gray areas become a hot zone of conflict. It gets ugly fast.

So we are each giving a little here and a lot there, and we're starting to develop some standards that we both can live with. The good news is that most of the time, we share a common goal. The tricky part is that we have dramatically different ideas of how to reach those goals.

It's hard. It's emotional. It's exhausting.

But the reward is something really amazing. More and more, we have experiences where it's effortless to feel like a family. We have long periods where it feels like we started from scratch and have been together for years. The His and Mine lines are so faded sometimes that you can hardly see them. It's easy, and it feels right. To have those experiences just a couple of months into this journey is energizing. Those moments keep me negotiating, compromising, and learning to share. They convince me to try again to re-program, because the end result is that my family becomes a family. My peiced together, baggage-laden family that I wouldn't trade for the world will somehow find a way to be a cohesive unit who love each other in spite of where we came from and how we got to where we are. That is my hope, and two months into this mess, I really believe it's possible. I've seen glimpses.