It was during the 35th year of our anniversary that my late wife died.  I never imagined that I would be single in my 50’s thinking about finding another mate for my life.  I needed to deal with my grief as well as thinking about taking care of two of my three children that were still in the home.  It was a crisis of giant proportion in working full-time, seeking to pay my bills, making breakfasts, lunches and dinners, cleaning the house, getting the kids to school, getting them to bed, as well as trying to be a mother and father to my kids that had just lost their mother.  There were times that I would sit on the couch or chair frozen with so many things to do and not knowing where to start.  The more I sat, the more frozen I became.  It was only when I thought about doing one thing-washing a dish, or making my bed-that I began to move from immobility to action.  You could say that I was depressed and needed to focus forward rather than dwelling on what I had lost.

It was after a few months that I dated a couple of women, but dating was an uphill battle.  I found that the women I dated had very different perspectives of life, of parenting, of dating, of almost anything.  Their baggage–and mine–caused us to be in different library sections, not even in the same book.  Trying to make a relationship work when two people who think so differently caused me to become disillusioned about ever finding a person that I could live with for the rest of my life.

This experience brought me to a principle that is critically important in blending families.  The principle involves having two people have like-mindedness and similar views on the importance of family and parenting.  It is in the early stages of dating that  questions need to be asked about their views of their children, their goals for their children, their feelings about independence from their families, and what they have done to help their children get to the place where they are 1) Independent, 2) Mature, and 3) Decision-making adults.  Of course there are different child development stages so the answer to these questions will depend on the ages of the children.

It’s one thing to ask these questions to the person you begin to date.  It’s quite another to see how they respond when you are put in a situation and need to put priority on your children.  Partners who are supportive will give full assent to your needing to take time to deal with the issues at hand.  Partners who show concern give you an indication as to where they are in their priorities of child raising.  In writing these last two statements, I am confronted with situations where people put top priority on their children at the cost of the marital relationship.  It’s good for the kids because they feel loved and valued, but it does a number on the marital structure that needs to be top priority.

In the book of Ephesians, Paul the writer, structured the book as a book of priorities.  The structure of Greek puts the most important relationship first, second most important relationship second, and so on.  In Ephesians, the most important relationship that is identified is our relationship with God (Ephesians 1-4)  The husband-wife relationship is the second most important relationship that is identified (Ephesians 5:21-26).  It’s in Ephesians 6 that Paul talks about the relationship with children in being obedient to their fathers and fathers not exasperating their children to anger.  Paul clearly defines the husband-wife relationship as more important than our relationship with our children.  That doesn’t mean that we neglect them, but that we make sure that our marriage takes priority over our children.

Principle

Before we ever come together as a blended family, it is critically important to make sure that our potential spouse and ourself have minds that are capable of meshing together, of getting into the same section of the library, into the same book, the same chapter, and on the same page.  Do we have the same priorities in place?  When our children are in crisis, is there support from our potential partner to deal with the crisis?  What does our partner see in terms of the time we need to carve out to get on the same page?  How do they value a marital relationship versus the parental relationship?