"I will never have a family again...."

The Ex made a disturbing comment to me yesterday about his family being destroyed and him never having a family again. He said he will never give 100% of himself, never full integrate his life with someone else's, and when the going gets tough he'll just get divorced again. He said that some things only come with "the first time around", as if an subsequent marriages and family are somehow not as legitimate. I told him that's a sad way to view life, love and family.

I don't know why this JUST now dawned on me, but that comment really was a slap in the face to me AND my family. He always talks about how he looks up to my parents and my family, but I grew up in a blended step family. I know I've mentioned this before, but for some reason it's true implications JUST really dawned on me. It sounds stupid, but it's like those optical illusion pictures that you stare at and then all the sudden see the picture of the horse or the sailboat. My parents have been married for 33 years, and from the outside looking in (hell, from the inside too) it looked like your typical nuclear 2 biological parent family with 4 kids. But the fact is that my mother was divorced and her ex husband is my oldest sister's father. My parents married when my sister was 5 years old.... when my mom was only a few years younger than I am now (27 I believe), and my dad adopted my sister and raised her as his very own, so well that nobody aside from select family members knew the difference. Unfortunately, the reason nobody knew or had to know was because her dad disappeared from her life, and my dad stepped right into that role.

I'm really baffled at myself right now, how I never thought about this, and didn't even think about it when I was having that conversation with The Ex yesterday. But it just goes to support my view that divorce is not the end of the world, not the scorge upon the earth that The Ex and right wing religious zealots say it is, it is not an impediment to having a happy and healthy family. Sometimes that first try just isn't the right try.

My family may treat this as it's "dirty little secret", though I don't know why. From now on I will proudly say "Yes, I am the product of a blended family". And I think, all things considered, we did okay.