The Sunday Paper today carries a column written by Carolyn Hax titled: “Dad worries merging homes will upset kids.” The Girlfriend wants to merge the teenage kids into one house and the Dad is concerned his kids will hate him forever if he does this. The Girlfriend figures it will all just work out and doesn’t show any concern for the kids’ situation. There’s nothing unusual about this except that Hax actually rips into her for being a selfish jerk. This is certainly a refreshing attitude which I don’t remember seeing before. Thank you Carolyn Hax!
Link to the article: http://www.mercurynews.com/style/ci_9868244
Here’s the column:
DEAR CAROLYN: I am almost 50 and have been dating by all accounts (especially mine) one of the finest men on the planet for three years. Our relationship is to the point that we do virtually all things together, maintain a mutual calendar, have daily interaction via phone and face to face, kid celebrations, family events, etc.We each have three high school/college-age kids. For the most part we all get along. He’s a churchgoing Catholic, very successful, thrifty, a doormat for his kids and an over-thinker. I am feeling it is time to merge our lives, as “dating” at this point is quite costly in time and in maintaining two expensive households, while living essentially the same life. He says his kids will not react positively to this “merger” and he will “lose” them.
While I respect there will be a learning curve for all of us, if he really can’t begin to plan on our life together, I am ready to move on. Can you glean any considerations to manage this situation? We love and enjoy one another tremendously, are loyal, compassionate confidants . . . but we have reached a stalemate, and I am growing restless with the situation and skeptical about my life’s path being decided by his children’s contrivances.
S.G.
DEAR S.G.: If you used the word “contrivance” to describe my desire not to have my world upended when I’m, what, three years from leaving the house? Not even that? Then I’d be angry at my dad for marrying you, too.
Home is a very, very big deal. You may be the adults of these homes, you and your boyfriend. You may be in a position to exercise your will over the will of your children. You may have legitimate reservations about kids who have this much say over their father’s life.But as one of the two adults here, you also have the ability, I hope, both to take the long view and to delay gratification.
You and this man have the rest of your lives to be together, but these kids have just a few years left in the nest. Why should at least three kids have to give up their home – bedrooms, hangouts, neighborhood, touchstones – and the others have to shuffle theirs, to tackle a “learning curve” they don’t need to tackle? To accommodate a situation where, so far, they get along “for the most part”?
I don’t advocate coddling children. When change is necessary for the greater good, then the kids will have to adjust.
But this is change for your good. And these are kids who have already been through one major nest-upending. Maybe your over-thinking doormat is overestimating your patience, or underestimating his kids. But maybe you’re underestimating the goodwill you could demonstrate by holding off on the merger till it displaces the fewest people possible – and by not resenting the kids for it. I wonder what effect it would have on the stalemate if you were to propose this: You and he plan on merging your lives officially when the nests empty out on their own.
Contact Carolyn Hax at tellme@washpost.com.
Filed under: Authority, Possible Personality Traits of Children of D., Prostitution, name change, runaways
Eliot Spitzer has resigned from his job as Governor of New York because he rents prostitutes. I don’t care a whole lot about a Politician’s sex life but I suppose it’s odd that Spitzer passed a law last year that is very harsh on Johns. Spitzer may have to serve more time in Jail now because of his own law. This is an odd story.
The media has come forth with the identity of the Prostitute that Spitzer knew as “Kristen.” Don’t know why but I don’t want to use her real name here. Here’s a link to an article about her although I suppose everyone has had their fill already (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/13/spitzer.kristen/index.html).
Here’s Kristen profile of herself from her MYSPACE website:
When I was 17, I left home. It was my decision and I’ve never looked back. Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split. Left and learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again. Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own.
This is the part that we’re concerned about here in bold:
When I was 17, I left home. It was my decision and I’ve never looked back. Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split. Left and learned what it was like to have everything, and lose it, again and again. Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone. I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own.
Why this repeated theme of Loss?:
… a broken family.
First off, I’d like to remind myself right here that, according to the psychologists, Kristen’s welfare doesn’t matter. It’s the 70 percent of Children of Divorce who are OK and don’t need help that the psychologists will concentrate all their talk on. (Is it Hypocratic Oath or Hypocrite Oath? And that’s not including the people from the 70 percent who don’t feel quite right about their parents’ divorce either.
I’m probably about the age of Kristen’s mother. In my day we never admitted that what was going on at home was bad. Talking about your parents’ divorce was sort of a back alley conversation that was done in private. In public it either invited either apathetic resentment or gooey empathy.
I only tell people I grew up in Divorce when I’m trying to feel them out to see if I can have any emotional intimacy with them. I keep the statement short and concise and use it more as Code to see how they react. It’s a lot like Senator Larry Craig’s foot tapping in bathroom stalls in Airports. “I’m Gay and that’s Taboo in my World and I just need some relief.” “I grew up torn apart and can’t handle being judged.” R U my Friend? Don’t know how to type out that lingo the kids have now.
And I admit when I read Kristen’s description my first reaction was “Oh Gawd. A basketcase. She’s out of control.” I don’t even know why. I think it must be conditioning to think on society’s terms. My first reactions to other people’s emotions are sometimes pretty cold I guess, like society’s.
My second reaction was to remember all the psychiatrists who have told me that this Codeword: “Growing up in Divorce” meant nothing and was not connected in any way with my depression, certainly it could not have invoked a traumatic reaction in any way. They also never asked a single question about the situation that I lived in as if all Divorces are exactly the same. Psychotherapists are absolutely useless to talk to because they are all divorced themselves and very self defensive. You can see those lips pursing the second you use the code on them. Either that or they are gooey Empaths who have no information to share but a lot of slime to smear all over you. Told you I’m cold but I keep remembering this one family service therapist who assured me that psychology studies Children of D now. And then she said nothing further about it.
My third reaction? I don’t really remember. I suppose just to feel sadness and to wish Kristen and her family well. There was prostitution in my family and I understand why women turn to it. It’s money. It’s from not having alternatives in society. It’s from being in a hurry. It’s from that line “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” “I’d do it anyway.” “They often just want to talk” is actually a marketing ploy that Call Girls tell to prospective “co-workers” to draw them into the pain. Women love to do this kind of thing to each.
The media is saying Kristen is self-victimizing. When the media plays these stories over and over again do they think of themselves as self-victimizing? When we the public watch these stories do we call it self-victimizing? Anyway, Kristen is probably working out a book and movie deal right now as we speak. She grew up being fought over as a tax deduction and a bartering tool for child support (which was probably never paid or came around the 20th of the month). If that’s what you are to your parents then that’s what you can be to your John’s. And at $1000 /hour, hey, how many months of begging from real life Daddy would it take to pull that kinda dough in?
The girl’s 22 and living in a $3,500 / month apartment. She knows she’s worth $1000 hour. I’m still at the $3.75 /hr self worth profile. When I was 22 I was working as a secretary feeling debased everyday anyway. And I was living in a basement apartment. It sort of freezes me to think about it right now.
So when we look at Spitzer’s bio we notice that he is not from a broken home. What can I say? Another sad product of a Normal Family.
Eliot Spitzer’s bad relationship with his Father was discussed in one Internet article. His father was such an Authoritarian that he reduced Spitzer to tears. That is a problem that kids from Normal Families seem to have. They seem to have a single moment where their parents reduce them to a smithering idiot. This is considered survival tactics. It produces Killer Instinct. I don’t have any proof of this, but it seems to instill an intense relationship with Authority in the little tots. It seems to drive them to abuse Authority in their careers (if you’ve ever worked in a large office for Middle Management you know exactly what I mean).
I think that’s maybe the one thing that Children of Divorce don’t really have as much of a sense of. Authority.
“This is for your own good” coming from a Divorced Parent will often just make the kids laugh. The parents act too much like the kids or some really old friends. Then in walks a step parent. Coming from a step-parent “the own good” statement is plain old sadistic. How many Authority Figures is a kid supposed to answer to without completely dissolving into a puddle of nothingness? Eliot Spitzer’s Father made him cry. Times that by 4 for each parent. Go ahead, do the math, it won’t hurt your head too much. Or will it?
Although often it can be a sign of anti-social behavior in a young person, I don’t think this lack of unquestionably approving Authority figures is a bad thing necessarily. Barack Obama, for example, was able to speak up in the Senate against going to War in Iraq because he doesn’t seem to have this blind stupid regard for Authority when Authority is wrong. (Of course, he’s a nice guy with good manners and a great education and a great wife and an ability to speak with pearls and diamonds.)
Wow, what happened here? Long ramble.
