He Said She Said -Blended Families

He Said
Dating is hard.Marriage is hard. Divorce is hard.
None of them is as hard as trying to blend families.
If you have ever been married, divorced, and married
again, you know of what I speak. Don't get me wrong,
My fiancee' is the epitome of love, happiness and joy.
BUT(the old proverbial but) blended families are a
constant reminder of the trials and tribulations of
love.
It's not her. It's not her children. They are all great.
It's our differences and what we bring from our respective
families and other marriages that open up Pandora's Box.
Nothing she does is wrong; it's just different from
how I would handle certain situations. Not right. Not
wrong. Just different.
That doesn't mean I don't love her any less or think
that she is a bad mother; I just have another opinion.
She is a good mother and I do love her. Some of the
problems come from the excess baggage of our past
histories brought to the forefront from another life.
"What we bring from the past is an effort to blend it
into the future"...for our families of course.
Is that profound or what? Sometimes I amaze myself.

She Said
Blending families is a little like combining vanilla
and chocolate. It's hard to take two families who were
brought up in separate environments, taught to solve
problems differently,and expect them to blend into the
Brady Bunch overnight. Blend into what?
Foods blend, Drinks blend. People tend to segregate.
With the divorce rate so high, it seems that a child
living with both biological parents under the same
roof is rare. In split homes, there must be a lot of
give and take from everyone. Hopefully, everyone will
have the same goal in mind, which is to coexist peacefully
and support each other emotionally. The Hill and Oldham
children are adults and there has never been a cross
word from any of them, but what about families with
young children?
When young children are involved, there needs to be a
common set of rules by which all abide. I have often
wished there was a set of instructions for how to
peacefully set up housekeeping with stepfamilies,
but there is no "easy button".
Why don't we just drop the term "blended families" and
call it something else like "Chosen Ones" with the
common goal of our children being healthy, wealthy,
and wise instead of being like us, older, poorer, and forgetful?