Holiday Guide To Effective Family Blending

Every family has traditions, traditions are stories that families write together. Family dynamics change due to separations, divorce, death or the two individuals’ grow apart.  Whatever the reason, it’s important to embrace the new person and blend family traditions, people and stories by respecting everyone and allowing new and old traditions to change, emerge, grow and thrive. Here are my thoughts for blended families:

Let’s start with the dysfunctional reasons holding families from bonding and reaching blending growth, which I call dysfunctional family blending or refusal to blend:

• That woman or man did not take him or her, they were gone long before he or she met.

• They are the new you, him or her.  Respect her. Embrace her. Love her. Get to know her, but mostly:

• Stop blaming him or her, they did nothing to break them up. And if they did, email me for that list of my thoughts on that subject. smiles!

• Try getting to know them, ask questions, you may learn you have a lot in common, even better you may end up liking or loving her too.

• We should never not like someone because of what someone has shared about them. It’s unfair to them and extremely telling about the person or persons sharing negative information.

Get to know the new person.  Ask pertinent questions regarding their personal:

Values, goals, ambitions, education, life experiences, engagements, personality, and behaviors

• Listen to them with an open heart, find awareness and meaningful in them, try including them in family discussions, they may share interesting and relevant information.

• New people are people too, and there must be something about them that makes your family member happy.

• Ignoring them is ignoring your family member and their selection. It also makes you look ugly, inconsiderate and unkind.

Don’t fight the new person for your family member’s attention.  That is a battle, you will lose. You will look petty. Again, there must be something about them that makes your family members happy enough to keep them around.

• If you continue to refuse to acknowledge the person or question why they were chosen, you are the problem.

• Never make assumptions.  They chose them for a reason, and normally they will proudly share the reasons, but you must be willing to listen and accept with an open heart.

• You don’t have to agree with their reasons or like them, but you should respect them unless of course, they have done something unacceptable to YOU.

One day you could be in their shoes and karma is a bitch. 

• Relationships end, separations, and divorces happen every day. 

• You could be next. Ask yourself, would you want to be treated like you have treated them? I think not.

Ask the person or persons sharing negative thoughts or information with you, why? What is their end game? And why do you choose to listen to them?

• Instead of stalking the person’s social media: Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, stalk them by starting conversations with her.  

Use your brain, who do you think they are going to admire most, you with your negative attitude or the new person who treats them with mutual respect?

• Also, don’t get caught up and use the excuse, it’s your mother, father, aunt, uncle, grandparent or in-law and you only wish to protect them. You don’t. Your controlling actions are about you and only you.

Remember they are together, the synergy is they go home with each other, sleep in the same bed, wake up together and are #1 when answering text and phone calls.

• Find and accept your place, when everyone is pushing back, the toxicity level increases.

• Stay in your lane, respect the dynamics of changing family positions.

• Be aware and mindful of others quietly watching your dysfunctional and toxic non-winning actions. 

• You can do this because trust me, winners are real winners with real hearts and well, losers are losers, reading this won't change their controlling attention-seeking perspective one iota.