This week in couples counseling, I was asked a question that should have been relatively easy to answer. What do YOU need?
I didn’t know. Not because I don’t have needs, but because I’ve spent so much time figuring out what needs to happen next that I hadn’t really considered what happens when I reach the point where I can’t be the person to make it happen. We didn’t get far enough into that conversation for me to fully understand my own answer, so I’ve spent the better part of the week trying to make sense of thoughts that have actually been swirling around for much longer.
I did what I usually do when something is bothering me. I researched, considered the options, found a possible solution, and did the work to make it easier to consider. It wasn’t a guaranteed fix, but it was something we could explore to potentially make a difficult part of our family life more manageable. Then I reached the point where the next decision wasn’t mine to make, and I had to wait. Which, for someone who likes to understand what comes next, is a special kind of torture.
I understand that people process things differently. My mother taught me when I was a teenager to wait three days before sending a letter written out of anger or hurt. Back when we actually wrote letters instead of firing off text messages and immediately regretting our enthusiasm. I’ve carried that lesson with me. I think things through, consider other perspectives, and frequently revisit conversations wondering whether I could have expressed myself differently. But I’ve also come to believe there’s a difference between giving something time and waiting for time to make the decision for you.
I’m a problem solver. I like structure, communication, and knowing where things stand. That doesn’t mean I need to control everything or that every idea I have is brilliant. Believe me, there have been some questionable ones. But when something is hurting people I love, my instinct is to figure out whether there’s a way to make it better. It’s what I tell our girls all the time: the answer is always no unless you ask.
I also know that my way of approaching problems isn’t everyone’s. Some people need time to process, some need to talk without being offered solutions, and some have spent so long managing difficult circumstances that the thought of introducing another unknown feels exhausting. I understand all of that. What I struggle with is knowing how to remain myself within those differences without feeling like my questions, suggestions, or opinions are creating more distance. I can notice a change in someone’s expression and immediately begin questioning what I’ve said. Was I too direct? Should I have just listened? Did I make something worse by trying to help? It’s exhausting to constantly wonder whether being yourself is making things harder for someone you love.
One of the more complicated realities of a blended family is that co-parenting responsibilities may belong to the biological parents, but the effects of contentious co-parenting don’t stay neatly contained within those conversations. They come home. They influence moods, decisions, plans, and the energy everyone has left for each other. I love my husband, and I know he’s exhausted, too. I know he carries things he doesn’t necessarily want to bring into our marriage, perhaps because he believes he’s protecting me from them. I understand the intention, but I don’t want protecting me to mean leaving him alone with something that affects both of us. And I don’t want supporting him to require pretending those circumstances don’t affect me.
And I want to be clear that this isn’t our everyday life. We have a good marriage. We go on dates, cuddle on the couch, laugh together, and make an effort to prioritize each other. We’re raising our family, making plans, and enjoying the life we’ve built. This isn’t something we wake up and argue about every morning. Most of the time, it exists quietly in the background, in that gray area of our lives we rarely need to talk about until something brings it back to the surface. It’s a shadow that becomes visible when the sun is shining behind us. We can be genuinely happy together and still have something unresolved that hurts when it comes back into view. And maybe that’s part of what makes it so difficult to address. Life keeps moving, and most days we’re doing just fine. But doing fine between difficult moments doesn’t mean the thing causing them has disappeared.
For years, we’ve talked about eventually getting through it. The girls will turn eighteen, circumstances will change, and life will become easier. But they were ten once. They were younger, and there were reasons to wait then, too. Now we’re looking toward adulthood as though it’s a finish line, and I can’t help wondering how much of ourselves we’re spending just trying to reach it. Parenting doesn’t end at eighteen. There are graduations, college, milestones, and all the things that come with raising children who become adults. I don’t expect every difficulty to disappear because a birthday changes the legal responsibilities.
I’ve seen those memes about probably needing a hug but choosing to keep going because we were almost there. I wonder how often we’ve done exactly that. Just get through this year, this situation, this next milestone, and things will finally be easier. We’ve been telling ourselves some version of that for nearly a decade. I don’t think anyone has their head in the sand. We know what we’re dealing with, and we’ve found ways to manage it. But inaction is still action. Choosing to get through something is a decision, and sometimes it’s the only realistic one. It just isn’t necessarily problem-solving.
I wonder whether familiarity plays a bigger role than we realize. Is it complacency, or have we become so accustomed to managing the same circumstances that changing them feels more frightening than continuing to live with them? There’s a certain comfort in knowing what to expect, even when what you expect isn’t particularly pleasant. At least you know how to handle it. Trying something different means accepting uncertainty, and I understand why that can feel unsettling. But I also wonder when the things we’ve learned to do to protect ourselves stop protecting us and start keeping us in the same place.
People love to say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and maybe sometimes it does. But I wonder whether we’ve confused becoming stronger with becoming better at enduring things we shouldn’t have to keep enduring. Maybe some experiences make us a little less of who we were. A little more skeptical of people we trust, less willing to be vulnerable, and much more protective of our peace. We learn to manage our own feelings and stop expecting things from others because it’s easier than being disappointed. Eventually, we might call that strength when what we’ve really done is become less available to the people we love.
I recognize that change in myself, and it scares me because I’ve been here before. I’ve experienced what happens when resentment makes you stop asking questions, stop sharing your feelings, and start managing everything within your own little world. It’s not necessarily a dramatic falling apart. Sometimes it’s two people becoming increasingly capable of living separate emotional lives while continuing to share the same home. I thought we’d made it through something like that already, back when my husband experienced similar feelings toward me. I hoped we’d learned enough from it to recognize the signs if they ever appeared again. And now that I recognize some of those similarities, I desperately want us to see our way through them together.
There’s another truth underneath all of this that’s been harder to admit. I show love by trying to make life easier for the people I care about. If there’s something I can do to take some of the weight off someone I love, I’ll try. So when I finally figure out what I need, when I put time and effort into finding something that could benefit our whole family, and it doesn’t seem to be met with the same urgency, I take that personally. I know hesitation doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of love. I know two people can care deeply and approach difficult situations differently. But emotionally, I receive it as though I’m not worth fighting for, and that’s a painful feeling to reconcile with knowing how much love exists in our marriage.
We’ve spent years making decisions with the girls in mind, worrying about whether someday they’ll look back and feel their parents didn’t fight hard enough for them. I understand that fear, and I share it. But somewhere in all that consideration, have we stopped asking what this is doing to us? Aren’t we worth fighting for, too? Aren’t our girls worth the effort of trying to create a more peaceful family life now, rather than hoping one eventually arrives? What if, when this chapter is finally behind us, we look back and wonder whether we fought hard enough for each other?
The hardest realization has been understanding where my ability to help ends. I can identify a problem, research the options, organize the information, and make a possible next step easier. But eventually, the decision or action belongs to someone else. And there I am, holding the baton. I’ve run as far as I can with it, and I can’t carry it across the next stretch. I don’t need someone to run exactly the way I would, or even agree that the route I’ve found is the right one. I just need to know someone is willing to take it and keep moving.
Because the truth is, I feel lonely. I feel like I’m locked inside a box I don’t have the key to, trying to find a way out of circumstances I can’t change on my own. And I imagine there are people in blended families who understand that particular kind of isolation. You’re part of the family, you love the children, and you live with the consequences of decisions and relationships you don’t always have the authority to influence. You’re affected by things you cannot control, and sometimes the only thing anyone can offer you is the reassurance that eventually it will be over. But what do you do with the feelings you’re having while you’re still living through it?
I think that’s what I was trying to explain when I was asked what I needed. I don’t necessarily need my solution to be the answer. I need conversations that move forward, even when they’re uncomfortable. I need to know that my feelings are part of the consideration, not another complication to manage. I need to be able to express a different perspective without it being mistaken for a lack of support. And I need to feel that we’re both actively working toward the life we want, rather than waiting for circumstances to give it to us.
I love my husband. I love our girls. I love the family we’ve built, and I want the future we’ve spent so much time talking about. I’m not looking for someone to blame, and I’m certainly not suggesting that nearly a decade of difficult circumstances can be neatly resolved with a little paperwork and a positive attitude. If it were that simple, I would have had this handled years ago, probably with a color-coded folder.
But I am afraid of what happens if we continue to measure our progress by how much longer we can endure. I can feel myself beginning to withdraw, and I don’t want to become someone who stops sharing because it’s easier than hoping to be understood. I don’t want either of us to become so protective of our own peace that we stop reaching for each other.
What scares me most isn’t whether we’ll make it to the finish line. We’ve already proven we’re capable of getting through difficult things. It’s whether we’ll recognize ourselves, and each other, when we get there. Whether the ways we’ve learned to survive will have created a distance we never intended, and whether we’ll still like who we’ve become within our marriage.
I don’t want to find out two years from now that we spent so much time waiting for our life to get better that we stopped taking care of the life we already had.
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