This felt therapeutic to write. The tl;dr is that complex issues shouldn't take any assumptions for granted and benefit tremendously from active dialogues where you can be honest and inquisitive. My parents had a shotgun wedding when they were 19. I was the intentional 2nd child a few years later. At age 3, my family immigrated to America (we're Caucasian Catholics/atheists so don't go around making crazy ethnic judgements from this). When I was 4-5, my dad began to love another woman who was also from our birth country. For this story, I'll call her Amy. Around age 7 my parents bought our family home. My sibling and I shared a room; Amy had a room; My mom and dad shared the master bedroom.
I can't really recall the mundane parts of daily life back then. But I think it was rather strange. Amy wouldn't really interact with me or my sibling. She didn't eat at our dinner table. I did play board games with Amy's sister when she was around because nobody else would. Every now and then, my parents would fight (emotionally but not physically abusive). Those fights generally involved issues over Amy.
My parents said they sat me and my sibling down to discuss this situation at one point before I was 8, but I have zero recollection of this. I now know I repressed many memories associated with Amy. There wasn't really further discussion of the situation; Amy was just the proverbial Elephant in the Room. Nobody in the household would mention Amy to others. Our homeland's culture and where we live in America would view this as a very scandalous affair.
To this day, I'm not sure what extended family members or friends know. My dad has separate sets of friends who know my mom and who know Amy. I think some of his current drinking buddies know both, but at the time I think he avoided mentioning it. Hell to this day, I've only felt comfortable sharing details about this to 6 close friends and 1 romantic partner. You Strangers on the internet cannot affect me. My sibling has only felt comfortable sharing with 2. My sibling also has latent personal issues because their whole life was a drunken mistake : ( As a slight positive, those issues have empowered my sibling to be very focused and successful in their life/career!
At age 11 my Dad was able to buy a second home where he would be with Amy about every other day. At this point I moved into Amy's former room in my family home. It was nice to finally have my own room. It was less nice to have constant angst and developmental issues because I was incapable of processing my family dynamic... There aren't alot of tv shows or books to inform my conception of families that were brought together by teenage pregnancy where the father had unmet emotional needs he satisfied with another woman but also felt a traditional nuclear family duty to his kids and their mother.
At age 12 or 13 I remember getting really upset when I'd check the family mailbox and see letters addressed to Amy. Sometimes I'd throw those pieces of mail on the asphalt and stomp on them a few times before taking them inside the house. Eventually my dad called me out on my petty malice and we fought (again nothing physically harmful).
There were a few other small squabbles and we ended up just not talking to each other for at least half a year. We are both very stubborn men. I avoided being in the same room as him. I didn't wish him a happy birthday that year. He didn't wish me one either. I can say 14 was definitely the worst birthday of my life. Around thanksgiving or Christmas that we reconciled; however, we didn't really discuss our issues, just hugged and moved on. When I applied to colleges, my dad separated from my mother in our tax documents to help me get more financial aid. There was no change in how they lived their life. But I guess it was technically true anyway. When I finished college, he reversed those changes.
After college, I was better equipped to have extended dialogue with my family about these issues. I suffer from depression and typically hid episodes from my family (which I now realize stems from the way I hid details of my parents relationship). Feeling shaky at my uncertain future, I blew up and yelled at my dad and expressed my frustration at his weird-ass relationship. After that we sat and talked through the this hush-hush unique aspect of our family life.
It really startled my dad because he didn't comprehend why I'd never talked to him about it since it was an issue for. He didn't connect me being a kid stomping on Amy's mail to my personal issues. He felt I could have asked about that this whole time if it bothered me. To be fair, my parents grew up under an oppressive failed government, so they have better pragmatism when it comes to real life problems versus these more petty relationship/psychological dramas.
My dad shared this cbs news clip about poly relationships and he shared more of his perspective. My mom and dad do care for each other in a romantic way. My mom is okay with Amy even though it upsets her. When they were younger, my mom had many of her own self-esteem issues that she hid from us kids because of her feelings as a young mother.
She would do some upsetting things to my dad, so when he met Amy he disregarded our society's norms about monogamous relationships. It's a peculiar situation, but its also very stable now. Regardless of the taboo about it, there isn't alot to talk about now. It is what it is. My mom, dad, and Amy are all decent people who have struggled through challenges in life which didn't have flawless solutions.
Even though it once felt wrong to me for my dad to have two romantic partners, I now think my parents have been able to have a more useful relationship as they've aged. Now that I have a more accepting view of this relationship and its impact on my upbringing, I feel more actively cognizant of my social filters and think it has allowed me to dive deeper into sensitive dialogue with people I care about.
If anybody connects with these issues feel free to ask me anything. Finally, if you're feuding with someone important who you won't talk to because the issue seems so obvious, be the person who starts dialogue. Things obvious to you are really hard to see from another's perspective. It is really powerful to discuss your personal issues with the people impacted by them.
Preferably talk in person or over the phone (text sucks, can you guess how long it took to write just this story?). On this note, I feel compelled to mention that if you've had a failed relationship, this advice may not apply. Somethings aren't meant to be if open dialogue cannot be achieved and that is 100% okay. Never harass someone into a conversation!
/thankyouMississippi/