If you’re traditionally partnered (“Trads”?) in the way that most of us middle-class college-educated thirty-somethings partnered in the 1990s, you probably followed a trajectory that looks like this:
1.) Meet someone in high school/college.
2.) Hook up.
3.) Finish college.
4.) Stay hooked up. (Or break up and find a different someone.)
5.) Get jobs/Get married. (Order varies.)
6.) Buy a house.
7.) Have kids.
8.) ???? I don’t know what comes next. My first marriage failed about three-years after Step 7.
When you’re not a “Trad” but rather fambled, things are much more complicated. If you were to track the trajectory of a typical fambled relationship, it might look like this:
1.) Hook up with someone whose marriage is failing while your marriage is also failing.
2.) Fight with soon-to-be-ex.
3.) Lose the respect and support of family and friends.
4.) Divorce. Experience a tentative freedom with your new partner while practicing extreme consideration for your ex and your children in order to maintain a working equilibrium. (Congratulations! You’re Fambled!)
5.) Experience guilt for the effects of the divorce on the children. Bend over backwards to make sure the kids are okay.
6.) Lose job and/or experience divorced-induced financial disaster.
7.) Experience mental health crisis.
8.) Break up with fambled partner.
9.) Get back together with, and commit too, your fambled partner by accepting the inherent anxiety that comes with being in a fambled relationship.
10.) Begin to build/rebuild relationships with family and friends.
11.) Introduce kids to each other.
12.) Fight with ex.
13.) Experience guilt for the effects of the divorce on the children. Bend over backwards to make sure the kids are okay.
14.) Begin to crawl out of divorce-induced financial disaster.
15.) Get married—or its equivalent—to your fambled partner while practicing extreme consideration for your ex and your children in order to maintain a working equilibrium…
As you can see, being in a fambled partnership is far more complicated than being in a traditional partnership.
As for me, I will drink this Diet Coke today while I sit in my bed at home with my laptop on my lap. I will hustle work today, all in the name of Number 14, in the hopes of forging a clearer path to Number 15.
Here’s to happy famblies everywhere!
—Steph
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