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  • Playing Well With The Spouse's Ex

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    Hyla Molander
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    Do you play well with your spouse's ex? Hyla Molander shares her experience of blending families.

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    Playing Well With the Spouse's Ex

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    Do you play well with your spouse's ex? Hyla Molander shares her experience of blending families.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    1K views6 pages

    Playing Well With The Spouse's Ex

    Uploaded by

    Hyla Molander
    Do you play well with your spouse's ex? Hyla Molander shares her experience of blending families.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 6

    PLAYING WELL

    WITH THE SPOUSE’S EX

    BY Hyla Molander
    PLAYING WELL WITH THE SPOUSE’S EX
    By Hyla Molander

    Dana and I clink our tequila-filled shot glasses, as our combined


    six children—2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 12—all sprint across the hardwood
    floors of her home.

    Tatiana, 8, shouts, “Get em!” and then, like a vulture in flight,


    she swoops her locks of matted medusa hair down upon a
    squirming pile of elbows and stinky feet.

    Voices squeal: “Get off . . . Mommy . . . Stoooppp . . . You


    farted on me!”

    Finally, the kids tumble aside, one by one, and Jason, 12,
    reveals his sweaty, red face. “You wanna help me here?”

    Poor Jason.

    Dana says, “Looks like you’ve got it handled, bud.”

    I laugh, raising my glass. “Here’s to being together.”


    Dana tilts her head back, swigs the Patron, and then eagerly
    sucks the juice from her lime wedge. “Wish we could do it more
    often.”

    Dana is Jason’s mom. I am Jason’s step-mom.

    And, yes, I really am drinking tequila with my husband’s ex-wife.

    On a good night, Dana and I might even grab the guitar and
    microphone from Jason’s Rock Band game. We belt out “Eye of
    the Tiger” while the wee-ones bang on the drums, jump on the
    bed, and dance in front of the TV.

    Tatiana often says, “We have four kids, but really six if you
    count them all.”

    The family dynamics are very confusing to her teachers at the


    beginning of the school year, but Tatiana loves Dana’s other
    children as if they were her siblings.

    Having grown up with divorced parents, the idea of former


    spouses having jam sessions with current spouses seemed
    insane. Why would anyone ever want to subject themselves to
    that?

    My rule had been to veer on the other side of the road, far away
    from men who’d been married before. I was widowed. Entirely
    different situation. There was no chance that my late husband
    would call in the middle of the night to scream at me about
    child support.

    I did, however, want to end up with a man who would be a


    loving daddy to my two and three-year old daughters. But how
    would I know about his parenting skills if he didn’t have
    children?

    Eventually, I opened up to dating men with kids. Men with kids


    meant men with wicked ex-wives.

    Frightening.

    A week after I met Evan, he invited me to the baseball field to


    watch Jason’s game. Wanting to make a good impression, I spent
    extra time pulling my daughters’ hair in pigtails, and putting
    their olive-toned bodies in matching hot-pink sundresses.
    I held the girls’ hands and walked towards the concession stand.
    Then, out of nowhere, something came towards me.

    It was her. It was the ex-wife.

    I wanted to flee.

    But she came at me, with certainty, her arms open wide. “Hyla,
    right?”

    What do I do? She’s hugging me.

    Dana’s one-year-old daughter began climbing on the bleachers


    with my girls. They were instant friends.

    Later that evening, my mom and I spoke on the phone. “You’re


    going to have a play-date with Evan’s ex-wife?” she asked.
    “Don’t you think this is a bit strange?”

    Yes.

    At first, it was strange to go to the park with Dana and her kids.
    And it took a couple of years of soccer games, school plays,
    birthday parties, and swim meets before I could trust that the
    “wicked ex-wife” wasn’t wicked at all. Dana was loving and
    supportive, always willing to help out with my daughters. She
    wanted Evan to be happy, so that Jason could be happy.

    Dana says, “What more could we ask for? Jason has four
    nurturing parents.”

    Divorce is tough. I’m certainly not claiming that it’s easy to get
    to the place where you’re doing tequila shots with your spouse’s
    ex, nor am I suggesting that it’s necessary to get as close as I
    have with Dana.

    What I do know, though, is that all of our children benefit when


    they see that their parents play well with others.

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