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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

After I Do: Leave and Cleave

Leave and Cleave - Some people have trouble leaving and cleaving --  that is, they have difficulty adjusting to making their NEW family with their spouse as the primary family.  What was that transition like for you?  And how did your family of origin handle it?

Even though I knew H was the one for me when we first started dating over 5 years ago, I only knew how it felt to want to marry him.  I knew how it felt to be a team and to be on the same side.  Marriage didn't change that much for us because we had experienced most aspects of married life before saying, "I do."  The actual feeling of being a family settled in only recently for me.  Sure, you could say the physical addition of a baby would make us feel more like a family.  Even without the baby in my tummy, I feel like a family unit now more than ever before.

This is the start of our lives, and we are our own family now.  It is recognized through marriage by the ones around us.  Our priorities are to each other, and we take care of one another.  That doesn't mean that our parents don't mean anything to us anymore.  It just means that we need to take care of ourselves first sometimes.  It means that we have to focus on our relationship and our needs.

I know that it might sound silly, especially to our parents.  My in-laws would love for us to stop thinking about ourselves and to think about the families we came from.  What about our newly formed family of two?  They want us to call often, visit without being asked, and to invite them over every now and then.  Then we feel super guilty when it's been a few weeks without a visit, and I don't want to feel that guilt.  I want them to think of us as a family, one that may be busy on the weekends and unable to visit all the time.  We have priorities to get the house ready for our Ninja.  We need to enjoy the limited time to ourselves that we have before Ninja's arrival as well.  These are our needs, and I would love if my in-laws could see that too.

As for my parents, they do recognize us as a family unit.  They used to invite us over for dinner fairly often, but now they know that we can't visit as often anymore due to changes in our lives.  Instead my parents might make us some food and bring it over because they know we're busy.  Somehow they are very understanding in ways that I never knew possible years ago.

So now we're a family, and we're a growing family too.  Our needs will constantly change.  Our priorities will always be to one another.  We will never forget where we came from, and our parents will always be an important part of our lives.

our small family of three :)

Check out other responses from the famous bees themselves over here!

After I Do:
Finances
Changes
Children
Wedding Regrets
Name-Change Decisions
Household Chores
First Anniversary

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