The DHX: The Doughtie Houses Exchange

By Jill Davis Doughtie

“[O]nce you willingly have a baby with someone, there is always love – somewhere.” — Peter Ehrlich

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” — Elie Wiesel

I think we struggle so much across houses in extended stepfamilies because we feel a connection we don’t know what to do with. We have needs we aren’t sure how to satisfy with such a complicated relationship in the mix. I suspect we struggle so much because somewhere mixed in with all the complication and pain and agony we feel compassion, we feel love, we feel connection, and we feel obligation. And that’s really scary. We’re afraid of what those feelings could mean for our lives. Everything would be so much simpler if we didn’t feel them. But if we didn’t feel them, I think we wouldn’t be pushing against the relationship. That’s my theory, anyway. We’d sidestep it or work around it or solve it or let it go like any other life obstacle. We wouldn’t obsess about it. It wouldn’t occupy most of our waking thoughts.

That’s the model I finally came to in my own situation a while ago. Maybe it doesn’t match everyone’s. But for me, at least, I realized one day that I was struggling so hard against Kathy because I loved her and cared about her and empathized with her and I couldn’t do anything to cut that out of my head, but I also needed what I needed, and I couldn’t cut that out of my head, either. For me at least, the answer was to work on letting both of those things — connection to Kathy and my own needs — coexist in my head. And to try to find a way to balance them without sacrificing either one.