Blissfully Blended Bullshit by Rebecca Eckler

Author:Rebecca Eckler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2019-05-24T16:00:00+00:00

· TEN ·

There’s subversive disparity not just within the four walls of the house, but also within the snack drawers and refrigerator. I’ve started to notice how Boyfriend magically turns into a short-order cook when his children are with us, buying groceries he knows they like or have asked for and practically making three-course meals when they are staying with us. On the days they are not with us, Boyfriend doesn’t seem to care as much about what we — Rowan, me, and him — are having for dinner. He’s more than happy leaving our nanny to make us something and leaving the fridge almost bare. Boiled pasta is as fancy as he gets for Rowan. There are still nights, of course, when he does make dinners for the two of us, when the children aren’t around or on our date nights we have promised to have once a week. But mostly, on the nights without his children, dinners are pretty plain.

It’s unfathomable, isn’t it, to be jealous of children who always have the groceries they enjoy in our house and to resent the fact that their dad spends an hour preparing a meal for them as if he’s on a cooking game show on the Food Network. But I often am jealous when I see that Boyfriend — what, tries harder? Puts in more of an effort? — as he stocks the cupboards and fridge and makes home-cooked dinners, from scratch and, of course, with love, mostly on the days when his children stay with us. So, yes, we even argue over groceries.

Boyfriend, by default, is in charge of the grocery shopping, his way of contributing to the household. We never talked about the division of household chores before we blended, but we both know it’s his way of chipping in, while living without paying rent or the mortgage or property taxes or the gardener or the internet or cable bill. I hate grocery shopping, so I think it’s a fair trade. But it does bother me that, if it’s just my daughter at home, he’ll boil her pasta, while he puts on an elaborate dinner when his children are with us.

While my feelings may be irrational, it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who goes through this. “Sometimes it does bother me that my husband does things for his biological son that he never does for our two kids, because I’m the primary parent,” one of my friends tells me, once I start noticing how, when Boyfriend’s children are over, our house turns into a five-star restaurant. “For instance, he goes to his son’s doctor’s appointments and buys him birthday and Christmas presents and clothes, and he’s never done any of that with our other two. He’s happy to let me be the primary parent, whereas he’s somewhat competitive with his ex-wife, who he has a very strained relationship with,” she says. “Part of it is also that he feels terribly guilty about his son, which I understand.

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