Transcript
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And welcome back to Pastor Plek's podcast.
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I'm your host, Pastor Plek, and with me in studios none other than Adrienne Plekkenpol.
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Welcome back, Adrienne, Thank you.
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She is my sweet wife ever present with opinions.
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We love her.
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And then also a special, very special guest, my cousin, none other than Senor Shane Loomis.
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Hi, all the way from California.
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Yes, I am, thank you, I'm so glad you're joining us.
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We're talking about blended families today, and something you've sort of become an expert in, and the reason why this is so important to me.
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As a pastor, I do a ton of counseling, and usually I'm dealing with blooded families who haven't thought through any of the ramifications of marrying with children, people that already have children, and what that does to the entire family, and so I would love to talk to you just as a family law person, and then I want you to walk us through some of the mediation that you've had to go through.
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So we'll just kind of start off right there.
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Just tell us kind of what your role is and what you do in California, but we are trying to recruit you to Texas.
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I love it.
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I love Texas.
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I'm having a great time here.
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My work is really currently as a family law mediator, and so what I do I think of mediation as a problem-solving technique with families that, quite frankly, I do a lot of divorce work, but I also do a lot of premarital counseling type work, and that's where this blended family idea comes from is families that have children.
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You know, each spouse has a history and a background and they're looking at how to bring their family together in a way that protects their children, that protects them, and to think about the things that come out of blending those kinds of families Right.
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Yeah, we're not like there's no part of us that's like fans of divorce or like we want.
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God's intention for family was that it would be husband and wife and their kids, and they never separate.
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But life happens and sin is prevalent, and so we have this reality and we need somebody who's a Christian in the middle of it, trying to put these pieces together in a way that honors God.
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So talk to me about why you think that just specifically people that have blended families they get married.
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Usually they just do it.
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Why do you think that is?
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Why don't they plan ahead?
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Well, I think there's a couple of things that I would say to that.
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One is that I think you're right.
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I've never been an advocate of divorce and in fact you have an ethical duty, when I was practicing, not to advocate for divorce, to give ways out.
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But one of the things I think is terrible, particularly in California but in other states, is that they create it as an adversarial approach.
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Talk to me what that means.
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So one of the things you do in a divorce I would say to people a divorce is a situation where you negotiate the terms of your contract.
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At the end You've already had the marriage, you had a set of agreements that you lived by, your marital agreement, your marital contract, and then you find out what the rules they're going to apply to you, which have nothing to do with how you lived your marriage and the way they structured, that is to say, spouse one versus spouse two versus.
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That's a terrible approach to marriage always.
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It is never one versus the other.
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Or a family right, it's not versus.
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And so I spend a lot of time looking at how can I protect children in this, because one of the things people do when they're fighting, when they come to this and say I'm going to take this marital pie, and it's a battle, who gets more of the metal marital pie?
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And of course, the attorneys are all.
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I can't wait, I want more of your marital pie, this is my, my money on the line, um, and I couldn't stand it.
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I couldn't stand what people were doing, and so I started doing mediation because it allowed us to say husband and wife, we have a family.
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No matter what we do, we're always going to have a family.
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Yeah, Can you explain that and tell me if I'm interrupting here?
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But I feel like that's the part where just because you're divorced doesn't mean that husband's not going to be involved for the rest of your life.
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That's absolutely right, and I think it's very odd how we as a society I mean I think there's a balance here On the one hand, if you really knew what marriage was going to be, if I gave you the pamphlet and said here's the deal nobody get married, let alone have kids, right, Give up everything, the other person gets everything and you're no longer important, right?
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That's what it would feel like.
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Of course, that's not true, but that's how it would read, and so it's good for us to be a little bit of a leap of faith into a marriage.
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On the other hand, to go in with no thought whatsoever.
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I'm just going to jump in that pool.
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The fact that it's a painting and there's no water, well, it'll happen right.
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And we're told this romantic story that love will conquer all, love will conquer all.
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But it's not love that says fuzzy, wuzzy love.
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It's true respect and deep understanding of each other.
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And the next step, we get together and we have a child, because that's what we're supposed to do.
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And we don't recognize that.
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What we're often doing is saying that love that we felt, feeling a little soft.
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If we put a kid in here, that'll feel good and we'll have it.
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But the kid doesn't have that agreement either.
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The kid came in with two parents who were obligated to take care of the kid, and often families will sort of align around that.
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They have an idea that we're going to raise this child, that we're going to raise this child.
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At the time they get mad at the spouse.
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They will start to say, well, if I just excise this person from my life, I'm going to remove them, everything will be better.
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Because it wasn't good.
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I didn't fix it by bringing them in, so if I push them out, it will get better.
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Well, the kid is still around, we still have Christmas and people say, oh, until you're 18.
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No, not until you're 18, until you're all dead.
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Right, we're all together and even then, hopefully, we're all joining up.
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So when we look at that relationship and say this is a lifelong relationship with your spouse guess what?
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Yes, dad is going to be dad forever, and that's a good thing and to really look at that and say I'm not excising this person, we're changing the structure of the family.
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That continues and the family continues always.
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So there are some very rare and unusual cases of horrific abuse.
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There are some very rare, but the vast bulk, the vast bulk of cases involve mad I don't like what you're doing, you don't like what I'm doing, I don't feel good, I'm out Right, and that those cases in our system, particularly in California, we say go after them, make them pay, get revenge and you'll feel better.
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And you don't feel better what you do, is you really scorch earth the thing and then have to go stand on this scorched earth and talk to each other because there's no way out?
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Oh God, that's a terrible, terrible approach.
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It's like we're going nuclear and then we'll all live in the nuclear holocaust and then we're going to live in the nuclear fallout and hopefully it'll get better.
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Right, and we know nuclear fallout doesn't last a little while, so it's kind of right.
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So I think one of the greatest things I started to learn in my early cases where I was doing working with families and it's really funny when you take somebody, that person is the most awful, horrific, terrible person in the whole world.
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They're a terrible parent, they're terrible, terrible, terrible.
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How did you meet?
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Oh, it was wonderful.
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He was just this big, strong man and I saw him working with children and it was wonderful.
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And I saw her working hard and she was just beautiful and the softening that happens.
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We completely lose how we met this person and we completely forget that 95% of this marriage was wonderful and that we had this.
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You know, I'm not saying that marriage isn't stressful.
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Marriage is not ever in the Bible or anywhere else does it say this is a smooth ride.
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That's not what it says.
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In fact, I think we're promised a couple things like persecution, pain let's look at these great people and marriage is just like that.
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It is very, very valuable and families are very valuable, but it is not a smooth ride and if we lose sight of that, we can make something that could be smoother worse by the nuclear option.
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Right, okay, so let's go to the planning head.
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Why don't people plan ahead?
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Some people are thinking that maybe they have a romantic belief or whatever they do, and you've seen this.
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I have, more often than not, particularly in California.
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We have a lot of third and fourth marriages, but in first marriages a very typical pattern is the first marriage they get married at 18.
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And it depends on there's a lot of variables here.
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I'm thinking of in a sort of middle class family range, middle class area.
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Most of the kids are likely going to go to some form of college, maybe not Princeton, maybe not Yale, maybe not Ivy, but they're going to go to school and they're going to think of going to school to get some sort of a job that that leads them into sort of a professional life.
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They're going to have a household with a family.
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That's what they're thinking they're going to do.
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And maybe they get a little frisky in college and have an accident.
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Or maybe they get married at maybe 19 or 20 and they grow right.
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They married this, this cheerleader, they married this football star and they turn into an insurance salesman and a teacher and it is not the same relationship that they had when they started and maybe they didn't know anything about themselves, let alone the other person, and so they can outgrow each other, which is unfortunate.
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If they're lucky, they sort of figure that early enough they don't have a kid, they don't have a massive financial investment Right and maybe they get out.
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But then there's the marriage that happens at 25, 30.
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And I'm using random numbers, but post-college have my first jobs, sort of have a little bit of understanding of life, yeah, exactly.
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And they get married and at 55 or 60 they're looking around going I'm not happy, and they have now their houses together, their businesses together.
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Maybe they spent the inheritance that one of them received.
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Maybe they and they're all their friends are saying let's be happy.
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Yeah, the problem was at 25.
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Nobody's thinking I need to protect anything because I don't have anything.
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I'm about to start working and I really think I have a promising career, but I don't really have it.
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And they think that counseling or prep is premarital agreements, planning for divorce.
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That is understandable, popular.
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And think of every pop culture reference we have.
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There's no.
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Cinderella does not investigate prince charming right or it's it's.
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I take you at your word, because why I?
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didn't I wasn't.
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I get I'm getting snow white and cinderella mixed up, but, whatever it is, neither of them spend any time getting to know who the person was.
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They woke up to a kiss boom.
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We're married and and that is not um uncommon to believe, that's not, and so we think of it as being unromantic or selfish or gold digger to investigate ahead of time, and I think it's the reverse.
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I think you owe it to your family to to think about it, so talk, talk about that specifically I guess your kids and I think sometimes especially have kids under 18.
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Yeah, uh, and those are the ones that are still being formed.
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And then you're like it didn't work with the first one.
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Now I fall in love with the second one and you're moving forward.
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Tell me about what blended families should be planning for, just when it comes to kids.
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Yeah.
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So I think when I went through a divorce myself and I was working very hard not to do all these horrible things that people do and I get along with my I mean it's 25 years.
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We've been divorced, I think for 10 years almost and we get along great and it was common about my daughter, but one of the things you do if you care about counseling, we use a lot of therapists in California and you go in and they draw these two circles and the circles are overlapping and they say this is mom, this is dad and this is your kid.
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In the center, in the overlapping.
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Every time you say something about mom, you're talking about your kid.
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Every time you say something about your dad, you're talking about your kid.
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Right, and all these feelings that you have towards those kids, you're mirroring what you feel towards the other spouse.
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Right, those kids, you're mirroring what you feel towards the other spouse.
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And so if you don't learn to love not romantic, let's be, you know, but love your ex-wife, love your ex-husband, you're never going to love your kid.
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That's not going to work With blended families.
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Well, now there's 17 circles because we have mom and dad, mom's mom, dad's mom, mom's dad, dad's dad, so we have the extended family.
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And now we have insert new spouse and their parents and their ex-husband ex-wife and their children of the ex-husband's ex-wives and so this, you know, it takes a village, becomes a whole other message.
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And if you don't love all of them, if you don't express respect and care for all of them, you are saying I don't love my kid.
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Wow, how do you do that?
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Wow, and now I have to take-.
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Because I think it's hard to do that, even biologically, absolutely, absolutely it's absolutely brutal biologically and it's brutal when the society says go get them.
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Go get them, take more.
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I want a bigger piece of the pie.
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So, as one who's not super familiar with a ton of divorces, tell me about that attitude of go get them.
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I think I've seen that in movie portrayals of lawyers and stuff.
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But is that real?
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Yeah, yeah.
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I think one of the things I've been talking about recently is when, at the start of a case I mean this is an example of how we set that up People believe, no matter how much I tell them don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.
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It's awful that at the beginning of a case, you go get a lawyer, you sneak behind the back, don't tell anybody you got a lawyer.
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Then the lawyer will say well, the first step is we've got to serve them, give them a copy of it, and that comes out of a whole procedure designed for civil lawsuits.
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Where you hurt me, I want the money back.
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That's where it comes from Like a business, like a business versus a business?
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right, apple gets mad that somebody stole their trademark, right, right?
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So they file a lawsuit and they have to tell the person they're suing that they're suing them, which is why we have this service component.
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So what they do is, many times they will say oh, he's going to sneak all the money away.
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The guy has no money.
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A lot of times, what we're talking about is we have a house and we have a little bit of retirement money, none of which can be accessed, and they're convinced he's been putting stuff in gold bullion offshore.
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Well, maybe he has, or maybe she has, or maybe, but that's not really what's happening, right?
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But the attorneys get sued if they don't do it, as though this is the most contentious, horrible, sneaky thing, and they will send a police officer or a sheriff's department kind of thing to serve him or her at work with a petition that they didn't know was coming.
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And what does it say on the petition?
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I want all the money, I want full custody and you never get to see the children, and I want you to pay all my attorney's fees and I want you to pay every dollar to me that you have in support.
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Well, the person receives this and thinks, oh my goodness, and what do they do?
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They go hire the big gun to fire back right and they launch.
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Well, first things, the petition has nothing to do with the resolution of your case.
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I don't care what it says.
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I don't care if it says we're going to Disneyland.
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There is not one thing in it that matters to the outcome, really.
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The second thing is why serve them at work?
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Why would you ever want to put somebody on guard?
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Think about how you would say I want to have a baby.
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Would you start by saying I'm going to take you at work, make sure you're in the middle of a business meeting and call you out you want to have a baby with me?
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You would never do that, right, and so that's how we treat this.
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That's a terrible way to go, and instead, what I would always tell people to do is start by working together before.
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Can to do is start by working together before.
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Can we fix this marriage?
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Can we do something?
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Is there something so broken that we have to end it, or is there something we can do to fix it?
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And if there isn't, we don't call this a end of marriage.
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We call it a transformation of the family, which is what it is.
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We are restructuring the way this family, which does continue is going to move.
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You said something in there like that.
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I didn't like 16, 17 circles, which?
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I didn't yeah.
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That was wild.
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So tell me about like, how, like talk about how, when you're dealing with families, how you get them to like I mean, I'm not sure if you've had to do this, but like, here's your coach how would you coach them to siblings?
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Hey here's your new brother.
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He's two years older than you Used to be the oldest child.
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Now you're not Right, I mean man.
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Well, one of the things.
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Okay, so you learn a lot from how to do it wrong when you end the marriage.
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Right, what happened?
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What I do?
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On the front end there's a stigma that premarital counseling is somehow divorce planning.
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Right, I think it's divorce prevention.
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I think it's done properly, with care and with intention.
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I love when people have a spiritual counselor or a psychological counselor or a mental health person.
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We are not doing this to divorce.
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We are doing this to have these really hard conversations to prevent divorce.
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that's the whole point, for example, what some people will do and it's very I don't mean to be so critical, but I'm critical of anybody who doesn't try to learn and that is that they're selfish.
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I want to engage in a relationship with this person.
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Okay, you don't get to engage in a relationship with this person.
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You are dragging everybody in your past into this relationship with this person, and so is that person bringing everybody into their past, into this person.
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So you believe I love her, I love him.
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Therefore, we are going to have a relationship.
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No, that's not what's going to happen.
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So one of the first things you do is how are you going to introduce this new person to?
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I'm going to use the husband and wife, because I just don't.
00:17:51.898 --> 00:17:56.901
I so I'm, if I'm introduced, the husband's going to introduce the wife to his children right right, okay.
00:17:57.542 --> 00:18:00.490
So do you say, here is your new mom.
00:18:00.490 --> 00:18:02.737
I mean, what are you doing?
00:18:02.737 --> 00:18:04.882
Right and what again?
00:18:04.882 --> 00:18:09.000
I said at the beginning, you have to love your ex-wife, right, right, or you have to love the mother of your children.
00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:15.086
However, you're blended, whatever that configuration is right, yeah, so I really encourage okay, wait, that's what.
00:18:15.105 --> 00:18:20.285
Yeah, you're right, because there might be people who never got married but had a kid together, but it's the same thing, yeah because the mom is the mom.
00:18:20.384 --> 00:18:22.800
Right, the mom is always the mom, will always be the mom.
00:18:22.800 --> 00:18:28.257
So I would say, really, take care, this is the first impression.
00:18:28.257 --> 00:18:34.460
Don't have mom's potential interviewing mom sleeping over right within the kids.
00:18:34.460 --> 00:18:36.585
See, you know, it's true, is that the nanny?
00:18:36.585 --> 00:18:37.366
Is that the mom?
00:18:37.406 --> 00:18:37.836
is that?
00:18:37.836 --> 00:18:38.539
Who is that?
00:18:38.539 --> 00:18:39.083
I don't know.
00:18:39.083 --> 00:18:41.897
We're not going to do that, and usually people don't even say anything it just happens.
00:18:41.897 --> 00:18:44.449
It just happens, just like I guess bob lives here now.
00:18:44.588 --> 00:18:48.821
Yes all right, and then bob moves out yeah right, right because we so don't do that.
00:18:48.821 --> 00:18:53.134
You have an obligation and a responsibility as a parent to not do that.
00:18:53.134 --> 00:18:53.575
Right, right.
00:18:53.575 --> 00:18:56.324
This is not a model that we want to give to any child.
00:18:56.324 --> 00:18:56.925
Right, right.
00:18:56.925 --> 00:19:01.492
Part of some people will say I got married, I got divorced, because I wanted to model a healthy relationship.
00:19:01.492 --> 00:19:14.300
Yes, I hear that a lot, and proceed to have the string of new no and I think people underestimate how value I did.
00:19:14.320 --> 00:19:23.503
I hate to bring up my own stuff, but when I started dating, I dated a woman who had some children and a very difficult relationship with her ex-husband, who was still in the picture as a father to the children.
00:19:23.503 --> 00:19:29.526
And I have my daughter and I'm going to introduce my daughter to this woman, and we were very.
00:19:29.526 --> 00:19:30.307
We spent a lot of.
00:19:30.307 --> 00:19:32.201
I mean, which side of the bench am I going to sit on?
00:19:32.201 --> 00:19:33.776
Which side of the bench is she going to sit on?
00:19:33.776 --> 00:19:35.201
What are we going to call you?
00:19:35.201 --> 00:19:37.648
How, how long can this meeting be and be?
00:19:37.648 --> 00:19:39.012
Okay?
00:19:39.012 --> 00:19:40.796
We're never going to do it at a house or a car.
00:19:40.796 --> 00:19:42.699
We're going to meet at a place that's neutral.
