Coming up on marriage today with Jimmy and Karen and a lot of relationships and a lot of first marriages

it takes a while for things to turn south and takes a while in in blended family relationship

it can exist the first day you meet.

You've been hurt before and you don't want to get hurt again.

You want to guard just that one little piece just in case this doesn't work out.

I'm not going to give you my whole heart. You have to

rebuild you have to relearn how to trust. It's what I do. And the A blended family when you define blended families. It's a marriage where one or both spouses bring children

with them from a previous marriage or relationship.

Sometimes it wasn't a marriage.

Sometimes it was, you know, an unwanted pregnancy that, know resulted in a in a child or

children or maybe multiple marriages or something like that but there's a

different dynamic to it 50% of all families are blended families. But there's also higher divorce in

blended families which isn't necessary. It's really necessary because there are

dynamics present day one in blended families that are not present in other families.

And you know, I mean there's enough risk of divorce in a regular marriage, but when you have a blended family marriage, we need to understand the special issues related to that.

I want to talk about lower trust and higher expectations.

And this is a difficult combination here. Lower trust is I have less good will

towards you and more suspicion of your motives and actions. I was innocent

once. I was innocent once. I was innocent once until I got my heart broken and I trusted and

until I got violated.

And in my first marriage or first relationship,

they were innocent till proven guilty. You're guilty till you're proven innocent.

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