If you saw the movie When Harry Met Sally you saw how they went from being college friends to falling in love over several decades. The basic premise, can men and women be friends without letting sex get in the way. Outcome, duh. They had sex, made it pretty awkward along the way and then came out a happy couple on the other side. Proving? Not sure what. That they were never just friends? That they were friends with benefits? That basically if you wear your crush down long enough you’ll end up with them? Either way it was a happy ending (no pun intended) and they got married. Fairy tale ending.
But what if the story continued beyond the awesome wedding and they had kids. And Harry never got up to feed them and Sally was super resentful and bitched to all of their friends about what a dick he was. And what if they went back to the fighting the way they were doing throughout the entire movie (until they realized they were “in love”) and what if Sally realized what an annoying asshole Harry was and Harry cheated on Sally and then their entire marriage imploded?
What if after they went to divorce court and split all of their assets and divided up the custody of the kids and moved into their own houses across town from one another they met other people and got married. What if then the real story began? Because, listen up Hollywood, that’s probably the more likely scenario these days.
I’m not trying to be negative here just realistic. I just don’t realistically see those two making the long haul. And, I would love to see a When Harry Met Sally Part II where Sally has to be a stepmother to her new husband’s kids. And Harry has to be a stepdad to his new wife’s kids. And they have to shuffle their kids back and forth between the two houses and deal with all the ex’s and new spouses and their kids. With all of the complaining those two did in that movie I can imagine they would make our blended family look like a breeze.
In real life there isn’t a happy ending. There’s an ending and you hope it’s happy but that’s a little dark and hopefully a long way off. In real life, some days are happy and some aren’t. And sometimes your marriage is easy and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes your kids are happy and if they are teenagers, often not. And no matter how many marriages, or kids, or stepkids you have that’s just a basic fact. If you add in all the other stuff it can get pretty crazy. So the best we can do is hope for some happy here and there along the way. It would be great to have a crystal ball to see the future or as Harry said: “When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.”
The best part of a blended family is that you get to add in the bonus kids without going through the childbirth part, and the part where I imagine Harry and Sally would lose their shit. You get to be a better version of yourself for the next person. In my case, I get to be a mother and a stepmother so I get to walk in the shoes of the mom to my four kids and I get to walk in the shoes of the stepmom to my husband’s three kids. It gives me a lot of insight into how the other half lives. I think it might be a good lesson for Harry and Sally and maybe they would even say “I’ll have what she’s having.”