Is There a Family Member that May Require Extra Support?

“People will sooner aid a sick dog lying on the sidewalk than to try to find shelter for a sick person. It's too much to deal with.” Michael Zaslow

Some of us come with baggage in the form of relatives potentially needing a helping hand. Not all people are created equal, nor do we all have the same opportunities. It is not unusual to see families providing additional support to a member when their life circumstances hit a rough patch.

Some have siblings with handicaps, mental health issues, or drug use that may render them, at some point, needing a place to live or aid in finding the social assistance they need to maintain a roof over their head and food in their stomach. It can be a bit like having another child. Some also have relatives that are perpetually a bit low on funds or need bailing out of jail.

I walk daily by homeless people, some due to mental health issues and some through drug addiction. I wonder about their families. Did they try to help, but just became exhausted or have they turned their back on them? What would you do if this was a part of your partner’s family?

It may be something you are just used to if it is your own family and it’s all you ever knew, but if this is your partner’s family, you may not want to be so charitable. It is important to look at your partner’s family make up to see if there is a member that may, somewhere down the line, require help from you both and discuss how this may play out and what you both are willing to do or give.

Look too at what diseases run in the family. This will give you an idea of what you may face down the line. If there is a history of Huntington's, your partner and their siblings each have a fifty percent chance of inheriting this disorder. It presents in middle age after people have had children. Would you be willing to have a sibling inflicted with this live with you or take over the care of their children?

Most young people have their parents still around and though it may be very far in the future, they may need your help down the line, much as they took care of you as a child. There are cultures where the parents will be readily taken in and others where a care home is found. Though this may be decades away, it is good to see how you each feel on the topic. There is little worse than having a mother-in-law you abhor suddenly sitting at your breakfast table every morning.

Do not assume that you will each do for your own family. You may find that you take in a family member, but it is the opposite partner that ends up dealing with it. The wife is driving her mother-in-law to the doctor, the husband has the credit to co-sign a loan for his wife’s sister. If or when things go badly, it then becomes an issue between the wife and husband.

My mom was diagnosed with cancer only when it reached the stage where nothing could be done. She didn’t have long to live. At that moment, the most important thing in the world to me was to spend as much time as possible with her. I sat at her bedside, I slept on a cot at the foot of her hospital bed. I did this for the two weeks she had left. Is this something your partner would support you doing? Would they take on childcare and put up with the loss of two weeks of income?

Some of this may seem like an easy yes, but what if the family member is one you have had a troubling past with? It is always easier said than done. You may find after opening your home that the dynamics are far more irritating than you imagined or harmful to the dynamics of the family unit. Maybe your brother-in-law starts hoarding in your home. Maybe your niece is stealing from your wallet. Maybe you can’t keep up with bills because the loan you co-signed is not being repaid. It is always good to have ‘what if’ conversations with your partner. There may be a very different desire to help and if you can get on the same page before there is an issue, you will be able to better navigate any storms.

Extra Support - Worksheet

 

1. Would you loan money or give money?

2. Under what circumstances would you give money to a family member to pay necessities?

3. If you made a loan and it wasn’t repaid what lengths would you go to to get it back?

4. Would you put your own future at risk to help (i.e. taking a loan or putting it on a card)?

5. Would you give up on luxuries (e.g. tropical vacations) to help?

6. Would you co-sign on a mortgage or car loan? If so for who?

7. Would you give bail money to a family member?

8. Would you help them catch up on child support?

9. Are you willing to pay their fines?

10. Would you pay for drug rehab?

11. Will you provide aid and money to a sibling going through a divorce?

12. Would you add a person to your cell plan that was not in your immediate family unit?

13. Would you let a family member turn on utilities in your name?

14. Would you lend money to your child’s girlfriend or boyfriend?

15. If there was a teen pregnancy would you pay for the raising of the child?

16. Would you take in a niece or nephew to prevent them from going into foster care? For how long?

17. Is institutionalization ever okay in your view?

18. What problematic genetic conditions run in your families?

19. Would you take over the care of a special needs sibling when your parents can no longer do so?

20. Would one of you give up a job to act as a caregiver?

21. Would you be a guardian of a mentally ill or disabled family member?

22. What do you consider a disability worthy of help (e.g. social anxiety)?

23. Would you consider buying a house with a rental suite to house a family member at no cost?

24. Would you let a family member live with you short term? Long term?

25. Would you take in a person escaping domestic violence even if this may present danger to you?

26. When your parents are old and frail will they live with you?

27. Would you pay for housing or an aide for an aging parent?

28. If an incident like COVID was hitting seniors homes would you bring a family member to isolate with you to hopefully protect them?

29. Are you willing to drive your aged in laws to appointments and take them shopping?

30. Would you be willing to do personal care for an aged relative like changing bandages or bathing?

31. Would you keep doing what you were to help if it became harmful to your family?

32. Would any of these situations extend to friends? If so how close of friend?

What are Your Individual Five Year Plans?

 If you do not know where you are headed, how will you know you have arrived?

We reach a place in our later years – the midlife crisis – when we look back at all we have achieved and measure it against what we have left to do before the clock runs out. If these are far apart, panic sets in. Who will we blame? Maybe ourselves, but it’s far easier to blame the partner that talked us into selling our sports car because it would not hold a car seat. The stereotypical image of someone going through a midlife crisis is someone ditching responsibility in favour of fun. If this is not how you want to end up, a good place to start is an open dialogue about the map you have for the future.

Just as you would not start a trip without a destination in mind, before you set off on a journey with a partner you need to be sure you are both travelling in the same direction. In general, we spend more time setting goals and checking off tasks at our work then we do in our personal life or even our most important relationships. It is easy to get complacent and lose sight of the finite nature of time.

It is not an unusual question to be asked at a job interview what your five year plan is. An employer does not want to spend time training someone if they are only going to be around for a year. While we are not, or should not, be in a relationship to train this person to meet your needs, we do want to be together for the long haul. If it is clear from the beginning your ideas are extremely conflicting, you either need to each adjust course somewhat so you both end up somewhere you want or break up. If one of you gives up your dreams and settles, will you resent the relationship down the road?

Sit down and write a couples’ bucket list or five year plan. Dr. Gail Matthews found you are forty-two percent more likely to achieve them as a result of cooperative planning. Make your list full of items that are concrete and measurable. ‘Have a happy marriage’ as a goal can look different depending on your background, temperament, and personality. It is better to state, 'date night every Friday' or 'save twenty dollars every week for a trip to Paris'. If you are both honest and paint a picture of the must achieve and the might be cool items, you are less likely to falter down the line.

Some of us are planners, long-term thinkers. We plan out our days, weeks, months, and years, making endless lists. Dierks Bentley wrote a song called Free and Easy that perfectly describes the short term thinker. These are people who like to be spontaneous, who find planning every detail claustrophobic. Those with an explorer personality type likely fall into this category. Two spontaneous partners will likely skip this exercise, finding it not in line with how they want to live life, not caring what is just around the corner, seeing even crisis as adventure. They may have a wonderful, exciting life together. People do not have to plan; the issue becomes problematic when one is a planner and the other isn’t or when our plans are extremely divergent and we have not had a conversation before the wedding about where we are headed.

If you have seen the other person's life map, compromise is possible. If both want to get a degree, but there is not money to cover both, one can work and the other attend school and then switch. If one wants kids right away, but the other to travel for two years, maybe you only travel together for one. As each goal is met, a life-long open dialogue can help you to build new goals to work towards.

This wild passion you feel for each other will not always be there. Life steps in in the form of mortgage, bills, and housework. You may have felt at the beginning that the fiery love you feel for each other will melt away all troubles. You can’t enter it blindly, just expecting it will not take work. Goals, in any area of our life, focus our attention. If you do not figure out what you want to be when you grow up, you will spend a lot of time wandering around aimlessly while you figure it out. Having goals also keeps you focused on your relationship and nurturing it. Nothing grows if it is not nurtured.

Have You Accepted Each Other's Flaws?

 “Find someone who knows all your flaws and mistakes, but doesn’t judge you and accepts you as you are.” Unknown

We come into a relationship with flaws and baggage, we pile it next to our partner’s trunks and suitcases of baggage and hope that it doesn’t take up too much space in your life. When romance is new, we may admire the other for traits different than ours. Things that may seem exciting or stabilizing. Down the road, they may become infuriating or boring.

I once dated someone who stated he was looking for someone that would help him make good choices.

That was what he was looking for in the moment: security and financial assistance. I knew instinctively he would not like the decisions I would help him make, like take a second job, cancel cable, and sell his toys. In the moment, my pragmatic approach to money management was attractive, but as I doled out an allowance – if we stayed together – it wouldn’t be.

Too often, we get caught up in the romance of the moment, the hormone high, and don’t look down the road. We downplay how traits will work out over a lifetime. I see people who marry knowing the profession their beloved is in, only to complain down the road at the effect it has on their relationship. If you marry a soldier, don’t be surprised when they are deployed and you are left alone with the babies.

If you marry thinking love will change a person or smooth out the edges, you shouldn’t be walking down that aisle. Commitment over a lifetime takes a lot of hard work and if you are going into it handicapped by traits you hope will disappear, it will be even harder.

Interestingly, I hear people speak of wanting their partner to change for the sake of the relationship, but rarely hear anyone say they themselves need to change. You can be sure if you are hoping for change, so is the other person. It would be nice if we could place an online order for the perfect mate, but since we can’t, we need to accept flaws and find the best match we can.

Things get better only if a person acknowledges them and wants to change. You can love someone to the moon and back and still they persist in staying where they are. Families of addicts will send them to rehab several times, yet they continue down that path until they make the change because that is something they want for themselves or they die.

If you haven’t had a discussion with your partner exposing your flaws and mistakes, you aren’t ready to make a commitment. Being this exposed is, without a doubt, a very vulnerable place to be, but a necessary step. You need to peek into each others baggage, so years from now, you don’t open a closet and see a skeleton.

Television court shows are filled with people who buy a used car, then want to return it and get their money back when it has problems. People, like used cars, are ‘as is’. You need to do your research on both. With a car, look under the hood, take a test drive, consult a mechanic, don’t just fall in love with its shiny exterior. With a person, it is not as easy...that is why it is important to question, question, question.

Divorced people can tell you about the red flags they saw early on. The behaviours they thought were cute when they were dating, but were annoying later on. Red flags are supposed to signal danger for us. Why is it we pay attention to them when driving but not when we sign a life-long contract?

If they walk away because of a flaw you possess, they were not the right person for you and you have saved yourself years of fights before it ended anyway.