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"&amp;quot;Mom,&amp;quot; Anna said to me yesterday. &amp;quot;Dad wants to pick us up early on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Is that OK?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Well, of course it&amp;#039;s OK, &amp;quot; I replied. &amp;quot;You have an eight hour car ride to Uncle Matt&amp;#039;s, after all.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;And Mom, guess what? Stacie and Maddie are going with us.&amp;quot; She expected me to be surprised, but really, I wasn&amp;#039;t. Stacie had to meet the family sooner or later. If anything was surprising, it was that I really didn&amp;#039;t feel one way or the other about it, which is a good thing all in all. &amp;quot;Mom, what do you think Uncle Matt will do when he sees her?&amp;quot; Anna&amp;#039;s eyes grew wide, as if she expects him to attack the woman with a pickaxe or something. &amp;quot;I think he&amp;#039;ll say &amp;#039;Hi Stacie, it&amp;#039;s nice to meet you&amp;#039; and he&amp;#039;ll probably shake her hand.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;But what if he doesn&amp;#039;t like her?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Why wouldn&amp;#039;t he like her?&amp;quot; I shrugged. &amp;quot;Anna, unless she sets his house on fire, I don&amp;#039;t think there&amp;#039;ll be a problem.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;What if he&amp;#039;s loyal to you?&amp;quot; She said. &amp;quot;Oh, Anna. We can all be friends. It&amp;#039;s not like we&amp;#039;re at war.&amp;quot;  I tried, as diplomatically as I could to get across that Uncle Matt doesn&amp;#039;t have to choose a side. There are no clear-cut winners and losers. We can all lay claim to a bit of both. Anna probably thinks that Stacie &amp;quot;won&amp;quot; her Dad, but I guess it depends on how you define winning. Once I found out about Stacie, I really wasn&amp;#039;t fighting to win him back, and to tell the truth, I&amp;#039;ve had some good come out of all of this, too. I really don&amp;#039;t feel like she won or I won. It just is and we&amp;#039;re all getting through it best as we can. I won&amp;#039;t make a battleground when there&amp;#039;s nothing here to fight over. He&amp;#039;s gone, and I truly don&amp;#039;t want him back. I also truly don&amp;#039;t want him to fail, either. I suppose I could fight out of spite, but that wouldn&amp;#039;t help anybody. As long as Peter and Stacie&amp;#039;s actions aren&amp;#039;t hurting my children, we&amp;#039;ll get along just fine. Did your kids expect people to choose up sides? Did they have a hard time understanding how others were going to accept the new person in your ex&amp;#039;s life? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a41929/no-battleground-here-16362/>