Love – Too much to ask for?

Of course you want everyone to love each other.  When people come together to create a family, it is normal for the members of this new family to think that everyone should love each other.  Biological parents especially want their new spouse to love their children, and want the children to love the stepparent in return. Stepparents think they should love the children, and children are often confused. 

The problem is that couples get married because they are in love with each other, usually not because they want an instant family complete with children. And even if they love the children before the marriage that can easily change.  Rather delightful children before the wedding vows can become surly, defiant, or worse afterwards for numerous reasons, especially towards the stepparent.  There are many reasons for this, but it creates a bind for the stepparent, who may be doing their best to parent these children. 

As for the children, I rather relate to them from a personal experience.  About a year and a half after my father died, my mother started dating someone she had met at the Senior Center in her area.  I was in my thirties when this happened, and I completely understood and appreciated my mother going on with her life.  But when I met Bill, a rather decent, elderly gentleman, I couldn’t get over the fact that he seemed to like my mother.  And I immediately disliked him for it. 

Things are even more complicated with children.  This new person moves in and often begins a process where the entire family changes.  The stepparent almost always does things differently than the biological parent, and has new authority to make things happen. 

If there is another biological parent still around, any fantasies that mom and dad are going to get back together again, die a final death when the marriage vows are complete.  And if there is another parent that is threatened by this new marriage, it is possible that they might give messages, even non-verbal ones, that if the children even like, much less love the new stepparent, it will be a betrayal to them. 

In this arena of newness and loyalty binds, it is understandable for children to be slow to warm up to the new parent and for stepparents to be slow to love the children. 

So, take the pressure off of everyone.  Announce in a family meeting that in your family, no one has to love anyone.  In fact, no one has to even like anyone either. Both children and stepparents, often sigh with relief when this expectation is taken off.   What you do expect, however, and will enforce, is that people treat each other with respect.  This is regulating behavior rather than feelings and is much more likely to be met with success.

And just maybe, with time, love will get a chance to happen on its own.  Best of luck!

How Could Your Child Love This New Stepparent?

When your former spouse gets married, it means that your children are going to have another mom or dad who is going to be an important part of their lives.

This can be pretty threatening, especially if that person is nice, maybe even nicer than you at times.  Of course, at times, you are the one who is nicer, but sometimes that’s hard.  It’s extra hard if he/she is the one who has moved on, and you haven’t.  You are in the unenviable position of being a single parent, with all the struggles that go with that, whether they be financial, exhaustion, or just plain loneliness.  Even if you were the one who left, and had good reasons to do so, it doesn’t make your present situation less difficult. 

So it’s tough when your children come home and tell you that their new step-mom just made the best cookies with them.  Or they went hiking, camping, fishing, with the new dad or mom, and he/she is super cool.  (Of course, either gender could make cookies as well.)

It’s tough to say to them, even if you don’t mean it, “I’m glad you had such a good time,” or even, “It’s great that you’re getting along with this new stepparent.” 

Because the truth is, as much as it hurts, on some level, you probably do want them to be with someone who is nice to them and makes them feel welcome.  You want this because you want what is best for them, what’s going to help them feel good about themselves when they are away from you with their other parent.

The funny thing is, if you give your children permission to like, or even to love this stepparent, it will not only be good for them, but they will love you even more for not putting them in an impossible loyalty bind. 

So remember these 3 things: 

1)         This is hard.

2)         The more you let them love others, the more they will love you.

3)         You will always be their mom/dad.  No one.  That’s right, no one can ever take your place.  

And the Wicked Stepmother said…..

Is the wicked stepmother nothing more than a fairytale?  If you are feeling like the wicked stepparent, did you start out that way?

Stepparents find themselves in no small bind.  Women especially are more often placed in a role of being the children’s caretaker; hence, more fairytales have the stepmother as their antagonist.  But truly, all stepparents often find themselves needing to discipline, guide, and correct children.  This can be tough.  Children may resent this new person in the household.  They may be in a loyalty bind with the biological parent who is not living in the house.  This parent may not be happy that their children are being guided by someone they themselves haven’t come to accept.  As for biological parents who are in the same household, they may give mixed messages to discipline the children but not in a way that upsets the children.  

So here’s a couple of ideas that might help.

*          Be easy on yourself.  You’ve taken on a huge task.  Do the best you can.  Don’t take it personally if things seem to go poorly, especially at first.  

*          Be slow to be the authority.  At the beginning, take on the authority of someone in charge, but not the primary person in charge.  Like a babysitter who uses the parent’s authority to discipline, tell the children that this needs to happen because these are the rules of the house. 

*          Change existing rules slowly.  A stepparent often sees how the biological parent may have become lax about holding the structure during times of transition.  Or maybe the bio parent always was more lax.  Either way, changing things quickly usually meets with resistance. 

*          Make sure you take care of yourself.  One way to do this is to keep something from your previous life, the one you had before being in this blended family. For example, spend time with your old friends and do some things without the family that you used to enjoy.  This will help you to renew yourself with what is familiar. The more you take care of yourself, the more available you will be to take care of others. 

*          Have hope.  Things usually get better with time, especially if you and your partner are working together on it.  My husband and I created a blended family.  We have had our moments, lots of them, but we’ve now been married 27 years and have raised three wonderful children.  

Stepfamilies: A Personal Story

They say it takes at least 2 to 4 years for a blended family to feel united.  It took our family at least that long or longer. 

But when Jimmy and Jerry, the twins, were 16, eight years after we were married, and Amy was 18, Dave decided that he wanted to adopt all the children.  Since their biological father had chosen not to be an active parent for several years, that was not a problem.  What was a complication was that Jim was not sure if he wanted to be adopted by Dave.  He still felt some loyalty to his biological dad, plus we had gone through some rough times together as a family.  So we left it up to Jim whether he chose to be adopted or not.  He finally made his decision the day we went to court.  His answer was no. 

Four years later, Jim came to me and said that he had given a lot of thought to how much Dave had given him and us as a family.  In spite of numerous conflicts, he gave them a stable home, was an excellent cook, and was there for them through thick and thin.  With all the struggles we went through, it would have been easy for Dave to leave us all.  But he didn’t. 

Jim decided that for Dave’s Christmas present, he wanted to be adopted.  Keeping our secret, I hired a paralegal to draw up the papers.  On Christmas Eve, after all the other presents had been opened, Jim presented Dave, his dad, the rolled up adoption papers, wrapped in festive paper with a bow.  He also gave him a special pen that he had bought for the signing of these papers.  With tears glistening in his eyes, Dave took the pen and signed the papers. 

Are blended families difficult?  Ours sure was.  But looking back, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.  

Transform Your Relationship-One Hot Tip

There is one thing you can do that will likely transform your relationship right now, and it doesn’t depend on your partner.  Whew!  Isn’t that a relief?  But it may be harder than you think.  At least it was for me.  

What you can do is this.  Think about what you do in the relationship that probably drives your partner crazy.  Separate it from what your partner does that makes you crazy, i.e., I wouldn’t do x, y, or z, if you didn’t do a, b, or c first.  

I want to share with you how this happened in my relationship after I had been studying about personal responsibility in relationships for awhile. Like many people, I was an expert on my husband’s shortcomings.  Being a therapist only made me an expert with a capital E. One of his shortcomings was that he didn’t ever seem available to talk things out with me when we had a problem.  His avoidance of conflict made me wonder if we would ever be able to resolve any issue since we never talked in a healthy way about anything.  

But what happened changed my relationship with him and my awareness of the power of taking personal responsibility.  This happened about 15 years ago so all the details have become illusive other than I was sitting in the hot tub, and Dave was standing next to the hot tub annoyed with me as I was clearly annoyed with him.   I remember thinking that he had a point, but that I would never have said what I did if he hadn’t said something else first.  Like I said, this was a long time ago.  

But I remember what I did next like it was yesterday.  I decided to only take ownership of my side of the argument.  I told him about my awareness and did not add anything about what he had said or did.  I whole heartedly apologized and expressed understanding about how I understood that what I said would be upsetting to him.

My fantasy was that he would then feel free to take ownership of his side of the argument, and that he would say something similar to me complete with his own apology.  He didn’t.  He thanked me, and he walked away.  It was all I could do to not climb out of the tub, follow him, and let him know that I was still waiting for his ownership, his apology.   

It’s probably good that I was in the tub and the effort seemed too big.  What did happen, however, is that Dave started to become more available to have conversations with me about things that were problems in our relationship.  This was big.  In a recent tiff,  he emailed me, “I'm sure we can mend things. We're getting pretty good at that.”   I almost reached through cyberspace and gave him a hug.