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This
continues a 3-page article on eight
extra concurrent relationship
stressors that typical same-gender stepfamily partners must admit
and resolve together, compared to average heterosexual stepfamily mates.
Another
common extra stressor is...
3)
Unique Conflicts With Relatives and
Supporters
Each mate is somewhere between deception and denials to first
public disclosure of their same-gender identity and partnership, to having key
people fully accept them as worthy persons and legitimate, committed co-parenting mates. If
same-gender couples don't get enough genuine
acceptance after coming out, they need to...
-
and accept that,
-
help their kids and supporters adapt to that, and...
-
decide if they need to
acquire
an alternate (non-genetic) family who does fully accept them and their
stepfamily.
I suspect that few heterosexuals, including
health and religious professionals, can really empathize accurately with the personal
(shame, guilt, fears, ambivalence, weariness, relief, ...) of coming out.
Genuine acceptance of same-gender preference spans honest (vs. dutiful or
pretended), unambivalent, loving (vs. intellectual) recognition and respect for
each partner as...
-
a unique,
talented person of inherent dignity and worth with universal human
rights,
-
a
valued member of their own biofamily, their stepfamily, and society,
-
a committed,
and
acceptance of both partners as...
-
a respectable
committed couple with legitimate human needs, feelings, opinions, anxieties,
hopes, goals, and dreams.
Relatives'
genuine (vs. pretended) acceptance of each partner as a competent co-parent
(vs. as a person / man / woman / relative) hinges on evolving trust that
they are
(a) clear on what each dependent child needs, and are (b) dedicated to, and (c)
filling those needs
(nurturing) cooperatively with another bio-parent, unless
he or she is dead.
Building trust among new relatives requires (a) two empowered
(b) much honest,
and conversation; and (c) direct observation of co-parents and kids
alone and together. A primal factor is
whether
each partner
(i.e. their ruling
trusts
themselves and each other
as competent co-parents in their complex, alien stepfamily.
Many things can
hinder approval and trust within each stepfamily member and between them: ignorance,
homophobia, shame, guilts, biofamily
and
biases,
unrealistic stepfamily
expectations, child custody and
visitation
disputes,
ineffective communication skills, fierce
and
conflicts,
relationship
and disagreements on what each
child needs, from whom.
Core issues are whether each child's other
bioparent...
-
is
by their true Self, and...
-
can
and
effectively; and...
-
can
forgive and accept that their former mate
prefers a same-gender partner over them; and...
-
understands and accepts stepfamily
basics and
realities (has realistic expectations); and...
-
can solidly trust that each biochild is safe enough in their
complex, alien new
An important acceptance factor is whether
each bioparent, sibling, and concerned relative feels that minor kids’
male / female identity, development,
and moral values are safe from (irrationally) feared "contamin-ation" or "perversion."
Dependent stepkids are best served if all
their genetic and step relatives and family supporters (e.g. teachers, clergy,
tutors, and counselors) can openly discuss confusions and questions about a same-gender
co-parent’s nurturing responsibilities.
Ideally, that can
lead to any family adult or supporter saying something like "Yes, Frank is
your father's partner, and your stepfather. You are his stepdaughter, and we
(or you all) all are a normal step-family." Adult
over this force
kids into stressful, confusing loyalty conflicts on top of many other
concurrent needs and stressors.
Post-divorce
legal battles
over child custody, visitations, finances, and
are
probably more common in same-gender-co-parent
stepfamilies. I suspect that U.S. family-law attorneys and judges are as vulnerable to
ignorances and unconscious biases about same-gender parents’ com-petence as anyone else.
In addition to personal, partnership, and
co-parenting struggles, same-gender partners often face...
4) Unique
Workplace Conflicts
Typically, both co-parenting
mates must work
full time. My same-gender clients have taught
me about the extra challenges they face in finding a
stable, satisfying job - like...
learning
whether it's safe to disclose
your sexual preference and living with a same-gender partner to your
management and co-workers: "Will I be hired? Fired? Demoted? Humilia-ted?
Discriminated against? Spurned?" This is specially tough in occupations
involving children and/or some religious organizations; and co-parents may face...
subtle or overt discrimination against
choice assignments, recognition, training, and/or promotions. For instance,
you might be barred from high-visibility positions because of the fear that
(biased) customers or clients might take their business elsewhere; and...
co-worker
rejection, distrust, and/or
harassments, which collectively promote workplace isolation, anxieties, and/or
dissatisfying phony (surface) relationships; and possibly you struggle with…
trouble
getting your partner covered by
health and life insurances, and Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and pension benefits.
Each job change, reassignment, promotion, and
organizational shift, like getting a new boss, down-sizing, or a corporate
merger, can reactivate (or ease) these stressors. I suspect that filing effective union or human-rights grievances because of
sexual-preference discrimination is harder than in racial disputes.
Another probable couple-stressor is...
5) Unique
Legal and Financial Problems
Many
American
families and stepfamilies are stressed by ex-mate
legal battles
over child custody, visitations, financial support, and parenting practices.
The odds of post-divorce
legal
disputes
like these are probably higher in same-gender stepfamilies. This is
partly because of the misguided supposition that same-gender couples will
raise gender-confused or significantly-wounded kids, and/or
somehow "wreck their lives."
Another cause for stressful
co-parent relations can be the extra hurt, resentment, anger, and
shame the heterosexual parent feels for (a) being rejected
and/or for (b) having been deceived by or choosing a "sick" partner in the first
place. Another cause of expensive legal fights may be (c) covert or direct
influ-ence from
and
relatives and/or
close friends.
Emotions can run extra high in divorces
involving same-gender preferences. This is even more likely if
the rejected partner is ruled by a
false self.
People who feel abused, victimized, and weak hire attorneys and use the
family-law system to supply leverage, righteous vindication, and
punitive power. Minor kids are always wounded by lose-lose-lose
parental legal battles, unless they’re being
and/or
Another potentially complex and expensive
stressor may occur if one of you wants to legally adopt your partner's child/ren. That’s
stressful enough in heterosexual stepfamilies!
Post-divorce legal battles are expensive.
Mounting legal bills skew household and family budgets, deplete savings, cause inner and
interpersonal conflicts, and can amplify cross-generational bitterness over
child-support and estate-planning disputes.
Typical same-gender couples are more vulnerable to financial stressors,
compared to heterosexual co-parenting partners. Besides income restriction
from possible job loss or promotion blocks (above), they may battle over child
support because of gender-related bitterness, resentments, or fears. They may
also incur higher-than usual counseling fees because of the scope and complexity
of their personal and stepfamily problems. Most stepfamily mates experience major
and
conflicts, and relation-ship
over insurance coverages,
medical and educational costs, and estate plans and wills.
Same-gender partners may also face…
6) Unique
Spiritual and Religious Conflicts
Average stepfamily couples are more likely to be of different religious faiths and traditions
than first-marriers. This may cause significant personal, marital, and
extended-stepfamily conflict. Typical same-gender couples and their
kids face extra stressors.
I know a divorced lesbian mother of
three who was expelled from her conservative Christian church when she revealed her
intimate commitment to another divorced biomother. She was told scathingly she
was living in sin, and that God would bar her from salvation unless she
repented and rejected her "unnatural and unholy lifestyle."
Former fellow worshippers and friends pitied
and shunned her and her custodial children, and "prayed for their redemption."
Her family's rejection and loss of social and Christian support, and the minister's
condescending judgment and warning, were devastating. The mom struggled to promote con-tinued faith
in scriptural teachings of love, brotherhood, and forgiveness to her pre-teen
kids, in the face of rigid, righteous scorn and shaming rejection by their fellow
"Christians."
Believing the Bible as the sacred, revealed
word of God, the woman wrestled with questioning the Scriptures,
while finding that her (God-created) body and emotions led her to
love and desire another woman. She had to make a
(core attitude) change to
retain her basic faith in the Bible, God, and her soul's safety, while
choosing to ignore, minimize, or re-interpret scriptural verses that implied or
declared
that carnal love between adults of the same gender was "an abomination."
Mates who aren't particularly religious (vs.
may
bypass these complex inner, parenting, and
social conflicts. Religious partners may
be in a congregation that accepts same-gender persons as God's beloved
children despite interpretations of a Holy book written by unknown authors thousands of years
ago. If you're not that fortunate, you must
chose between hiding your personal and family realities and leading a false
life (below), or revealing it, and seeking a new church community.
If relatives are
religiously conservative, a change of church or religious faith can
create major family-system dissension and conflict. This is
specially true if an ex mate insists that their church
and faith is the one true way, and the immortal souls of the kids are
endangered by the same-gender co-parent's "sinful lifestyle" and
different church or faith. In such cases, stepkids are caught in an emotional
crossfire they didn't cause and can't understand or control.
Finding an ordained
clergyperson to sanctify a same-gender commitment ceremony can be hard
in some locales. Having a
same-gender wedding service and reception can evoke unexpected biases and
upset in some relatives, friends, and fellow congregants. The hurts and
resentments from a conflictual commitment ceremony can take months or years to abate.
On top of these six extra
sets of stress, partners may also
have to…
7) Learn to Live a
Stable Double Life
Many heterosexual co-parents are vaguely
uncomfortable or clearly embarrassed to reveal that they're in a stepfamily. They
hide that
from themselves and/or other people to avoid facing
significant shame, guilts, and fears. In this sense, many
stepfamily co-parents live a kind of double life: wanting to appear as "just a
normal (bio)family" in public, and living stepfamily life behind closed doors.
Typical same-gender co-parents must
lead an even more complex double life. Because of pervasive
social and religious bigotry, they must live cautiously and defensively in
choosing who to reveal their relationship and stepfamily identity to, and when.
This is specially complex when dependent kids and/or grandkids, and hostile
relatives are involved.
A paradoxic task is
couples trying to foster the values of honesty, respect, and responsibility
in their kids, while modeling
and/or asking them to make exceptions about telling the truth about their own
family relationships and reality. An underlying co-parental challenge is the
difficulty telling the full truth about (a) same-gender attraction and (b) family
reactions to it, to your minor or grown kids.
Because
kids quickly learn of the cruelty of
their peers, they develop their own reasons for lying about their
same-gender stepfamily status. So they
create their own kind of dual life. At
the least, they must cope with feeling significantly "different" than most of
their peers, just at the time they're desper-ately seeking social "normalcy,"
acceptance, and approvals.
Living in an unsafe
(wounded) society forces
many same-gender partners to choose a dual lifestyle: the "real" one in
their home and trusted social
circle, and the deceptive public one. Such a double life usually promotes
and related
false-self
It inexorably requires lying and giving
which promote shame, guilts, and anxieties. If either partner
and/or a child is from a
childhood, they have suffered a lifetime of these already.
After each co-parent comes out publicly,
their relatives must repeatedly decide what to "say" socially about
this branch
of their family. Their stance can range between compassionate, centered,
honesty and support, to condemning, pitying, and scorning, to lying, pretending, or avoiding because of
their own confusion and insecurity.
So all members of a same-gender stepfamily may have to choose to live
an honest, authentic life or a dual life to preserve their
pride,
and securities.
People who need to distort or hide
things about themselves or their family are often governed by a false self.
That's the core problem, not any deceptions they try to maintain. For more
perspective on family secrets, see this.
We just briefly explored
these seven extra sources of confusion and
conflict for typical same-gender stepfamily co-parents, compared to heterosexual couples:
-
More
personal shame, guilt, anxiety,
confusion, and grief; and…
-
More
co-parenting conflicts with
(a) each
other, (b) stepkids and (c) their other co-parent/s, (d) school and clinical
professionals; and (e) some family-service providers; and...
-
More
disapproval and rejection from
sets of relatives, specially co-grandparents; and...
-
More
employment anxieties and conflicts with ignorant and biased co-workers; and...
-
More
legal and financial problems: e.g.
custody and child-support battles, and insurance coverages; and...
-
More
spiritual and religious conflicts at
home and in conservative church communities; and...
-
Striving for a stable
double life as
necessary - i.e. adapting to guilt about deceptions, fear of
discovery, and many frustrations.
We’ll look at an eighth
common stressor
- finding effective personal and family supports – when we review your options
on the next page. First,
pause and reflect... recall why you began reading this article. What do
you notice about your thoughts and emotions at this point? How do you feel
about what you just read and how it may apply to you and people you care
about?
Now let’s take a closer look at
the central co-parenting task: helping dependent kids fill their special needs while filling many other personal and partnership needs. The first step is to
learn about…
Typical Stepkids' Extra Tasks
To fully appreciate the scope and feeling of the
combined stressors that average stepchildren face, read these outlines of
~60 developmental and
family-adjustment needs kids need
informed, empathic adult help to fill. Kids in a same-gender stepfamily They
often
have a mix of additional mental, emotional, and relationship needs like
these...
Change
Confusion into Understanding
Typical stepkids
need to find answers to
questions like these...
"What does homosexual mean? Why are
homosexual people called ‘gay’ and ‘Lesbian’?"
"Is my Mom(Dad) bad or sick for being
homosexual? Is s/he going to hell?"
"Will s/he ever change back to 'regular'?"
"My minister / Bible / friend / relatives /
teacher / says that being homosexual is really bad. Are they right? Who
decides? If they're not right, why should I believe anything they say?"
"Is homosexuality 'catching'? Can I or my
brother or sister 'get it'?"
"If I'm sexual with (a same-gender child or
adult) will that make me homosexual?"
"How can I tell the difference between
'regular' touching and play, and homosexual touching?"
"Why don't (most) people like homosexual
people?"
"Will I be homosexual, or am I?"
"How can homosexual people have babies?"
"Why don't I ever see or hear about
homosexual animals?"
"If one parent is homosexual, does that mean
the other one is too?"
"If (my) grandparents aren't homosexual, how
(did) can they have a homosexual child?"
“What exactly is a ‘faggot’? A ‘queer’? A 'dyke'
/ A 'fairy' ?”
"What is normal, anyway?"
“Why don’t I see families like ours on TV,
or hear my friends talk about families like ours?”
"Are we a real 'stepfamily'? Some people say
we aren't." (They’re wrong.)
“How am I supposed to behave with my
(homosexual) parent and stepparent?”
“Why did this have to happen to me / us?”
"Who am I?" (the dignified biological
son or daughter of a respectable man and woman who conceived a child, and a
stepdaughter or son in one kind of normal stepfamily.)
Each stepfamily's unique situation will foster
questions like these that each minor and grown child (and unaware
adults) need
to answer. Kids need their caregivers to (a) want to
empathically
to them, and (b) to encourage discussion, venting, and truth-telling. Do you
know which questions your minor and grown (step)kids are trying to answer?
Yes, kids of heterosexual parents can have these questions too, but they're
usually generic, not personal.
The nature and complexity of kids’
questions about sexual preference and love depends (partly) on their age and knowledge, specially their
understanding of
and sexuality. Unhealed
in
your kids, co-parents, and kin can block open family discussion and resolution
of important questions like these.
The more
kids' questions like these are
validated and well discussed and answered, the lower their chance of
significant confusion and emotional upset. That lowers the odds of their
"acting out" and raises the odds of their eventually accepting and
bonding with a stepparent, stepsibs, and stepkin. This is most likely if
their
co-parents are (a) clear
and
and (b) able to
nurture as a mutually-respectful
despite
significant values
differences and other conflicts.
Gaining stable, accurate clarity on
questions like these amidst social ignorance and reactive con-troversy
is a vital part of your kids’
their losses of biofamily togetherness and social normalcy. Their co-parents'
related task is to clarify and answer their own
questions about same-gender unions and families, and then help kids and others answer theirs.
Major disagreement on
answering kids’ questions usually fosters volatile
and
relationship
among adults'
and in and between
their stepfamily's related homes. The solution is for co-parents to evolve
an effective strategy on resolving these three common
stressors, not to debate same-gender
questions.
Besides getting mentally
clear on such questions over time, typical stepkids (specially teens) must
also manage special
emotional turmoils. Do you need a stretch break before reading
about them and stepfamily mate's options to manage all these concurrent
extra challenges?
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