Project 9 of 12 toward high-nurturance families and relationships
	Resolve Stressful Loyalty Conflicts Paradox: Put Your Kids First by Putting Them Third! by Peter K. Gerlach, MSW

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        This is one of over 150 articles focused on building high-nurturance family relationships and preventing divorce. This introduction describes the Web site's purpose and the best ways to use its resources. Each article is part of a mosaic of ideas, so the more you read, the more sense they'll all make.

        These articles augment, vs. replace, other qualified professional help. The "/" in re/marriage and re/divorce notes that it may be a stepparent's first union. "Co-parents" means both bioparents, or any of the three or more related stepparents and bioparents co-managing a multi-home nuclear stepfamily. 

        Before continuing, reflect: why are you reading this - what do you need?

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        This is one of a series of Project-9 Web pages on mastering the unavoidable inner-personal and mutual conflicts from complex stepfamily mergers. A universal conflict involves resolving competing loyalties in and between stepfamily adults and kids. For wide-angle perspective, read this example and return here.

 The key Web articles in this series are integrated into the guidebook for co-parent Projects 8-12, Build a High-nurturance Stepfamily.

 Mastering Loyalty Conflicts: If You’re Already Re/married...

       If (a) you’re now experiencing some loyalty dilemmas and/or (b) you want to help those who are, you’re in the right place! This framework works for both of those:
 

Assess for the real (underlying) problem/s, and ...

Act to fix it (or them) as a co-parenting team. Then ...

Resolve your loyalty conflicts via eight steps.

Here's a look at each of these …

1) Assess for the Underlying Problem/s, and Work to Fix Them

      While loyalty conflicts are a real current problem for average step people, they're usually symptoms of underlying conditions that need co-parents’ attention first. Attention to the loyalty conflicts without fixing the underlying condition/s probably won't work, long range. What follows is a summary of typical core problems I’ve seen since 1981, and suggestions on what co-parents can do about them.

       Make some distraction-free time, get your partner, and use the following as a general troubleshooting checklist and problem-solving discussion-starter. Some of these real problems stand alone, and others combine. Note a core premise here: it's always the responsibility of the three or more co-parents to resolve current loyalty conflicts in and between their stepfamily homes. Do you agree?

Eight Typical Underlying Problems

        Problem 1) One or more of your co-parents isn't aware of being dominated by a false self. Such wounded people can rarely deal effectively with stepfamily loyalty conflicts until they’re well into self-motivated personal healing.

        Solution: All your co-parents read about modular personalities, true and false selves, and any of the referenced readings that fit. Each of you assess for false-self wounds honestly. If appropriate, get qualified professional help to augment or clarify your findings. Encourage attitudes of compassion and hope, not blame or shame! 

        If any of you are in normal denial of false-self wounds, evolve and work a meaningful recovery plan over time, and give it (i.e. you ) top life priority. The biggest beneficiaries of doing this difficult and priceless project are your dependent kids. Without your recovery, they’re at high risk of developing a protective false self, and choosing wounded partners to continue the toxic ancestral cycle.

         Problem 2) One or more of your co-parents don’t really accept that you're all now in a normal multi-home nuclear stepfamily. Alternatively, they do accept, but don't accurately understand what that means. If so, this usually sets up stressful unrealistic expectations that hinder effective family problem-solving.

        Solution: If one or more adults among you is providing part-time or full-time guidance, nurturance, and emotional and/or financial support for their partner’s minor or grown biokid/s, then they've chosen a stepparenting role. Any family with one or more stepparent - stepchild pairs (including adult kids) is a stepfamily.

        Explore any discomfort with accepting this from the view that not accepting your reality is causing serious stress - or will, continually. If even one of your three or more co-parents balks at this acceptance, expect relationship triangles and loyalty conflicts involving them to stay unresolved. Co-parent Project 3 offers you concepts and tools to help you accept your identity as a normal multi-home stepfamily. 

        Another possible root-problem underlying your loyalty conflicts is ...

        Problem 3) All three or more of your co-parents do accept that you’re in the same stepfamily, but one or more don’t know (a) what that means, and/or (b) what’s normal - i.e. someone’s still consistently using biofamily expectations and standards.

        Where this is true, co-parents are at risk of heeding misguided advice (e.g. "You must put the child/ren first!") from misinformed (and/or wounded) clergy, lawyers, counselors, doctors, or other professionals. Mates who understand how different stepfamilies are will choose informed advisors and supporters.

        Solution: All your co-parents work at Project 4 together: read and discuss the articles, and compare your current stepfamily expectations against these 60 realities. Help each other (vs. attacking or competing) discover if anyone has significantly unrealistic expectations about themselves or other members, or about your common family dynamics. 

Reality-check your beliefs with veteran co-parents. Work toward adopting common, realistic expectations for all your role and relationship norms in your stepfamily, starting with stepparent and stepchild.

        Problem 4) Someone other than the resident co-parent/s consistently controls the key decisions in one or more of your co-parenting homes. Possibilities: a chronically acting-out (psychologically- wounded) child or relative, an intrusive or desperate ex mate, or no one is in charge.

        Solution: If the resident co-parents aren’t already finding effective solutions for it now, this problem may merit some temporary stepfamily-aware professional help. Avoid professional counselors or therapists, however seasoned, who have no meaningful specific training or experience in stepfamily dynamics and norms. "I’m an experienced, licensed, ‘family-systems’ or 'marriage-and-family’ professional" is often not good enough.

        With or without clinical help, you co-parents can use structural maps to assess who's really influencing the major decisions, roles, and rules in your caregiving homes. Sometimes this isn't as simple as it sounds...  The objective is to get the resident adults solidly back in charge of their own home, and resident and/or visiting kids feeling safe that they're not powerful enough to run the home. If they are that powerful, one or more caregivers are probably often controlled by a false self.

        Another possible core cause of your loyalty conflicts is ...

        Problem 5) One or more of your co-parents picked the wrong people to commit to, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time. This is too complex a subject to summarize meaningfully here. Where this is true, I’ve found it’s always an offshoot of co-parent couples being in protective denial of one or both being psychologically wounded.

This root problem will always cause an interactive network of stepfamily relationship problems.

        One symptom of this condition is one or more co-parents not ranking their remarriage and family emotional health consistently high on their personal priority lists. "OK, so we're a stepfamily, not a biofamily. Yeah, we should get clear on what our key values and expectations are... but first I / we need to get the car fixed, balance the checkbook, plan our party, watch the news, cut the grass, take a nap..."

        Solution: If you haven't yet, do Project 1 together. For starters, each of you co-parents follow and read the three multi-part "wrong-choice..." worksheets here. Depending on what you conclude...

invest in the Project-8 guidebook The Remarriage Book and/or any of these recommended titles; and/or...

get qualified professional help and forge personal recovery programs, or breathe a sigh of relief and look elsewhere.

        Another possible core reason for recurring loyalty conflicts is ...

        Problem 6) One or more of your adults and/or kids is blocked in mourning their losses. This will probably inhibit the griever from...

• feeling and expressing key emotions like anger and despair,

• saying final goodbyes to prized lost things, and...

• really accepting their new stepfamily realities, roles, and relationships.

That in turn causes a stream of loyalty conflicts and relationship triangles, until the blocked resumes normal grieving. Blocked grievers are usually living in low-nurturance families and homes, and often have significant unseen psychological wounds. 

        Solution: Work at Project 5 together over time. All your three or more co-parents read about healthy grieving, symptoms of blocked grief, and related resources. Discuss your ideas together and tailor the suggestions in the articles to fit your situation. Again, the biggest long-term beneficiaries from this effort are your minor kids and their unborn offspring.

        In many typical stepfamilies, ...

        Problem 7)  Divorced bioparents haven't worked intentionally to heal their mix of co-parenting barriers . This is usually a form of blocked grief, often fueled by unacknowledged false-self wounds in one or both bioparents. Until resolution, it usually promotes relationship triangles, blocks effective inter-home communication and conflict resolution, and stresses all concerned, including minor and grown kids.

        Solution: Co-parents make Project 1 a high priority, and help each other do it. This will probably need some appropriate professional help along the way. The first requisite is that both divorced bioparents become Self-motivated to heal - if only to nurture their minor or grown kids who are caught in the ongoing crossfire. Augment that by tailoring and following the suggestions in these ex-mate articles.

        Ideally, each conflicted bioparent will want to (a) genuinely self-assess for the other seven underlying causes shown here (which are probably present), and to (b) act self-responsibly toward appropriate solutions for themselves and their kids. Usually, unrecovering  shame-based (significantly-wounded) co-parents fall into escalating, destructive attack-defend spirals, with or without traumatic legal interventions roiling the waters....

        And finally, it's probable that under your loyalty conflicts lies ...

        Problem 8)  One or more of your co-parents are benignly ignorant of what (a) win/win compromising is (do you know?), (b) the seven communication skills are (can you name them?); and/or (c) the key differences between verbal fighting, defending, explaining (justifying), debating, or arguing and effective problem-solving. This is a very common problem in all families, in my experience. 

        The good news is: once identified, this problem is fixable, with patience, practice, and dedicated effort. Symptoms are co-parents' (a) often avoiding attempts to resolve conflicts, and/or (b) consistently finding such attempts "unproductive" - i.e. one or more people don't really get their primary needs met well enough.

        Solution: Give Project 2 high priority together. All three or more of your co-parents learn about the seven communication skills. Contrast them non-judgmentally to the way you all try to verbally resolve your values conflicts now. Co-operatively (vs. combatively), work to develop the seven skills in and among you all - specially empathic listening, assertion (vs. aggression or submission), and problem solving. Teach your kids these concepts, and model the skills for them!

       If you help each other learn to dig-down cooperatively as you build your co-parenting team (Project 10), you should experience significant improvements in your family relationships (and Self esteems!) over time. This skill-building task harvests major benefits in all other areas of your lives!

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        We’ve just hilighted eight typical core problems underlying the loyalty conflicts you’re experiencing in and between your stepfamily’s related homes. Usually several of these problems are operating at once. It’s important to avoid blaming or scapegoating someone for these problems: you all have been doing the best you’ve known how!

        I believe co-parents' unawareness of root problems like these and other key factors is one of five key reasons for epidemic U.S. (re)divorce. Average co-parents like you often don’t know what they don’t know about stepfamily realities, because our society as a whole is uninformed about them. Such ignorance is not a shameful blunder, it’s a normal, correctable condition, once it's understood! Your kids depend on you to learn - and act!

 Mastering Your Loyalty Conflicts

        Now - if you’ve thoroughly assessed for underlying core problems and are now all working toward solutions appropriate for your unique multi-home stepfamily, you’re ready to start resolving your values and loyalty conflicts together. How? Here’s an overview: All three or more of your co-parents...

Accept that such conflicts are a normal, built-in part of every multi-home stepfamily, and that no one is bad or wrong when they happen!

Each of you co-parents accept personal responsibility for resolving your loyalty conflicts and any underlying core problems in and between your homes. It’s not the kids’ job or "somebody's," it’s yours!

Help each of your co-parents learn to clearly describe what (a) values and loyalty conflicts. (b) relationship triangles, and (c) win/win problem-solving are. Then teach each of your kids what they are. Help them know that no one is bad or wrong when values conflicts happen.

Follow these steps as appropriate:

Name these conflicts when they happen - like: "hey, people, we’ve got another loyalty conflict (or whatever term you like) going!" This can almost turn into a game …;

Identify clearly who’s in the middle, and who else is involved in the current clash. Watch for "invisible" members of the conflict - e.g. non-custodial bioparents, kids at college, yourself, or others not physically present, but strongly emotionally invested in the conflict’s outcome;

All involved adopt an " =/=" attitude: i.e. "each person’s needs here genuinely are of equal importance." If your respective true Selves aren't in charge, this will be hard.

Identify as clearly and specifically as you can what each involved person needs at the time. Be prepared to allocate investing a lot of time to do this, until you get the hang of it!

Co-parents take and responsibility for making enough resolution time, and leading win/win compromising. If that doesn’t seem to work well enough, then co-parents review "what option here is best for our relationship?"

Take that best option, and honestly acknowledge any resentments, angers, or hurts this choice causes the others involved. Reaffirm with everyone your central priority of building a strong, healthy step-home to protect you all against re/divorce.

Verbally appreciate all of you for your efforts at resolving a difficult group dilemma, specially if you all made win/win compromising (problem-solving) work for you. Discuss and note what worked well for you about this process, and do more of it the next time.

        If these guidelines don’t seem work well enough, review the eight possible underlying problems again for "sleepers." Option: use qualified (stepfamily-aware) professional help with this, to guard against protective denial and repression.

         If you mates (a) ignore, defer, or minimize the importance of co-parent Project 9 or (b) ignore the eight core problems beneath your conflicts, you raise the very real risk of legal or psychological re/divorce for you and your dependent kids. As with all valuable things, there's no free stepfamily lunch!

        Pause, breathe, and recall why you rfead this article. Did you get what you needed? If so, what do you need now? If not - what do you need? Who's answering these questions - your wise resident true Self, or "someone else"?

Continue Project 9 by learning how to spot and defuse toxic (persecutor - victim - rescuer) relationship triangles in and between your stepfamily homes.

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