Project 10  of 12 -  Build a high-nurturance family together!

When an Ex-mate Re/commits ...

Expect and manage major
family changes together

By Peter K. Gerlach, MSW;

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The Web address of this article is http://sfhelp.org/Rx/ex/reweds.htm

        Clicking links below will open a summary popup or a new browser page, so please turn off your browser's popup blocker or accept popups from this nonprofit Web site..

         This is one of a sub-series of Break the Cycle! Web pages suggesting practical solutions for special stepfamily problems. The introduction gives perspective on this nonprofit Web site and the author. The ideas here aim to augment, not replace, other stepfamily-aware professional counsel.

        Most American stepfamilies are founded on of one of two divorced (vs. widowed) bioparents committing to a new partner. If their ex mate chooses a new mate later, that sends significant shock waves rippling through the web of existing extended-stepfamily relationships. The shock waves are simultaneous changes in the stepfamily's membership, identity, roles, rules, assets, and rituals.

        If your or your mate's ex spouse is about to recommit - or may - how can you prepare for and manage all the changes that will happen to you and your kids? This article explores your options. They will make more sense if you first read ...

  • This overview of stepfamily basics and what they mean; and ...

  • A summary of five reasons most stepfamily marriages are greatly stressed; and ...

  • 11 primary causes of most stepfamily "problems," and...

  • How to "map" your multi-generational stepfamily, and discuss who comprises it; and ...

  • Perspective on stepfamily identity and inclusion (membership) conflicts;  and ...

  • How to spot and resolve three inevitable marital and family stressors, and...

  • this example of a real multi-home nuclear stepfamily.

  About Changes

        As you know, all kids and adults must constantly adapt to chosen or forced changes in their environment. Can you think of people you've known who "adapted well" to major life changes? What makes you think so? Recall others whom you feel have had major trouble in adjusting to chosen or forced new life circumstances. After significant changes (like re/marriage and cohabiting), we instinctively strive to rebalance our routines, relationships, and expectations to regain stability and  security. Some of us are faster than others at restoring those prizes - at "adapting."

        When your child's or stepchild's other bioparent re/marries, their new partner's presence, opinions, values, goals, needs, and resources will cause webs of small to great changes in all your lives - specially for co-parents and kids in your two or three-home nuclear stepfamily. This is specially true if this new person is a bioparent too.

        Many factors determine how impactful an ex-mate's engagement, cohabiting, and/or re/marriage or  is - e.g....

How much advance warning you all had of their union (more is better); and ...

How many people comprise your nuclear stepfamily (fewer is easier); and ...

The (hostility-to-harmony) status of the relationships among your divorced bioparents and their kids and relatives; and...

The progress that all involved kids and adults have made grieving their biofamily's reorganizing from divorce or death, and their major losses from your re/marriage and/or cohabiting; and ...

Who has custody of which child(ren), and how stable visitations, child support, parenting agreements, and legal custody status are; and ...

The communication and problem-solving effectiveness among the co-parents and kids in your nuclear stepfamily; and ...

How far you've all come in stabilizing your stepfamily merger to date; and ...

The degree of false-self dominance (wounds) in each of your three or more co-parents. Typical false selves are apt to resist or overreact to environmental change, and have the hardest time restabilizing.

        If and when your child(ren)'s other bioparent commits to a new partner, you co-parents and kids will experience significant changes in your lives. How can you best prepare for them?


  What Will Change?

        Depending on the factors above, adding a new co-parent and their biofamily to your nuclear stepfamily may shift many facets of your lives:

Where the new couple and any custodial kids live. They may relocate to a new city, move across town, or make no dwelling change - for now. If they move, any custodial kids may need to change schools, churches, and socializing patterns with relatives and friends.

Your co-parenting financial arrangements. The new adult brings her or his own assets, debts, and values. S/he may or may not approve of your child-support agreements - i.e. who pays who how much, how often, and what the money is used for. S/He may be passive or active in accepting or changing your present arrangement - including child allowances, insurance coverages, special-activity expenses, and wills;  

Your child-visitation rituals. The new adult has needs, priorities, and opinions that may cause the frequency, duration, and quality of visitations to change - specially if s/he has kids too. And adding a new nuclear-stepfamily co-parent will change ...

Your religious and holiday rituals  like birthdays, christenings, bar and bas mitzvahs, worship, vacations, and national and ethnic celebrations. S/He may enrich your stepfamily with new religious and ethnic customs, or adopt your existing ones. Adding this adult's relatives to your holidays will complicate who goes to who's house, when, for how long. It will also add a period of confusion about who expects gifts, calls, visits, or cards from whom, when, and why. A sure change to expect is in...

Your co-parenting communication sequences and patterns. Over time, this new co-parent will either improve or degrade the general effectiveness of child-raising discussions and problem-solving in and between your (step)child's two homes. And...

Your co-parenting "division of labor" and "job descriptions" (responsibilities) will shift. This new adult (and any kids they bring) will cause significant changes in the caregiving roles and rules in their house - including who provides what nurturance to which child(ren), how, and how often. For instance s/he may take on the responsibility of tutoring a stepchild faltering in school, or may initiate flute lessons or little league participation.

        More changes to expect when a new co-parent joins your nuclear stepfamily...

Your stepfamily's identity and structure will shift. The re/commitment of your or your partner's ex mate brings a new biofamily into your multi-generational stepfamily. All of you accepting, ignoring, or rejecting all of them, and being accepted or rejected by all of them, will cause minor to major membership, values, and loyalty conflicts - and associated relationship- triangle stresses - for everyone. And prepare for...

Confusions and conflicts over first and last names and stepfamily role-titles - e.g. "Dad wants me to call his new wife 'Mom' - do I have to?" After re/marriage, kids may suddenly have a different last name than their mother, and/or they or their co-parents may have the same first name as a new stepsibling or step-relative. And...

This couple's re/marriage and/or cohabiting will change the pace, stability, and flow of your complex stepfamily merger. It will probably take several years - and scores (hundreds?) of discussions, confrontations, conflict resolutions, and compromises - to restabilize.

        Every stepfamily will have a unique web of things like these that change when a divorced parent commits to and a new partner. Some changes will be triggered by "serious dating." Others will erupt when the couple moves in together, others if and when they re/marry. The resulting series of emotional, logistic, financial, legal, and family-system  changes will affect each other, and take years to stabilize.

        So what? These many overlapping changes cause losses for all stepfamily members, and temporarily lower everyone's home and family stability and emotional security. How long "temporarily" lasts depends on many factors.

        The moral is: existing stepfamily adults do well to expect these interactive changes, work together to adjust to them, and help their kids do the same. Restated: your co-parents can be passive and react to these many changes as they manifest, or you can elect to be proactive and prepare you and your kids for your new environment.

        Prepare how ?

  Options

        I assume you're reading this because someone's ex mate has chosen a new adult partner. You probably want to know what to expect, and how to understand and solve new family role and relationship problems. Since your personalities and stepfamily situation are unique, treat the following ideas like a buffet: take what appeals to you, and skip the rest.

        A key change-preparation is your co-parents all reaffirming that you and your kids are members of a multi-home, stepfamily. Then affirm what that means to you co-parents and kids - i.e. that each one of you is grappling with a set of complex stepfamily identity,   membership, role, rule,  and ritual changes already. 

        Your step-hood also means that each of your minor kids needs to fill many concurrent maturation and family-adjustment needs, and that each of your kids and adults is somewhere in the process of mourning  two or three sets of significant losses  - childhood, biofamily breakup, and stepfamily formation.

        Your extended-stepfamily identity also means (a) your co-parents' re/marriages are at significant risk of eventual failure for five reasons,  and (b) there are 12 challenging Projects that each of you co-parents - including your newest caregiving teammate - can work patiently at together to prevent re/divorce  trauma for you and your minor kids.

        Within this context, you co-parents can help each other prepare for the stepfamily changes above by doing things like ...

        1) Do an attitude check first: do your present co-parents solidly agree you're all a team with common long-term stepfamily goals, or are you opponents and adversaries? If one or more of your present co-parents feels the latter, some major divorce-related stressors are unresolved. That probably means one or more of you is unaware of being dominated by a false self, and your problem-solving skills aren't as effective as they could be. 

        If these are true, then the following suggestions will probably be irrelevant.

        2) Let everyone know when dating a potential new stepparent "gets serious." Keeping this a secret from anyone is a symptom of false-self wounds and unawareness.

        3) When courtship become "serious," encourage preliminary social contact among all three or more  of you co-parents. In addition to the normal getting-to-know-you dance, intentionally learn:

How likely is it that the new adult and any ex mate bears false-self wounds? If that's likely or obvious, is s/he clearly aware of that and in some form of true (vs. pseudo) self-motivated recovery? Most divorced U.S. adults - and their new partners - seem to be significantly wounded, and don't know it. If you co-parents haven't assessed yourselves and each other for false-self wounds by doing Project 1, you won't be able to assess your co-parent.

Does this wo/man have significant experience at marriage and high-nurturance bioparenting and/or stepparenting? If not, s/he probably has some unrealistic family role and relationship expectations. See Projects 3 and 4.

Does s/he clearly understand that when dating becomes serious, that creates or expands a psychological stepfamily? If so, does she have any idea what that will mean? To answer, you have to know what it means! If the new adult is unaware, you may ignore that, or choose to alert her/him to it. The latter promotes long-term stepfamily harmony and success. And...

If the new person is a divorced parent, how stable are his or her post-divorce biofamily relationships? What are their strengths and current key problems? How are each of her/his kids, if any, doing with their sets of developmental and family-adjustment needs?

        More change-preparations you co-parents can make...

       4)  If the new couple is receptive, offer them printed copies of the Web pages (above) from this site or a copy of the guidebook for safeguard Projects 1-7. If they're willing to read these, ask if they'll discuss their reactions to the main ideas with you. Will they join you in doing the safeguard Projects?

       Option 5) If the couple is open to it, have a series of exploratory discussions on each of the change items above. I suggest the first of such talks focus on how you each adapt to significant life changes. Some common change-reaction styles are...

ignore, minimize, intellectualize (over-analyze), and/or deny the changes, and/or what the changes mean;

panic and "run off in all directions" (have no plan);

wait until there's an exciting change-related crisis, and then find someone to blame, rather than problem solve and accept things you can't control;

try to see major changes coming, alert everyone affected, and help each other prepare;

numb out feelings caused by major changes - like anxiety, guilt, remorse, confusion, and anger - and stay intellectual, defocused, or distracted by busy-ness;

"collapse," and/or catastrophize and play "ain't it awful" or "doom and gloom" over and over;

consciously grieve the losses that major life changes always cause, and/or intentionally help others grieve their losses;

get "depressed and apathetic;" and/or ...

withdraw internally or socially, or obsessively seek companionship or counsel.

        add your own favorites...

        A vital related topic to discuss is how each one of you adults grieves  major losses.

        Use printed copies of linked articles above to promote mutual awareness and understanding. Help each other keep a long-range (e.g. 10 or more years') outlook as you discuss how to manage all the changes you expect or are experiencing.

        Option 6) Try out the interesting, non-competitive Ungame together - specially if the new co-parent has kids. This provides a safe way for kids and adults (in any family!) to learn about themselves and each other.

        7) Use these stepfamily-strengths worksheets to appreciate the assets you all contribute in merging your complex new stepfamily.

        8) If you co-parents have drafted a stepfamily mission statement, give the new co-parent a copy, and invite their thoughtful reactions. If you've drafted co-parent job descriptions based on your mission statement, share copies of those too. The purpose of this is information-sharing and exploration, not competition or demands. By the way, help each other stay clear that stepmother, stepfather, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, and stepsister are roles, not people!

        9) If you co-parents are part of a well-run support group, consider inviting the dating couple to sit in on a session or two.

        Option 10) Give all your co-parents, older kids, and key relatives copies of this article on the complex multi-year merger you adults are co-managing. Discuss it together after everyone's had a chance to digest it.

        11) If the new couple decides to get engaged, invite them to draw their version of your stepfamily's genogram (map), and compare it with your own. The goals are to (a) recognize how complex and conflictual your stepfamily membership- decisions can be - specially for minor and grown kids; and (b) to begin to resolve them together as teammates.

        After your choices among all these change-preparation steps...

        13) If one or more of you co-parents is having significant problems (need conflicts) around including this new stepparent and/or a related child or other relative, then (a) review these common problems and co-parent barriers, (b) dig down to discern whose primary needs aren't being filled, and (c) use win-win problem-solving together - ideally as co-parenting teammates.

        If you follow steps like these and are able to reduce significant problems about integrating a new co-parent, then affirm your problem-solving success, and identify how you all did it! If such problems don't recede, suspect that some version of these hazards are hindering you.

  Recap

        New stepfamilies form when one or both courting adults seriously considers accepting the challenging role of stepparent. Usually, one divorced parent recommits months or years before their ex mate does. Their new courtship partner/s increase the number of related co-parents to three or more.  

        If a new partner has kids and ex mates of their own, these people and their respective biofamilies add many new people to your complex multi-generational stepfamily. They also bring a web of new values, customs, traditions, preferences, genes, memories, goals, fears, expectations, and strengths. These will mesh or conflict with yours, creating inevitable values and loyalty conflicts and relationship triangles.

        Before the new co-parent and their kin swell your ranks, roles, and relationships, your kids and adults are already involved in a complex multi-year merger of at least three multi-generational biofamilies. The courting couple's behaviors, engagement, cohabiting, and re/marriage will create webs of changes throughout your stepfamily system which will temporarily slow and confuse this merger. Your co-parents will react to these many changes after they start to manifest, or they'll  choose to plan for them in advance as teammates, and help your kids and kin do the same.

        This article hilights typical changes you can all expect when an ex-mate dates seriously, and offers 13 change-planning options to choose from. Managing your dynamic set of concurrent changes while maintaining a high high nurturance level together depends on all your co-parents ...

wanting to live under the guidance of your true Selves, vs. living in denial of psychological wounds;  

helping each other to maintain mutual-respect attitudes, and to learn to use effective-communication basics and skills together; and...

understanding what it takes to build a high-nurturance family of any sort; and...

each genuinely accepting your stepfamily identity and what it probably means to each of your adults and kids; and...

defining and acting on a long-range family mission, vs. putting out endless local brushfires and living reactively without goals and plans; and... 

helping each other negotiate realistic role and relationship expectations as you do all this, while you all...

help each other intentionally stay personally, re/maritally, domestically, and collectively