Theological Perspectives on Divorce and Remarriage

Chapter 7 The Fifth Challenge

Ex-Spouses Are Part of the Family

Papernow, P. L. (2013). Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships. Taylor & Francis.  https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781136701542

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813645-7

By definition, stepfamilies include at least one other parent, alive or dead, outside the household, who is an inextricable part of the new family. Meeting this challenge requires stepfamily members to find the best in themselves under circumstances that sometimes pull for the worst.

Available vocabulary no longer reflects the realities of this challenge. Sharp increases in cohabitation and surging numbers of children being born out of wedlock (Cherlin, 2004) have rendered the lexicon of “marriage,” “divorce,” and “remarriage” obsolete. This book stretches the terms “post-divorce,” “postdivorce parenting,” and “ex-spouse” to include both previously married and never-married co-parenting relationships. To reflect rising rates of joint custody, this chapter generally refers to the child's “other parent,” without the quotes, hoping not to confuse “other” with “less important.” The terms “nonresidential parent” and “noncustodial” parent will refer only to an ex-spouse who does not have joint custody.

The Challenge

The Problem for Children Is Not Divorce. It Is Conflict

Repeated exposure to affectively arousing events compromises children's ability to regulate their own physiological arousal.

(Fosco & Grych, 2008, p. 844)

Stepfamilies often begin in the early years post-divorce when interparental conflict remains highest. Even when legal proceedings have ended, recoupling can rekindle, or provoke, tensions between ex-spouses.

The Children's Story

It is not whether children live in a first-time family, single-parent family, or a stepfamily that most powerfully predicts their wellbeing. It is the level of conflict, combined with the quality of parenting practices. Indeed, some family scholars feel that conflict is the most robust predictor of post-divorce outcomes for children.1 The drawing in Figure 7.1 was created by a focus group of young adult stepchildren. It vividly captures their experience of feeling torn between the people they love.

The pressure may come from outright battling, snide comments, or inadvertent “leaking.”2 For several years, Heather Kramer was her mother's confidante. (Genogram on page 73.)

My Mom Was Leaking

After my dad met Vivian, my mom was having a really hard time. She would talk to me about all the bad things that were happening between her and my dad and Vivian. Part of me wanted to know every single detail. Part of me didn't want to hear any of it. My stomach would hurt for hours each time we talked. Finally my friends convinced me that I had to tell her to stop. Thank goodness she listened.

What the Research Says about Conflict and Kids

Three decades of empirical research details the impact of conflict on children, in first-time families, post-divorce, and in stepfamilies. Negative outcomes include lower levels of self esteem, compromised social and cognitive competence, lower academic achievement, and poorer subsequent romantic relationships. Even moderate tension between parents exerts significant negative effects on children's attention, academic achievement, and immune systems (El-Sheikh, Buckhalt, Cummings, & Keller, 2007). The damage continues well after children have left the parental home. Adult and young adult children of chronically conflicted, never-divorced couples, especially girls, report significantly lower wellbeing than their peers with low-conflict divorced parents (Amato & Afifi, 2006).3 4 5

Stepcouples Form in the Presence of Former Spouses

Parental conflict does not just affect the children in stepfamilies. Stepparents find they have married their partner and their partner's previous marriage! For good or for ill, the pathways by which ex-s pouses respond to each other become firmly entrenched. While some parents become accustomed to this emotional choreography, new partners like Sandy Danforth want change. (Genogram on page 5).

“I Also Married Eric's First Marriage!”

I knew when I married Eric that his daughter Elyssa was part of the deal. What I didn't count on was that I also married Eric's marriage to Bonnie. Eric is usually such a calm, steady guy. But when he was upset with Bonnie, he’d turn into a total crazy man. For a few years there, they couldn't talk about a thing without a big blowup. I tried to adjust. But I couldn't stand it. It took me a while, but I finally managed to tell Eric that it had to stop.

On the other end of the spectrum, highly collaborative ex-spouse relationships can also be challenging. Parents have been making decisions together about their children for many years, first as partners, and then as divorced co-parents. Including the stepparent in decisions that affect them requires detouring from well-worn pathways. (Genogram on page 3.)

Ellen Wants to Switch Weekends

Kevin Anderson and his ex-wife Ellen had established a very cooperative postdivorce relationship. In this spirit, Kevin gladly agreed to Ellen's request to take the children for an extra weekend, but forgot, yet again, to consult Claire. In addition, instead of a few days alone with her husband, Claire now confronted yet another weekend in her stuck outsider position. She was both hurt and disappointed. Kevin was embarrassed. He was also torn: Taking care of his wife required that he not only break the deal he had made with his ex-wife, but give up some treasured extra time with his kids.

Very collaborative ex-spouses engage in a web of joint activities that are supportive to children and comforting to single parents. Some of these may now feel intrusive or threatening to a new stepparent. Vivian recalls the first two years of her marriage to Hank. (Genogram on page 73.)

“I Had to Share Hank with the World”

It was so hard in the beginning. Hank's ex-wife Cheryl was calling all the time and asking Hank to go to dinner and fix her plumbing, and her car, and every other thing. Just when I finally had a partner, I felt like I had to share Hank with the world.

Recoupling Affects Ex-Spouses

The recoupling of one former partner impacts the other. Children's concerts, sports events, birthdays, graduations, and weddings now include the new partner as well as his or her children and family. Even in the friendliest of circumstances, an ex-spouse's recoupling can awaken old feelings of rejection and provoke fears about being replaced as a parent. Hank's remarriage created a fundamental change in his post-divorce relationship with his ex-wife Cheryl. It also unleashed a flood of old feelings for her. Hank's new wife Vivian's need to establish a rigid boundary around her own new family only increased the pain.

“I Went Really Dark”

When Hank told me about Vivian, I got really depressed. I’m the one who left, but I guess it churned up a lot about feeling like Hank never really loved me. It didn't help that Vivian is eight years younger than me and she managed to get pregnant right away. She's also skinny and gorgeous, even now, after two kids. I felt so threatened. The worst was, she put a complete stop to Hank and me doing things together with our daughter Heather. I went really dark for a long time.

Moms and Stepmoms: Colliding Needs and Views of Reality

Like Vivian and Cheryl, moms and stepmoms often have some of the most emotionally fraught cross-household relationships. Many factors can contribute to this “perfect storm.”

Despite many changes in women's roles, identity and self-esteem remain firmly tied to mothering for many. Both mothers and stepmothers fear being marginalized or labeled as a “bad mother.” Stepmothers who move prematurely into a parenting role can exacerbate mothers’ fears of losing their children to another woman.

When both moms and stepmoms can manage their own feelings of insecurity and make room for each other, children gain. When they cannot, everyone suffers.6

Dads and Stepdads Seem to Have It Easier

Dads and stepdads generally have a much easier time with each other than moms and stepmoms. The majority of stepchildren form positive relationships with both their nonresidential father and their stepfather (Ganong, et al., 1999; White & Gilbreth, 2001). In a large random sample, increased contact with noncustodial fathers did not affect stepfather—child relationships. In fact, children with the best outcomes were close to both their stepfathers and their nonresidential fathers. Those most at risk were close to neither (King, 2006).

Nonresidential Father-Child Relationships Are Vulnerable

Even though rates of joint legal custody are rising in the U.S., women are still awarded primary physical custody most of the time (Singer, 2009; White & Gilbreth, 2001). This means that most divorced dads are nonresidential parents. Empirical support for the central role of fathers in children's wellbeing is now unassailable. Increasing numbers of men are eager to remain involved with their children and the percentage of those maintaining regular contact is also rising.7 8 Sadly, however, nonresidential father—child relationships are vulnerable to deepening cycles of disconnection. For the first year after Hank and Cheryl separated, Hank Kramer saw his daughter Heather regularly but still he could feel their connection eroding.

Hank Starts to Lose His Daughter

I’d call Heather and she would be doing homework or in the middle of texting a friend. I knew that was normal. But it was so hard. I couldn't talk to her in the morning over breakfast, or sit in the living room and watch a game with her. I even missed knowing she was sleeping upstairs. I knew I was losing her.

About two-thirds of children do maintain some connection with their nonresidential dads. However, somewhere between a quarter and a third of school-age children report no contact at all with their noncustodial dads in the previous year (King, 2006).9 School activities and peer relationships can make it increasingly difficult for kids to shift houses every other weekend. Like Heather, adolescent girls are particularly at risk for losing connection with their nonresidential dads (Coleman, et al., 2000; Pasley & Moorefield, 2004).

When Dads Become Stepfathers: Losses and Loyalty Binds for Men

About two-thirds of nonresidential dads recouple (White & Gilbreth, 2001). When a nonresidential dad partners with a woman with children, the losses for dads can be compounded by loyalty binds. Recoupled dads may find themselves more involved with their new partner's children than with their own. To add to the pressure, when nonresident dads spend time alone with their own children, their new wives feel may abandoned. The financial needs of the first and second family may also be in conflict.10 The toll of loss and loyalty binds can be heavy.

Hank Feels Doubly Alone

I miss Heather every single day. Sometimes every single hour. When I play with Vivian's kids, or I hold our baby Holly, I am thinking of Heather at that age. It's like I’m not here and I’m not there. When the child support check goes out, Vivian gets mad that my income isn't being spent in our household. I feel torn as a dad and inadequate as a provider all the time. Vivian has her own upset about all this, so I can't talk about it with her. It's like I’m doubly alone.

What the Research Says about Co-Parenting Arrangements

Many stepfamilies begin taking shape while co-parenting schedules are still being worked out. Arrangements also change over time,11 Empirical data can help support wise choices.

Joint Custody?

While there is general agreement that joint custody is not appropriate where there is violence, mental illness, or extremely high conflict, the data suggests that joint custody generally provides better outcomes all around (Bauserman, 2002), irrespective ofthe level ofsocioeconomic status and pre-divorce conflict (Seltzer, 1998).12 13

Collaborative Co-Parenting Is Best for Kids

Highly collaborative co-parents insure the most positive outcomes for their children (Hetherington, et al., 1998). They communicate easily and often about childrearing issues and they resolve their differences constructively. Some continue to celebrate birthdays and some major holidays together, often with new spouses included (Ahrons, 2004).

Low-Conflict Parallel Parenting Is Next Best

The vast majority of divorced parents practice “parallel parenting,” running their households quite separately from each other. Although less optimal than highly collaborative co-parenting, low-conflict parallel parenting serves children quite well (Hetherington, 1993; Hetherington, et al., 1998; Pryor, 2004; White & Gilbreth, 2001). Not surprisingly, this is especially so when parents are nurturing and provide adequate supervision (Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991).

Supporting Young Children in Two Houses

Feelings run especially high when decisions about parenting schedules involve young children. Sleepovers, even for very young children, support wellbeing by strengthening father—child relationships (Pruett, 2000; Pruett, Ebling, & Insabella, 2004).14

More predictable and consistent parenting plans produce better adjusted children in both high and low conflict families. Consistent weekday schedules are important for children under three. Weekends can be flexible (Pruett, et al., 2004). Children with more sensitive temperaments, and those who have difficulty planning and keeping track of their belongings, are also better supported by consistent, predictable schedules.

When Stepcouples Form as the Result of an Affair

All five challenges, including this one, are intensified when stepcouples form as the result of an affair.

Hold the Complexity

Americans, particularly, have a knee jerk tendency to condemn the person who stepped out of the marriage. However, the reality is very often more complex. Affairs are rarely the best way to resolve a marital deadlock. However, they usually (not always) result from a long series of events in which both partners have contributed to widening gaps in understanding and closeness.15 16

Insiders and Outsiders When There Has Been an Affair

Insider parents in these families have to a lot to juggle. They must balance their new partner's desire for acceptance with not only their children's pain but their ex-spouse's feelings of hurt, anger, and confusion. They also have to make room for all of their own competing feelings. Joy and relief may sit right next to heavy guilt, and enormous grief.

Stepparents often become the focus of blame for both ex-spouses and children. They often will need to remain in a more extreme outsider position, and for longer, while the insider parent rebuilds trust with children, and the ex-spouse begins the recovery process.

Children After an Affair

I generally discourage “telling the truth” about affairs to children. Affairs, and all of the events that lead up to them, fall in the “sordid details between ex-spouses” category, not in the “kids need to know” category. When children do know, the healing process becomes infinitely more complex. The new stepcouple's desire for a fresh start will diverge even more starkly than usual from children's need for time to work through their own hurt and betrayal.

Parents’ relationships with their children are often deeply compromised in these cases, especially when the ex-spouse involves the kids. Loyalty binds after an affair can be especially tight for children, who often side with the parent they feel is more vulnerable. Some begin refusing visitation. The urge for parents to explain rather than empathize, to give up entirely, or to press children to “get on with it,” can be strong. The repair process with children is often long and slow, but for those who can hang in, healing does happen.

Parents will often need to see their children alone, without stepparents present, for a very long period of time. Clinical work with the parent often focuses on enabling the parent to remain truly present to children's feelings of anger and betrayal. When children refuse contact, I suggest that parents write an “I’m still here” letter. “I know you are hurt and very angry with me. Right now you are siding with your mother/father, who is hurting a lot. When you are ready, I am here and we will work this through, a little bit at a time.” In my experience, when parents can hang in, relationships do eventually heal.

Ex-Spouses Are Especially Raw

A custodial mom who has been left is especially likely to withhold visitation. I am often asked whether parents (usually fathers) should go to court to enforce visitation. My concern is that even if fathers win, children arrive in the new household with agonizingly tight loyalty binds, which may actually compromise the repair process. Clinical work with the ex-spouse begins by differentiating the adult's needs from those of the children. “Do you love your kids more than you hate your ex?”

Parents and Stepparents Have Different Burdens

Recoupled parents who have had an affair, especially fathers who tend to lose custody, often suffer enormous losses. Reaching for a loving adult relationship often costs them not only their children, but long-term relationships with in-laws and friends. This cost is also born by stepparents who find themselves living with a partner who is awash with grief and guilt. Stepparents may also carry their own load of guilt. They may also be more outraged than parents are by the behavior of children and ex-spouses. Those who are able to provide support and compassion can play an important role in the healing process.

Easy Wrong Turns

Keeping Children Caught in the Conflict

It should be clear by now that divorced parents who cannot stop fighting with each other fill their children's lives with tension. Parental conflict all too often transforms life cycle events from “occasions of pride in growing up” to “reminders of continuing pain and loss” (Whiteside, 1988b, p. 35). Some parents attempt to avoid conflicted communication with their ex-spouses by passing messages through their children. This strategy adds unbearably to children's experience of being “the bone between two dogs” (Braithwaite, et al., 2008).

Circling the Wagons

One way to dispense with the awkwardness of ongoing ex-spouse relationships is to draw a tight boundary around the new family. Heather Kramer describes the devastating consequences. (Genogram on page 73.)

“I Really Lost My Dad”

For the first two years after the divorce, my mom and dad got along pretty well. We would have dinners together, and we would all go out for my birthday. It felt like I still had a family. My dad and I were kind of disconnected, but at least I knew he was there. After my dad met Vivian, everything changed. Vivian wouldn't even let me see my dad unless she was there, too. She put the kibosh on mom and me and my dad getting together. It was like another divorce. Only this time, I really lost my dad.

Moms Close the Gates

Sometimes a rigid boundary between a child's two families is drawn not by the new stepfamily, but by a threatened ex-wife. While some mothers do refuse contact due to real concerns about their children's safety or wellbeing, others acknowledge that, all too often, their reasons have nothing to do with their children. We need to differentiate between the former, who need validation and support, and the latter, who need compassionate, firm help to resolve their anxiety or anger in a different way.17

Cutting Off One Set of Grandparents

Especially for adolescents in single-parent families and stepfamilies, close relationships with grandparents are linked to fewer emotional problems and more positive social behavior (Attar-Schwartz, Tan, Buchanan, Flouri, & Griggs, 2009; Hetherington, et al., 1998). Unfortunately, paternal grandparent—child relationships are especially vulnerable to post-divorce cut-off by former daughters-in-law (C.L. Johnson, 1998).

Stories of Stepfamilies Fostering Co-Parenting Relationships

Helping Kids Feel Centered

When the adults step up to this challenge, children feel centered and safe, rather than caught between the people they love. Unlike the child in Figure 7.1, here is Sabina Danforth at 12, reaping the rewards of positive relationships with both her dad and her stepdad.

“I Love My Dad and I Love My Stepdad”

My dad is the best cuddler ever. Even though I’m pretty big now, I still like to climb in my daddy's lap and get big hugs from him. My dad is pretty emotional, like me. Eric, my stepdad, is real calm most of the time. He helps me and my mom when we get mad at each other. He teaches me about things like organic food and how to organize my room.

Sabina also feels free to enjoy the widening differences between her two homes.

Both Twinkies and Tofu

At first it was hard. But now I really like my two houses. If I want to laze around, eat Twinkies, and watch TV, Dad and Lydia's is definitely the place to be! If I want to be really active and eat healthy, my mom and Eric's is the place to go. It's like my family has helped me get to know different sides of me.

Communicating Constructively about Kids

Successful ex-spouses, even highly conflicted ones, communicate directly with each other, not through children. They circumvent conflict by using brief phone calls, texts, emails, short notes focused on the mundane, factual exchange of information about schedules, activities, and health appointments, not their personal relationship.18

Cross-household communication about adolescents can be particularly challenging. Adolescents often prefer more flexibility and longer time periods with each of their parents. However, “I’m spending the night at Dad's” all too easily becomes a cover for an unsupervised sleepover. Adolescents fare best when co-parents honor the need for flexibility, but still maintain consistent monitoring and supervision between households. Mona Hoffman Heller describes how she and her ex-husband, Fred, stepped up to the challenge (Genogram on page 47).

A “Parental GPS System” for Maddie

Fred and I don't get along that well. We run pretty separate households. But the girls, especially Maddie when she got into her teens, were taking advantage of our communication gaps to get into some big trouble. Finally Fred and I had a pow wow.

We agreed that whenever one of the girls shifted houses or had a sleepover plan, we would text each other with the contact info for where she was going. We called it our parental GPS system. If she wasn't where she said she’d be, we agreed that we’d tell each other. No matter whose house she was at, she lost her cell phone for a week.

Successfully Negotiating Holidays across Households

In a stepfamily, holiday celebrations can require coordinating with not only an ex-spouse, but his or her entire kinship network. Sandy Danforth demonstrates the recipe for meeting this challenge: flexibility, some creativity, and enough generosity and self-control to put children's needs first. (Genogram on page 5.)

“Chosen Christmas”

Before their divorce, Sandy and Dennis Danforth and their daughter Sabina had a much loved tradition of spending Christmas Eve with Dennis's sister Maggie. After the divorce, Sabina had continued this tradition with her dad, switching to her mom's for Christmas Day. Then Aunt Maggie's husband landed a new job 700 miles away in North Carolina. Sandy was faced with either allowing Sabina to spend the whole holiday with her dad in North Carolina, or ending this treasured ritual.

Sandy said, “Giving up Christmas Day with my girl felt so hard, but it seemed like the right thing for Sabina. And for Dennis. Eric suggested that we use those four days to go to our favorite B and B in Vermont. That year, we began celebrating “Chosen Christmas” with Sabina and Elyssa a few days after Sabina returned from North Carolina. We have done that ever since. In return, Sabina is with us every Thanksgiving and Dennis does Chosen Thanksgiving. I still miss Sabina on Christmas, but it has become a really special time for Eric and me.”

“In retrospect, two Christmases in two days was way too much for Sabina. She almost always had what we called her holiday meltdown. Last year we realized that the meltdowns had stopped completely. When I asked her about it she said, ‘Now on Christmas and Thanksgiving, I can breathe, Mommy.”’

Stepparents and Parents Supporting Each Other

Helping Nonresidential Dads Hang In

Stepparents can exacerbate the distance between nonresidential dads and their kids, as we saw with Vivian and Hank Kramer. Or they can help their partners move closer to their children.

A Larson Hug Is Not a Hug

Tom Larson complained frequently about missing his three young adult children. His third wife Gloria's response was, “But you don't call them!”

“They should call me!”

“So call them!”

“They don't return my calls.”

“Right,” said Gloria, “you call once and then you give up. Text them! All kids return text messages.” “What would I say?” “Ask them about them!” said Gloria. She added, “And, Honey, a Larson hug is not a hug. Give them a real hug.” After a visit to his newly married daughter Trisha's house, Gloria added, “You want a better relationship with Trisha? Cut the negatives! The first thing you say is not, ‘Your deck needs staining.”’

Like Hank Kramer and Tom Larson, fathers often miss their children terribly. And like Tom Larson, they often need extra support to keep reaching out.19

The Need for Support Goes Both Ways

Especially for residential stepmothers, staying involved without usurping or threatening a child's mother can be a tricky business.20 A supportive partner helps immensely.

“I Couldn't Do It without Eric”

Even when Elyssa was still barely talking to me, I was shopping for school clothes with her and baking brownies for the class picnic. Bonnie did not none of those things, but she needed the credit for being a great mom. If we were at a school function together, Bonnie definitely needed to be front and center, right next to Elyssa. For Elyssa's sake, I would just step back and let Bonnie be the mom.

It was the right thing. But it was hard. At first Eric would start ranting about Bonnie, which didn't help at all. Finally, he calmed down and got his head on straight. After that, I could go home and he’d put his arms around me. Knowing he’d be there when I got home made it much easier for me to stay on the sidelines. When Bonnie was especially horrible to me, he would take me out for a really nice dinner and we’d always order the two most sinful desserts on the menu.

Managing Old and New Relationships with the Extended Family

Recoupling often requires some renegotiation of longstanding relationships with grandparents, uncles, aunts, and friendship networks. This was the case for Connie Chen and her mother, Carol. (Genogram is on page 5.)

Connie and Her Mom Rework Their Relationship

“My mother is part of me and Cody,” Connie had announced with the case-closed tone she often used early in her relationship with Burt. Connie had not been close to her mother as a child. However, when Connie's husband Larry died, Carol, by then a widow herself, had moved in with Connie and Cody for a full year. In the years since then, Connie and her mother had talked several times a day, often late into the night. They also spent all of their holidays together. Now, however, the late night phone calls intruded on Connie and Burt's time alone together. Carol was also firmly allied with Connie in painting Brandon as the source of the family's problems. The mother-daughter relationship that had been so sustaining in single-parenthood now threatened to undermine Connie's new family.

Over several meetings in various configurations, we set about reworking the boundaries and integrating Carol in a different, more supportive way. Many different factors contributed to the success of this effort. Carol had adored Larry. In our first joint meeting, Carol divulged “a crazy fear” that if she welcomed Burt, she would be “unfaithful” to Larry. Grandparents have loyalty binds, too! Burt, with a little coaching, was able to reassure his mother-in-law that, “Larry is part of our family, too.”

Understanding Brandon's story helped Carol to balance her natural urge to protect her daughter with a more realistic picture of the new family's developmental tasks. We also capitalized on Burt and Carol's shared love of gardening. This joint activity gave Burt and his mother-in-law a way to build their own new relationship. “We are bonding over peonies,” said Carol. Last but not least, Burt's greater emotional presence eased some of Connie's need to rely on her mother.

As in the Chen/Czinsky family, ex-spouses who have died live on, not only in children's hearts, but in extended family relationships. Successful stepfamilies honor these losses and loyalties, and, like Connie and her family, they move slowly toward building new relationships.

Cultural Norms Can Help Meet This Challenge

There has been considerable effort in both the mental health and legal domains to establish a wider cultural expectation of low-conflict, collaborative ex-spouse relationships (Ahrons, 1994, 2004; Doolittle & Deutsch, 1999).21 22 It is interesting to note that in the U.S., it is primarily within the White, Anglo-European cultural context that parental separation and recoupling are associated with such high conflict. Anglo culture draws the boundary of “family” tightly around the adult couple, making an ex-spouse an “intruder.” As we will see in Chapter 9, African American families are more likely to see ex-spouses as an integral part of a cooperative network of neighbors, grandparents, and friends who care for children together (Berger; 1998; Stewart, 2007; Whiteside, 1987). There is a lot to learn from these norms, which are associated with lower levels of ex-spouse conflict, higher involvement by nonresidential dads, and better outcomes for adolescents in stepfamilies (Stewart, 2007).

Best Practices: Key Strategies for Negotiating Family Life Across Households

General Guidelines23

Actively monitor conflict levels

According to Finn (2011), “Children are neurologically and developmentally impacted by stress and tension from a very early pre-verbal age, and possibly in utero.”

I believe that we all need to monitor conflict in the same way that physicians regularly check blood pressure levels. When a stepfamily member describes a tense interchange with another adult, I always ask (gently), “Were any of the kids there?” “Kids” include young adults and adults. Pay special attention to the period before and the couple of years after a parental split when conflict levels are most likely to be high.

Ex-spouses, and their kin, are part of the family

When children are distressed, the quality of current and past relationships between ex-spouses needs to be part of the early assessment. As part of this process, I help my clients to gather clues about how best to reach a challenging ex-spouse. What are his or her strengths? What matters to this person? What threatens him or her? (See the work with Eric Emery in the case study at the end of this chapter.)

When this challenge is not the focus, I slowly gather information about these relationships as the work unfolds. I listen closely for my clients’ skill level in managing these relationships. Some questions to ask over time include: How long ago was the split? How friendly was it? What is the relationship like now? How long were you together? Who else in the family were you/are you close to? In your ex-spouse's family, who was your child close to? Has that changed since the divorce? How do you handle disagreements with your ex?

If both partners have an ex-spouse, ask about both. Ask both children and adults about grandparents and other kin. (In a high conflict divorce, their stories may differ.) Identify relationships that can be supportive to children, those that may be contributing to tension in the family, and any that have been cut off by recoupling.

Ex-spouse challenges set multiple compassion traps

Chapter 3 introduced what I call the “Rashomon Effect,” named after a 12th-century Japanese tale in which a bandit, a woodcutter, his wife, and a samurai each tell the story of a murder from four different perspectives. Of all the challenges, this one finds stepfamily members telling the most utterly divergent stories about the same events.

“Can you believe it! My client came home to find his ex-wife had walked into his house to help their daughter dress for the prom. Isn't that outrageous?” This is a direct quote from an experienced family therapist who had bought into the story of his client's ex-wife as the villain in the piece. The mother's best friend may have been hearing, “My ex-husband and his bitchy new wife wouldn't even let me dress my daughter for her first prom!”

While the mother's boundaries may leave something to be desired, every player in this story needs our compassion. Again, we help by empathizing with the feelings of those we are sitting with, without feeding the conflict: “How hard that dressing your daughter for this important event in her life turns out to be so complex!”

Level I Psychoeducation

Protect Children from Parental Conflict

No leaking!

Children need basic information, not sordid details. They do need to know, “We can afford to go out for dinner about once a month, now.” They do not need to know how often Dad pays child support and whether it is sufficient. Parents who are upset with each other can tell their friends, their barber, their therapist, and their hairdresser. However, they should not share these things with their children, including their young adult and adult children.

Collaboration is best for children, but low-conflict parallel parenting is next best

Again, children do best with highly collaborative post-divorce relationships between their parents. When this is not possible, low-conflict parallel parenting is the next best thing, and is still more the norm.

Handle differences between houses in a factual, neutral way

Divorced parents do not have to agree. They do have to be respectful. Most kids can handle divergent rules and values between houses as long as the adults remain neutral and factual about the differences. Most children above the third grade understand that their math teacher's rules are different from their English teacher's.

When a child complains, “But Mom lets me drink Coke with dinner!” Dad can respond calmly, “Yup! Your mom and I are different on this. In your mom's house, you drink Coke with dinner. In our house, we have milk for dinner. When you’re grown up, you can decide which you think is better. For now, we drink milk in this house.”

Help ex-spouses to let go of all but life and death differences

Parental conflict inflicts much more long-lasting damage on children than whether they eat sugar cereal or practice their piano lessons at their other house. The more tense the co-parenting relationship, the more judiciously the issues need to be chosen, and the more strategically they need to be presented. (See Jeffrey Wittman's terrific book Custody Chaos, Personal Peace [2001]).

Respect household boundaries

Divorced parents should not make plans for their children on the other parent's time without express permission. Nor should parents make disciplinary decisions across households without express agreement. In high-conflict situations, incorporate this explicitly into the legal agreement or file it with the parenting plan.

The schedule trumps all

Very collaborative ex-spouses can easily negotiate schedule changes in a fair and respectful way. However, even cooperative co-parents benefit from the fallback principle that, when there is a disagreement, the original schedule stays in place. In a high-conflict divorce, try to get this principle written into the divorce agreement or filed with the parenting plan.

Ensure that, at children's events, children's needs are primary

Children's performances, graduations, weddings, and other events should be centered on children, not adults. If adults cannot be civil, I encourage them to sit far from each other or stagger their entrances. If Mom truly cannot bear sharing college Parents Day with Dad's new wife (or vice versa), I suggest that one of them (usually the stepparent) make another time for a more intimate visit. For brides and grooms with a distraught divorced parent, groups of friends can take turns providing extra attention to the vulnerable parent.

Foster connections with extended kin

Grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles are important to children's wellbeing, especially in single-parent families and stepfamilies. When extended kin are undermining new family relationships, sometimes a couple of joint meetings and some psychoeducation can make a difference.

Reassure the ex

An ex-spouse's recoupling can be very anxiety-provoking, especially for mothers, who often fear losing their children to the “other” woman. Anxious ex-spouses are more likely to behave badly than secure ones. Preventive action can sometimes help. I encourage parents to send a short email, or snail mail note to an ex-spouse saying something like, “You are, and always will be, our children's mother.” It can be helpful to share the details of Loyalty Bind Talks with ex-spouses (see page 57). Stepparents can write a short note: “I will try to be the best stepmother I can be for your children. I hope I can add to their lives, but it will never ever be my intention to replace you.”

Maintain a steady flow of positive feedback

Small positive moves provide a cushion when difficulties do arise. “Thanks for the schedule change! I appreciate it.” Stepmothers are very grateful when mothers acknowledge their efforts: “Thanks for being good to my kids.”

The sulfuric acid metaphor

As a last resort, for those who cannot stop badmouthing, I say, “You love your children. I know you would never want to hurt them. This may be harsh. Ready? Saying negative things about your ex to your daughter feels ‘true’ to you. But it turns out that it is a bit like pouring sulfuric acid into your daughter. I know you would not want to do this to your child.” I always ask, “What is it like to hear this from me?”

Support Children across Households

Encourage direct, calm, brief communication

Passing messages through children is extremely costly to them. Short texts and brief emails can help even conflicted co-parents pass information, and monitor children's whereabouts, while maintaining distance. When both parents are comfortable with the internet, on-Sine calendars facilitate communication24 A caveat that I have to repeat surprisingly often is: Ex-spouses often differ markedly in their comfort with cyber-technology. If the ex doesn't read email, use the phone, or snail mail!25

Post the calendar

Children need clarity about where they will be and when. For young children, use simple stick figures or faces to indicate days with each parent. Clearly mark the current date.

Meet the special needs of very young children

Children under three do not have well-developed language skills. Parents must share much more substantial detail about eating, sleeping, emotional ups and downs, etc. Predictable consistent schedules are better for all children, but this is especially critical during weekdays for young children. Weekends can be more flexible.

For all children, a “2, 2, 5, 5” plan provides weekday consistency and supports both the parent—child relationship and the stepcouple relationship. Monday and Tuesday are always with one parent. Wednesday and Thursday are always with the other parent. Weekends switch back and forth. The resulting schedule alternates two-day and five-day periods, with and without children.

Adolescents in two households need both flexibility and supervision

Ex-spouses need to collaborate closely enough to monitor the whereabouts of adolescents.

Parents, not children, created the necessity of managing belongings across two households.

When a child's favorite sweater, baseball glove, or textbook doesn't show up in the move between houses, co-parents need to handle this without blaming children or putting them in the middle. I encourage those with resources to buy two sets of important items. A laminated List of Things that Go with Me attached to a child's back pack, or a short text at switch time listing critical items, can help some children collect their own belongings. However, especially for younger children and those with organizational or attentional difficulties, extra trips to retrieve missing items are simply part of supporting children in two houses.

Nonresidential dads often need extra support

Noncustodial fathers may need extra encouragement to bear potential rejection from their children, without withdrawing, becoming coercive, or inappropriately sharing their own pain. They often need specific guidance to engage in “everyday talk” (Braithwaite, et al., 2003)—asking more specific questions about their children's friends, inquiring about their school work, and expressing interest in their kids’ daily activities. Modern technology can be a gift to nonresidential dads. Almost all kids respond to texts. Email and Skype also offer excellent pathways for maintaining connection with technologically savvy cyber citizen kids.26

Help Children with Transitions

Keep transition times peaceful and comfortable

Moving between households requires enormous adjustments for children. Even for adults, switching houses once or twice a week would be extremely stressful. Any parental tension at all is extremely burdensome for children at this vulnerable time. Adults need to remain calm and relaxed. Conversations about scheduling and any other issues need to be saved for another time, out of children's earshot. If one parent is hostile at transition time, encourage the other to end the conversation. Alternatively, make a pick-up arrangement that avoids contact (see High Conflict Co-Parenting Relationships, below).

Transition rituals can help

Many children fall apart before, during, or after switching houses, even those with very cooperative friendly co-parents. Transition rituals can be comforting and soothing: “When you come from Daddy's, we always hang your back pack here. Then we have a snack. Then we play a game.” Snuggle Night (in Chapter 4) was a transition ritual in Kevin Anderson's house.

Help parents identify their children's particular needs

A large gathering just before or after switching houses is way more than some children can handle. It is just fine for others. Some children do better with a planned activity at these times. Others need to hang out in a quiet, unstructured way. Many children need one-So-one time alone with their parent before and after transitions. Some need some time by themselves. I encourage parents to notice what works, and to learn from what doesn't.

Keep an eye on holiday transitions

Even for extremely resilient, easygoing children (and many adults), more than one major holiday celebration in a couple of days is exhausting. Splitting Christmas Day serves the needs of ex-spouses who both want to be with their children on the actual date of a holiday. For many children it is a recipe for meltdowns.

Carefully Manage High-Conflict Co-Parenting Relationships

Encourage disengagement in high-conflict couples

When conflict is ongoing, encourage separate, parallel parenting. Arrange drop-offs by one parent at school in the morning and pick-up by the other parent after school. Parents can meet in a neutral place such as a park or a McDonald's. Week-to-week shifts between houses may support children of conflicted parents better than more frequent transitions, unless children are very young or one parent is abusive, alcoholic, or mentally ill.

Use explicit legal agreements to eliminate as much ongoing negotiation as possible “For high-conflict families, a lack of specificity promotes parental conflict, and conflict breeds insecurity for the children” (Stahl, 1999). For children, rigidity is highly preferable to conflict. Eliminate arguments over scheduling by establishing a very specific, iron-clad calendar, including exact times for weekly and holiday drop-offs and pick-ups.

Use mediators, special masters, parenting coordinators

High conflict co-parents require a mechanism to resolve differences. In the U.S., available mechanisms vary by state. American Family and Conciliation Courts is an excellent resource.27 Very high conflict couples benefit from a court appointed “special master” with final decision-making power. Divorce agreements for more moderately conflicted co-parents should assign a parenting coordinator with knowledge of stepfamilies, who is skilled enough to facilitate resolution.

Strengthen children's support networks outside the family

When parents are in conflict, increased connections with supportive grandparents, family friends, peers, religious leaders, coaches, and teachers can moderate the stress. If necessary I convene parts of the child's support network to coordinate efforts to protect children from tension and badmouthing.

Authoritative schools can make a difference

When children are being exposed to conflict or to poor parenting practices in either household, authoritative schools can ameliorate some of the toxic effects. If there is a choice, look for a school that provides warm, caring, responsive adult—child relationships, sets clear, realistic expectations for responsible behavior, and provides consistent supervision. Conversely, chaotic, neglectful school environments have even more adverse effects in these cases (Hetherington, 1993).

Support Both the Stepcouple Relationship and the Ex-Spouse Relationship

A “Dutch door” between households can be helpful

Very close relationships between ex-spouses work for kids and co-parents, but they can be challenging for stepparents. The image of a “Dutch door” with a top half and a bottom half, can be useful. The top half needs to stay open to allow easy communication about children. The bottom half may need to close, drawing a firmer boundary between ex-spouses around more personal adult issues.

Changing habits with ex-spouses is a process, not an event

Parents are accustomed to arranging schedules and making decisions with their ex-spouses without input from another adult. Stepparents do need to ask, and even insist, that their partners consult with them on issues that affect them. However, changing long-established habits takes time.

Level II Interpersonal Skills for Managing Ex-Spouse Relationships

Adults who meet this challenge develop “a repertoire of courteous and respectful patterns of co-parenting exchanges” (Whiteside, 1988b). The more provocative and uncooperative the ex-spouse, the more difficult it can be, and the more critical it is, to approach wisely and strategically. You will find step-by-step directions for most of the skills below in the Interpersonal Skills Toolbox in Chapter 15. Difficult Conversations (Stone, Patton, & Heen, 1999) is another excellent resource for these skills.

Soft/Hard/Soft is a very useful skill for ex-spouse issues

Example: When setting new boundaries with an ex (“soft” is in italics): “I really want the kids to be connected to you. I know it's nice to talk to them at bedtime. But it turns out that makes it hard for them to get to sleep. I know that would never be your intention. Let's keep evening calls to before 7 p.m.”

Lace emails with joining

An ex-spouse makes plans with a child on the other parent's weekend. (Joining is in italics.) “I get that you’d really like to take Polly to a baseball game next weekend. I know you both love the Red Sox. I am afraid that we have plans.” Not, “I can't believe you expect me to give up my Sunday with Polly!”

Stick to short factual statements. Avoid labels

Fact: You have tickets to a baseball game with our daughter on my weekend.

Label: You are so selfish.

Cool the conflict. Don't feed the fires.

Long nasty emails require only simple short factual responses: “I am so sorry; I cannot switch weekends with you.”

What looks like “manipulation” may be a child trying to manage a loyalty bind

A child looks perfectly happy at Dad's. However, he tells his mom that he is miserable there. Mom tells Dad, “Your son is extremely unhappy at your house.” In this case, Dad initiated the divorce and Mom has had a very tough time with it. As I am listening, all of the nonverbal clues sound to me like this boy may indeed be thriving in his dad's house. It is possible that he is trying his best to protect his mom. In any case, empathic connection will be more useful than direct confrontation. Dad can say to his son, “Sometimes divorced kids worry about their parents. I know you love your mom and me, and you want us both to feel OK. That's a big job for a kid! Right?” (Notice that Dad does not blame either his ex or his son.)

Even if the child discloses nothing, the fact that one parent has said, “I know you’re in a bind” is regulating and comforting. In a very high-conflict divorce, I would encourage Dad to simply deflect with his ex-wife, “Thanks so much for telling me! I will pay close attention.” If there is some cooperativeness, Dad can be a bit more open with his ex. “Gee, I’ve been watching closely and I don't see it. Do you think maybe he really cares about you and doesn't want you to feel bad when he is at my house? He is such a loving sensitive kid.” (Notice that this statement also carefully avoids blaming the mom.)

Seven steps for what to do when the other parent does something toxic

One of the most difficult and confusing moments for a divorced parent occurs when a child reports that an ex-spouse has said or done something truly awful. Here, briefly, are guidelines I give parents. Note that children are often protective of even an abusive or neglectful parent. It is sometimes easier for children to open up to a skilled guidance counselor, friend, rabbi, minister, or other third party.

Keep your cool. Ranting about the other parent's bad behavior makes an already extremely distressing situation even more so for children. My guideline for parents is, “If you can't stay calm, bite your tongue until you can.”

Calmly check the facts with the ex. Children often do not report accurately. “Polly says you have tickets for the Red Sox game next Saturday. Did she get that right?” (Note: A parent who was drinking or abusive will usually deny the behavior. Generally, in these cases, if the story differs, I am more inclined to believe children.)

Begin with something positive, and truthful, about the offending parent. “Daddy has a lot of great qualities.” “Your mom loves you a lot”

Acknowledge unacceptable behavior with a simple, factual statement. Children do need validation that unacceptable behavior has occurred. If Daddy is getting drunk and falling asleep at 7 p.m., this is not a time to simply say, “Just remember that Daddy loves you.” Children need to hear, “Your dad does get drunk.” “Your mom does say very bad things about me sometimes.” “Your stepdad does lose his temper.”

Immediately shift the focus to the child's feelings. “That must be very scary.” “That must be very confusing—who to believe, Mom or Dad?” “It must be tense inside you when he starts drinking/when she loses her temper.” Help parents to listen and empathize. Children need to feel that caring adults really get how scared, or sad, or confused they are.

If safety is an issue, make an action plan. “If Daddy gets scary, text me and I’ll just show up, like it's by accident. I’ll say you forgot one of your books. I promise I won't tell him you called me.” Enable the GPS tracking device on a child's cell phone, identify safe neighbors, etc.

Use the “language of parts.” Children, like all humans, are hard-wired to pull away from people who hurt them. They are also hard-wired to move toward their parents for caring and protection. A scary, disappointing, or cruel parent evokes both the urge to move toward and the urge to move away. This creates an extremely disregulating “biological paradox” (Siegel & Hartzell, 2003). Adults often try to resolve the conflict by dissuading a child from caring about, or being upset by, an unreliable parent. This leaves children even more alone.

The language of parts helps children hold all of their feelings: “Part of you misses your mom. Part of you wants her to stay away.” “Part of you doesn't want to care when Dad doesn't show. Part of you cares a lot.” “That's two opposite things in the same boy. That's a lot for one person to hold. Both make sense to me. Let's make room for both. I have big arms. I’ll help you hold it all.”

Level III Intrapsychic Work Can Help Meet the Ex-Spouse Challenge

Even experienced therapists fall into the trap of siding with their clients against a poorly behaving ex-spouse ignoring the contribution of their own client's reactivity.

Intrapsychic issues that affect ex-spouse challenges

A history of inadequate parenting can make an ex-spouse's poor parenting particularly provocative. A critical or derogatory ex-spouse will be especially debilitating for someone who grew up with shaming and humiliation. As we will see in the case study that follows, healing old wounds can lower the emotional temperature and increase effective engagement.

Shifting the focus inside

For clinicians, as with the other challenges, begin right away asking, “So when she hangs up on you what happens inside of you?” Early in the work, tie this into psychoeducation and coaching constructive responses. If reactivity continues, you have laid the groundwork to continue on the intrapsychic level. Chapter 16 provides more detail about moving into this level or toward a referral.

Case Study

Eric Moves from Ineffective Battling to Effective Strategizing

For a number of dads in my practice, working at the intrapsychic level has made a profound difference in their ability to work effectively with their ex-spouses. In each case it was their second wife who asked, and then insisted, that they get help! This was true for Eric Emery. (Genogram on page 5.)

Sandy Asks Eric to Step Up to the Challenge

Eric Emery was generally a calm and even-tempered guy, except in matters concerning his ex-wife Bonnie. Phone calls with Bonnie consistently deteriorated into shouting matches. The friction became so debilitating to Sandy that finally, in their third year together, she insisted that Eric come with her to get some help.

Eric Can't Stop Battling with Bonnie

Within our first few minutes, Eric began railing about Bonnie's “incredible disorganization” and her “unconscionable irresponsibility” as a mother. “She doesn't work. She lives very well off my child support. I don't see why she can't return a damned phone call.” There were certainly some serious issues. Elyssa often arrived exhausted, with homework assignments incomplete or lost, and without most of her clothing. Bonnie provided none of the considerable academic support that Elyssa needed.

Bonnie's behavior sounded problematic. However, Eric's anger was rendering him ineffective and wearing his wife thin.

Shifting from Interminable Battling to Approaching Wisely

Eric's inability to rally his considerable skills for the cause suggested that wounds from another time might be driving up his temperature. Still, we began on the first two levels. Sandy felt that both Elyssa and Sabina overheard much more than Eric assumed. We talked a little about the impact on children of even moderate tension between adults. Eric was quiet. “I guess I’m not helping Elyssa's anxiety much.”

The first step in influencing Bonnie, I told Eric, was to learn more about what made her tick. Bonnie, Eric reported, had always had great difficulty planning ahead and organizing. She had struggled terribly in school and had flunked out of community college. Getting Bonnie to “plan better” and “follow through more” was looking less realistic by the moment. We turned to more practical and creative strategies.

Finding End Runs

Eric, somewhat grudgingly, agreed to buy Elyssa some extra sets of clothing to keep at Dad's house. “Cheaper than grinding my teeth,” he joked. Sandy took on the task of using the school website to download Elyssa's homework assignments, monitoring their completion by email. She also began learning about how to support a child with Elyssa's specific learning disabilities.28 Elyssa was not ready for Sandy in a disciplinary role. However, they had been getting closer and she was quite open to Sandy's help with her school work.

Sufficient sleep is critical for children, so we turned there next.29 On the pretense of freeing Bonnie to attend a yoga class, they traded halves of the week with her. The switch enabled Elyssa to begin her week at Eric and Sandy's with three nights of good sleep, leaving only two school nights at Bonnie's.

But … Eric Can't Stop Battling

Despite these successes, Bonnie missed several doctor's appointments with Elyssa's allergist. Eric's temper flared, and Bonnie continued to hang up on him. The rush of damning language in Eric's irate outbursts was overwhelming even to me. No wonder she hung up! Any hope of getting heard by his ex-wife would require Eric to calm himself down, and speak in short, simple sentences, with plenty of Soft/Hard/Soft and joining. Eric fully understood the concept. “I start out with good intentions,” he kept saying. “But then I just lose it!” Now I hoped I had the leverage to begin turning him inside.

Making a “U-Turn” (Schwartz, 1995) to Intrapsychic Work

“How hard as a dad,” I said, trying to reach into Eric's anguish, “that your daughter's mother doesn't take care of her in these ways. It must be torture for you!” “It is,” he replied wearily. We sat together with this for a moment. “You’ve actually got the skills you need. I know you use them with Sandy and with Sabina when she loses it. But, it looks like they just go out the window with Bonnie.” He looked up and nodded.

We talked about “Papernow's Bruise Theory of Feelings” again (page 10). “Anybody would be really upset about this,” I said. “But it sure looks like something about this stuff with Bonnie is banging into something old and painful. The door flies open and you’re a goner. How about we open that door in a much safer way and heal whatever is in there? What do you think?” It was near the end of a session. Eric agreed to think about it. He then cancelled the next session, and the next, and he did not return my phone calls. I wondered if I had moved too quickly.

Eric Starts Healing Ricky's Bruises

Three months later, Eric reappeared, sent by Sandy to “Do something about this!”

Working slowly and respectfully in the Internal Family Systems model (Schwartz, 1995, 2001), we followed Eric's intense response to Bonnie back to his own adolescence. There we found a lonely, skinny 14-year-old boy, then called Ricky, living alone with his alcoholic mom. “My dad was always at the office. My mom was either asleep or raging. She was too drunk to make meals. We had a BMW in the driveway, but there was no food in the frige. We didn't even have toilet paper half the time!” Bonnie's difficulties providing for Elyssa had stirred this boy's anguish, which in turn had uncorked a flood of wounded outrage.

Together we began to ease Ricky's burden of neglect. Under the indignation was a deep well of grief. As Eric healed his own history of failed parenting, Bonnie's “stuff,” as he called it, began to be significantly less provocative.

Rescuing Ricky Helps Eric Meet the Challenge

After several sessions of concentrated work, Eric disappeared again for awhile. He returned with Sandy a couple of months later to strategize about a scheduling issue with Bonnie. The change was stunning. “It works!” Eric exclaimed triumphantly. “Bonnie is still doing her same old same old, but it's just not driving me so nuts any more. She hasn't hung up on me in ages. She's actually almost cooperative!” I was as thrilled as they were.

Over the next few years, Eric returned occasionally, sometimes with Sandy, for coaching about issues with Bonnie, or to do some more work when the old feelings kicked into gear again. Nine years later, Eric and Bonnie pulled off Elyssa's wedding with only a few minor snarls.

Conclusion to Chapter 7

Many aspects of this challenge can evoke intense reactivity. For the wellbeing of children, it is a public health imperative that stepfamily members find the best in themselves, even in circumstances that pull for the worst. Moms and stepmoms sometimes have to exert considerable effort to co-exist peacefully. Nonresidential dads often need extra support to keep reaching out to their children. When the adults negotiate these challenges successfully children can feel centered, safe, and nourished in all of their important relationships. Parents, stepparents, ex-spouses, and in-laws, all play a role in, and are affected by, how this challenge unfolds.

CHAPTER 12 The Stepfamily Cycle

Normal Stages of Stepfamily Development

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813645-12

The Stepfamily Cycle originally emerged from my qualitative analysis of interviews with nonclinical stepfamily members about how their families had changed and grown over time (Papernow, 1984, 1988, 1993). Over the decades, the model has been enriched and enhanced by the stories of both thriving and struggling stepfamily members. The Stepfamily Cycle begins in the Early Stages when well-established bonds of attachment, shared history, and easy shared middle ground lie in pre-existing parent–child (and ex-spouse) relationships. By the end of the Middle Stages, the family has begun to re-organize. The Later Stages start to see a truly mature stepfamily.

The “stages” of the Stepfamily Cycle might more accurately be described as “stations.” A few families do ride through them in order, but most do not follow a neat, linear sequence. That said, developmental markers can be enormously comforting. As the recoupled mother below attests, they help stepfamily members to differentiate between a difficulty that signals trouble, and one that marks a normal, somewhat rocky, passage on the way to a better place.

Suddenly, after two years of relative calm, we were fighting over everything. I was sure it meant the end. Another divorce. I was really scared. After the workshop last week, I was so relieved. I realized we had actually just hit Mobilization. My husband had finally started blurting out how left out he felt. I have to say I was pushing back pretty defensively. Placing ourselves in the Stepfamily Cycle helped us both to calm down and start talking.

Early Stages: Getting Started or Getting Stuck

Fantasy: The Invisible Burden

The longing for harmonious “blending” is profoundly rooted in what makes us most human. All couples enter new relationships with fantasies of blissful connection. Stepcouples bring their own particular set, thinking “I will finally have the family I have been waiting for. My new partner and I love each other. He or she and the kids will love each other, too. The new stepparent will be a good parent to my children. The children will be grateful. The ex will fade into the background.” For older recouplers, “It will be just us.”

For those who want to help, the toxic impact of “wrong ideas” on vunerable step relationships can feed the urge to jump in quickly and forcefully with corrective information. However, it is important to remember that relinquishing fantasies requires giving up long-held hopes. It often involves wading through considerable shame (“How could we have been so dumb?”). We need to approach with gentleness and compassion. As always, when, despite some work on the first two levels, fantasies will not budge, stepfamily challenges may be replaying past painful attachment breaks.

Immersion: Reality Hits (“Something's Wrong Here and It Must Be Me. Or You. Or the Kids”)

In Immersion, the realities of stepfamily structure begin to make themselves felt. Stepparents start feeling the loneliness of their outsider position. As they voice their struggles, parents begin feeling torn. Shifts toward family togetherness (the new family takes a vacation together, a stepparent moves in, the stepcouple gets engaged or married) activate children's losses and loyalty binds. Spending more time together reveals parenting polarizations and exposes differences in routines and values. It becomes increasingly obvious that ex-spouses, and their extended kin, are an integral part of family life.

“There are two ways to be fooled,” says Soren Kierkegaard. “One is to believe what isn't true. The other is to refuse to accept what is true” (1962, p. 23). Refusing to accept the reality of “stepfamily architecture” often triggers shame (“What's wrong with me?”) and blame (“What is your problem?”). We saw this with Vivian and Hank Kramer in Chapter 5, who, three years into their marriage, remained locked in straining for the impossible. Families that begin with a better understanding of their stepfamily challenges spend less time in Fantasy and Immersion. Some, like Mona and Norman Heller, begin adrift in fantasies. However, when they hit Immersion, they adjust their expectations, change their course, and move forward. (The Heller genogram is on page 47.)

Mona's “Reality Sandwich”

For a few moments there, Norman and I had this starry-eyed picture of our happy new family. I did bond with his two boys pretty quickly. But it was obvious, equally quickly, that my girls were not going to fall in love with Norman just because I did. Quite the opposite. In fact, at first, I think they hated him just because I loved him.

The reality sandwich was not tasty. It was gritty and nasty. Sometimes it made me really sad. I did insist that Molly and Maddie treat Norman decently. Norman did the same with his kids. But we didn't force those relationships. We waited a long time before we moved in together.

Awareness: Clarity and Acceptance (“It's Not That Something Is Wrong. It's That We Are a Stepfamily!”)

Letting go of their fantasies enabled Mona and Norman to move out of Immersion and into Awareness. In this stage, clarity, compassion, and curiosity begin to replace confusion, anxiety, and shame. The challenges remain intense, but step-family members meet them with more equanimity.

Stepparents begin moving from, “Something's wrong with me (or you)” to, “It's tough sitting at the dinner table while the kids talk only to their dad!” Parents shift from feeling inadequate that they cannot meet everyone's needs to more confidently conducting their relationships one-by-one. Children begin to voice their losses (“It's too much too fast!” “I need more time with my mom”). They find language for their loyalty binds (“I hate it when my mom says mean things about my dad”).

Middle Stages: Reorganizing Family Relationships

Mobilization: Airing Differences

In this stage, stepfamily members engage more openly over their differences. The most successful families keep their fights comparatively short and reasonably constructive, returning to the calm optimal arousal of Awareness to fully understand the needs on all sides. Some, however, become mired in conflict.

Action: Going into Business Together

In the Action stage, stepcouples begin “going into business” together. Patches of shared middle ground begin to form on a range of issues. Shared understandings about “how we do things” emerge earlier in some areas than in others. In Chapter 6 the Danforth/Emery family easily and creatively solved their differences over “how to dress for Christmas morning.” Sandy and Eric's class differences over financial matters required considerably more effort. As we also saw in Chapter 6, the most successful stepfamilies forge new middle ground out of a solid understanding of what matters to each member. Again, flexibility, the willingness to learn from each other, and the ability to laugh together are key strengths that make a difference.

Later Stages: Mature Stepfamilies

Contact: Intimacy and Authenticity in Step Relationships

In the Contact stage, stepfamilies finally get their hard-earned honeymoon. The adult stepcouple becomes a reliable sanctuary for connection and caring.

Stepparent–stepchild relationships have stabilized. In many cases, the bonds have continued to gain strength and warmth over the years. At the same time, residual “outsiderness” enables many stepparents to be less reactive than parents around hot button issues such as boyfriends, sex, and career planning. This combination of caring and perspective opens the way to a rewarding “intimate outsider” mentoring role for stepparents. Seven years down the road, Kevin Anderson's daughter, Katie, relishes the way in which her stepmother Claire, fills this role for her.

Claire Doesn't Flip Out. She Listens

Claire is definitely the best to talk to about boys. My mom, and especially my dad, tend to flip out. Claire loves me but she doesn't flip out. She listens. She gives me really good ideas about how to handle things. When I’ve got something sticky to talk about, Claire's the one.

Resolution: Holding on and Letting Go (“We're Definitely a We”)

In this stage, stepfamilies exude a solid feeling of “we-ness.” A sense of “shared experience, shared values, and easy cooperative functioning” (Browning & Artfelt, 2012, p. 39) saturates the family. Measures of children's wellbeing become increasingly indistinguishable from those in first-time families (Bray, 1999b).

Stepcouples have now forged intimate, secure relationships. Stepparent-stepchild relationships may range from deep and caring to distant but civil. Stepparents may have moved into an authoritative parenting role with some, all, or none, of their stepchildren. Solid middle ground throughout the family now offers many easy pathways to collaboration around kids, parenting, values, daily habits of living, and living well with ex-spouses. As when any two foreign cultures come together, differences remain, but they, too, are woven into the family fabric. Here is the evolving saga of food in the Papernow/Goldberg household:

In year three of the Papernow/Goldberg stepfamily, my daughter went through our kitchen pointing, “Papernow, Papernow, Papernow” (organic whole grain cereal, skinless chicken, fish, skim milk, nonfat yogurt, and the entire vegetable bin) and “Goldberg, Goldberg, Goldberg” (sugar cereals, white bread, a couple of steaks, two-percent milk, and “real” mayonnaise).

In year four, my daughter began inching out of her fervent vegetarianism and added fish to her diet. In year five she added chicken and even, occasionally, red meat. Over the years my husband slowly converted to low-fat cheese and skim milk. In year ten, a Weight Watchers stint drew my husband into whole grains, nonfat yogurt, and chicken. Fifteen years later, Papernow food and Goldberg food have become almost indistinguishable, except for the vegetable bin, which to this day remains almost entirely Papernow territory.

Even in Resolution, threads of “ownness” linger (Hetherington, et al., 1999). As stepfamily scholars Larry Ganong and Marilyn Coleman put it, “Parents love their children more than other people do. Children love their parents more than they love other adults” (2004, p. 229). Life cycle events may re-activate long-dormant challenges. In Chapter 6, Eric Emery and Sandy Danforth again encountered the disparity in their values about money, this time over whether Elyssa would attend a state school or a private college. By then, however, they could draw upon an established history of engaging respectfully over these differences. In their eleventh year together, Elyssa's wedding reprised Sandy's outsider position. (The Danforth/Emery genogram is on page 5.)

Elyssa's Wedding Pushes Sandy Outside Again

“It was such a surprise and yet no surprise,” Sandy said. “Of course Elyssa wanted to plan her wedding with her mom, not with me. Even though we all know that I am a much more organized person than Bonnie. Elyssa also wanted her mom and dad to walk her down the aisle. I totally understood, but it was hard to imagine sitting in the pew all by myself!”

By this time, I had known the family for many years. I suggested that Sandy ask her best friend Robin to come as her “wedding buddy.” The bridal gift of a “wedding buddy” is to sit next to the stepmother (sometimes a stepfather), gossip with her, and, if necessary, pass the kleenex. “I still missed Eric at times during the wedding,” Sandy said, “but I had a ball with Robin.”

Grandparenting in Long-Time Stepfamilies

Long-time stepcouples watch children grow up, marry, have their own children. Parents and stepparents become grandparents and stepgrandparents. As in all aspects of stepfamily life, some stepgrandparents form very close relationships with their grandchildren. Others are more distant. As with mothers and stepmothers, grandmothers and stepgrandmothers appear to experience more tension than their male counterparts. Negotiations over wedding planning, new babies, birthdays, and holidays may now involve a very large network of in-laws and grandchildren. These events can stir up a raft of old and new feelings about insiders and outsiders, cultural differences, etc. When this goes well, multiple grandparents and step-grandparents work together to make room for each other, enriching grandchildren's lives and providing extra helping hands for adult children:

Both my ex-wife and I have been remarried for almost 20 years. Our children's kids each have a minimum of six grandparents. One has eight! It's great, because we can all take turns pitching in when the kids need us. Each of the grandmas has her own special name. My wife is Grammy Pam. My ex-wife is Nana. My stepson's Italian mother-in-law is Nona. My stepdaughter's mother-in-law is Yaya. Our grandkids think this is normal. They feel really sorry for their friends who “only” have three or four grandparents.

Chapter 13 Six Patterns of Becoming a Stepfamily

DOI: 10.4324/9780203813645-13

Over my own three and a half decades of experience with both clinical and nonclinical stepfamilies, a number of patterns of development have emerged. I have divided them into two “Easier Rides” and four “Harder Rides.” The two “Easier Rides” are Aware families, and Slow & Mostly Steady families. The four “Harder Rides” are Avoidant, Roller Coaster, Race Car, and Return & Repair families. These patterns seem to align with the work of several other stepfamily scholars (see the Notes chapter for details).

How Long Does it Take?

Everyone wants to know, “How long does it take?” In my experience, aware families move into Action within about two years, and spend another couple of years solidifying, for a total of four or five years to mature stepfamilydom. Slow & Mostly Steady families spend comparatively more time in Immersion and Mobilization, reaching Resolution in about six or seven years. These are the two “Easier Rides.” Again, the bottom line is, becoming a stepfamily is a process, not an event.1

The four “Harder Rides” take much longer. They get stuck along the way, or skip critical tasks and have to go back in order to meet their challenges. Avoidant, Roller Coaster, and Race Car families are likely among the over 25 percent of stepfamilies that break up within five years (Cherlin & Furstenberg, 1994; Hetherington, et al., 1998). Differing levels of psychoeducation, quality of interpersonal skills, and intensity of intrapsychic issues explain most of the differences.

Two Easier Rides

Aware Families

Aware families meet their challenges most quickly and easily. Mona Hoffman Heller, mother of the noisy teens Maddie and Melissa, and her husband Norman, dad of the much quieter children Noah, Nicole, and Ned, are an Aware family. Like Jody Jenkins and Duane King, and the Danforth/Emery family, they work together to meet their children's needs, form a mutually supportive parenting coalition, and deal constructively with their differences.

On the first level, Aware stepcouples begin with more realistic information. They are less burdened by powerful fantasies, or they fairly quickly relinquish those that don't fit. On the second, interpersonal skills level, adults in these families engage in high levels of constructive communication about step issues. On the third, intrapsychic level, Aware stepcouples come with few “bad bruises in the wrong places.” Alternatively, they willingly and effectively engage in their own internal work, as Eric Emery did in Chapter 7, to deal with his intense triggering over his ex-wife's failures.

Aware stepfamilies are not thrilled by their challenges. Whether it was Elyssa's unreadiness to bond with her stepmother, Mona's uneaten kugel, or Eric Emery's “holiday best” attire on Christmas morning, they get hurt, disappointed, or angry. However, they bring enough empathy and equanimity to the process to repair fairly quickly and find their way back to each other.2

Slow & Mostly Steady Families Need a Little More Time

Slow & Mostly Steady stepfamilies move forward successfully, but with more effort than Aware families. They may start with unrealistic expectations, come with slightly poorer interpersonal skills, or bring some moderately painful family-of-origin bruises. They spend more time lost in the silent resentment of Immersion, or mired in messy blaming Mobilization. Some SMS families include a child who needs considerably more time for adjustment.

Like Claire Abbott and Kevin Anderson, little by little, with or without help, SMS families find enough wisdom and good will to meet their challenges, moving issue by issue into Action and finally into mature stepfamilydom.3 4

Four Harder Rides

Avoidant, Roller Coaster, Race Car, and Return & Repair families have harder, longer journeys. They often bring more tenacious fantasies. They make many more of the “wrong turns” that derail stepfamily development. On the interpersonal skills level, they are more likely to respond to their challenges with attack and/or withdrawal, without compensating amounts of warmth and caring. On the intrapsychic level, a childhood history of abandonment or abuse may make the constant attachment breaks of stepfamily structure especially painful.

Avoidant Stepfamilies Remain Stuck in the Soup

Avoidant stepfamilies remain stuck in the silent anxiety and confusion of Immersion. There is little flow of communication about step issues. They bump along with very low levels of family satisfaction. Stepparents suffer their outsider positions in silence, withdrawing or complaining ineffectively. Insider parents in these families may be unaware, dismissive, or critical of the stepparent's experience of rejection and invisibility. Or they may be paralyzed with anxiety over their inability to please the people they love. These couples may lurch into an ineffective fight, but quickly retreat into silence, rather than hanging in until they fully understand each other. The research noting high levels of avoidance in stepfamilies describes this group (Afifi & Schrodt, 2003). Without good help, it is likely that Kevin Anderson and Claire Abbott were heading in this direction. Hank and Vivian Kramer were in this pattern when they arrived for help.5

Occasionally, even many years later, some members of Avoidant stepfamilies move forward into more intimacy with each other. Twenty-three years after her mother remarried, 41-year-old Isabel Rousseau reached out to her 66-year-old stepfather, Spencer. Although her family remained unintegrated, she found a “giant unlooked-for gift” in her relationship with her stepfather.

Isabel's “Giant Unlooked-For Gift”

Isabel Rousseau's stepfamily had always been dominated by her extremely demanding mother Iris. Isabel's stepfather, Spencer, had apparently occupied his outsider status in polite, stoic silence for the entire 23 years of his marriage to Iris.

In her own therapy, as Isabel began establishing firmer boundaries with her mother, she expressed her fear of losing both her mother and her stepfather. We spent a session helping her articulate never-voiced feelings about Spencer: “I never would have gotten out of my mother's house without him,” she said wistfully. “I am so grateful for the way he takes care of my mother.”

Guessing that Spencer would appreciate hearing that Isabel valued his presence in her life, we strategized a moment during the next family visit, after mom had gone to bed, when Isabel could approach her stepfather. Two visits passed. Then, during the third visit, for the first time in over two decades, Isabel found the nerve to open a conversation. “I told Spencer that I wanted to say something to him that might surprise him. I told him I wanted him to know that I am free to have a life because he loves my mother. I also thanked him for being good to my older sister, which I know is not always easy!”

She was stunned at the result. “I got this giant unasked-for gift. This formal reserved man looked directly at me and said, ‘Thank you. You don't know how much that means to me.’ I told him I didn't know why I had never thought to say these things to him. He said very sweetly, with no bitterness at all, ‘Your mother does take up a lot of space.’ We started to talk, just a bit. Now when my mother starts to lose it, sometimes I can look at Spencer and he winks. It's still awkward. But we’ve opened the door.”

Roller Coaster Stepfamilies Wage War

Roller Coaster stepfamilies live in the high conflict of Mobilization, battling over insider/outsider challenges, children, parenting issues, differences in family values, and ex-spouse relationships.6 To my surprise, some of these Roller Coaster couples stay glued together for years, cycling between short, often very intense, moments of connection followed predictably by profound misery. Roller Coaster stepcouples who get good help, or who have constructive enough fighting styles and sufficient counterbalancing affection for each other, can work their way through to stability.

Roller Coaster couples are among some of my most heartbreaking cases. Often stepfamily challenges are triggering memories of early childhood wounds. Current events are translated into a replaying narrative of old hurt. As you have seen throughout this book, where there is willingness, intensive individual trauma work can enable the family to steer on to more solid ground. However, for some, even the suggestion of “going there” is so terrifying and the refusal is so intractable, that I cannot find a way through. Here is one of them.

“Why Won't He Listen?”

A stepmother in a double family came for help “getting my husband to listen.” She reported daily screaming matches with him in front of their four children. As a child, this woman had been left alone and unprotected with an uncle who abused her sexually and emotionally. Her attempts to tell her parents had been dismissed as “hysterical.” She had survived her childhood by “being tough and holding it together.” The constant attachment breaks of stepfamily living were tearing open these old wounds, completely overwhelming her historic protective coping skills.

Although she was desperately alone, this stepmother allowed no empathic connection from me. I could not interest her in shielding her children from the conflict. “I’m speaking the truth,” she insisted, “What is the problem with that?” She refused all invitations to learn a few skills that might help her husband hear her better. “Why should I have to adjust my behavior? What he's doing is not right, and he won't listen to me.”

This stepmother's dogged assertions that wrongs be admitted to and addressed made so much sense in the context of her history. But her blind rage was leaving her ever more isolated. My efforts to reassure her that, together, we could safely approach those old betrayals and heal them fell on deaf ears. “I’m done with all that,” she kept saying. “This is about the present, not the past.” After a very rough ride, the couple separated.

Race Car Couples Rush Forward and Crash

Race Car stepcouples charge directly and prematurely into the “going into business together” moves of the Action stage. Like Connie Chen and Burt Czinsky, they often bring strong and extremely unrealistic expectations of “blending.” An initial spike of good feelings rapidly gives way to the realities of stepfamily structure, plummeting the family into misery.7

As Connie Chen and Burt Czinsky learned all too well, the precipitously fast pace of change kicks children's losses and loyalty binds into high gear. “It felt like they expected me to run a marathon with two broken legs … and a broken heart,” said Burt's grieving adolescent son, Brandon. Like Brandon, who had a meltdown when his stepmother strung the “wrong” lights on the Christmas tree, struggling children often react with apparently “bad” behavior. When things go badly, spiraling negative cycles between these children and the adults in their family can make life ever more miserable for all. When Race Car families crash, some pick themselves up and, like Connie and Burt, find the resources to slow down and start over.

Return & Repair Families Affirm the Capacity for Healing

Roller Coaster and Race Car families can be some of the most challenging folks I work with. What I call “Return & Repair” families are some of the most touching and affirming. These stepfamilies find their way, sometimes after many years of struggle, to thriving stepfamilydom. Frank Wolfe and Dick Tucker came to therapy for other issues and stumbled unexpectedly on long-dormant step challenges. (Genogram is on page 7.)

Dick and Frank Return and Repair, 15 Years Later

Dick Tucker and Frank Wolfe came to couples therapy just after celebrating their fifteenth year together, wanting “to get closer again.” Frank's daughter Felicia was ten when her dad met Dick. Dick's daughter Denise, now 27 and the mother of her own two young boys, was 12 when her dad's partner came into her life. A few questions about how Dick and Frank's step relationships had evolved over time revealed that much of their current tension had calcified around unresolved challenges. The family had bumped along for years as an Avoidant family. Their step issues had been buried under pained silence, occasionally punctuated by a nasty fight, which only sent them scuttling back underground again. Through several years of therapy that also focused on many other areas of their lives together, we returned many times to the unspoken impact of their stepfamily structure, helping them to break their long silence and expanding their understanding of the challenges they had been struggling with.

As the younger of the two girls, Felicia had been fairly welcoming of Dick. However, Denise had entered her dad's new family as an adolescent girl. As we learned in Chapter 11, she also had a very tight loyalty bind with her mother. Not surprisingly, Denise had been decidedly cold and even rude to Frank. Frank had been the stuck outsider in this family. Dick had occupied the stuck insider position.

Each round of revisiting those years brought more clarity about what had happened, followed by more intimacy and tenderness as they began healing the pain that had accumulated between them. The grief, sometimes laced with shame, was often palpable. “I tried to tell you so many times,” Frank said bitterly, the first time we delved into these issues. “Denise wouldn't even look at me. You just kept saying, ‘You’re the grown-up.’ ”

Over time, with some help, Dick began repairing this hurt. “You’re right, I didn't get it. I left you so alone. I’m so sorry,” he was finally able to say. “That was the worst,” Frank said, reaching for Dick's hand, “not that your daughter didn't talk to me. But that you didn't get it.” “I know. I so wish we’d had this kind of help then. I am so sorry.” Frank also began to own his own contribution to the stalemate—a sharp tongue, followed by silence and withdrawal.

Kevin and Claire Move from Surviving to Thriving

When we first met them, the Abbott/Anderson family was ensnared in the challenges of the Early Stages, probably on their way to becoming an Avoidant step-family. With help, they have moved forward as a Slow & Mostly Steady family. The mature stepfamily we see in Figure 13.3 looks very different from the well-established first-time family in Chapter 2 (Figure 2.5 on page 19.) However, seven years later, the Abbott/Andersons are no longer just surviving. They are thriving.

Surviving the Early Stages

Figure 13.2 shows this family in their second year together. Kevin and Claire had been very much in love. However, their caring was eroding in the face of their stepfamily challenges. As we saw, with little preparation for this journey, rather poor interpersonal skills, and a few “old bruises in bad places,” this couple's attempts to engage all too often widened the distance between them.

Thriving in the Later Stages

Seven years down the road the Abbot/Anderson family have found their way into the Later Stages. The family in Figure 13.3 looks very different from Figure 13.2. The two major forces for connection introduced in Chapter 2, attachment and middle ground, are now pulling this family together, rather than dividing it. Over several years of hard work, Kevin and Claire replaced “straining to blend” with many more practical and effective strategies. Slowly they mastered some better interpersonal skills. Both had courageously addressed childhood wounds that were contributing to reactivity. Over the years, we had occasionally returned to that work when necessary.

By their fourth year together, Kevin and Claire were forging an increasingly reliable sense of intimate attachment and a gathering shared sense of “how we do things.” Claire had begun moving into an authoritative parenting role with Katie. By then, Kevin was automatically checking in with Claire before making decisions with his ex-wife Ellen. In year five, Ellen's travel schedule changed and Kevin agreed to her request for the girls, then 12 and 16, to move from living part-time to living half-time with Kevin and Claire. However, he did so only after many long and fairly constructive conversations with Claire.

Now, the sense of solidity and wellbeing extends throughout the family. Both Katie and Kendra are thriving. As we heard in Chapter 12, Claire has moved into an “intimate outsider” role with her younger stepdaughter that is extremely rewarding for both of them. “Issues still come up,” says Claire. “We still make messes, but I think we are much kinder to each other. We sure laugh a lot more.” As in most mature stepfamilies, threads of “ownness” linger (Hetherington, et al., 1999). Katie, now 14, is still a little closer to her dad and mom than she is to Claire. Kendra, now an 18-year-old college freshman, still maintains more distance from the family than her sister does, although her loyalty bind with her mother has loosened a little. Rather than a disruptive force, remaining insider/outsider divisions have become an accepted part of family life. Claire muses:

I wouldn't say Kendra and I are close, but we’re friendly. We’ve found a few things, like baking together, where it's easy for us. Lots of times Kevin goes by himself to visit Kendra at college. That's fine with me. Sometimes I come for a day. Sometimes not.

Although Kevin remains the primary go-to parent for Kendra, Kevin and Claire now have a viable parenting coalition, talking “mostly pretty well” about both girls. A few of the classic parenting differences remain, but in much softer form. “He's such an easy mark when the girls want money,” says Claire. “Sometimes I have to jerk his chain about it!” Kevin puts his arm around Claire and adds with a chuckle, “Claire still thinks I don't listen to her about being firmer with the girls, and I still think she doesn't get how much I’ve changed! “The obvious warmth between them makes it obvious that this, too, has become an accepted part of “how things are.”

Recent major surgery for Kendra had thrown all three adults together in Kendra's hospital room. “At first it was a bit uncomfortable,” says Claire. “On the third day, Ellen leaned over to me and said, ‘Thanks for being so good to my girls.’ That meant the world to me.”