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Recall the difference between being accepted as a full member of some group, and being a guest or outsider (non-member). Here acceptance and in-clusion mean "all other members of the group (a) know who I am, (b) want to include me in group activities, and (c) genuinely care about my needs, feelings, and opinions, as I care about theirs." Partial or mixed inclusion happens when some family members include a new person, and others don't (rejection). Significantly -wounded (unaware, needy) courting co-parents often under-estimate the difficulty of trying to get all members of a new nuclear stepfamily to fully accept each other. This is specially likely if any adult or child in the existing divorcing or bereaved biofamily - including ex mates, minor and adult children, and close relatives - isn't well along on grieving their many family losses. Most stepfamily analysts suggest that it can take four or more years after re/wedding (vs. cohabiting) to achieve stable-enough mutual inclusion. For perspective, acceptance spans 16 categories of things, not just "accepting a stepparent (the person)" or "stepsiblings liking each other"! The most sensitive inclusion arena is between a new stepparent, each stepchild, and her or his "other bioparent," if living. If the stepparent has kids, they need to accept their new stepparent and each stepsibling and "close" steprelative. Bottom line: in most cases, expect full mutual inclusion to be a multi-year process after any nuptials, after overcoming many significant values and loyalty conflicts and relationship triangles. Typically, full inclusion after co-habiting without re/marriage is even more complex. The most difficult inclusion scenario is new co-parenting partners cohabiting before one or both are legally or psychologically divorced. slides / more detail / Project-4 index / example / Q&A / close |
Stepfamily Reality