Get the most from this article by (a) saying out loud why you're
reading it, and (b) reading these first:
-
basic suggestions that begin this subseries
of articles about step-relatives
-
factors promoting a
family and
satisfying relationships
-
An
introduction to
normal personality subselves (like yours)
-
typical stepfamilies are significantly stressed, and common
they cause
-
typical
co-parents can avoid or reduce these problems
Use the
ideas here to augment, not replace, other stepfamily-aware professional
What's the
Surface Problem
?
A
newly re/married, 30-something couple sat in my office, talking
passionately. The bride had custody of two pre-teen daughters from a prior
marriage. Her husband also had a pre-teen daughter from his first marriage,
who lived with her biomom and visited him (now them) irregularly. The
couple was planning to conceive an
"ours"
child in the near future.
Both
co-parents were hurt and angry that on family occasions, the
man's father clearly enjoyed and favored his bio-granddaughter more than his two new
step-granddaughters. The bride's girls had asked their Mom why the older man didn't
like them, and were balking at visits with him. To complicate matters, the new
groom worked with his father every day. His parents had divorced many
years before, and his mother lived 1,500 miles away.
The
older man had been cordial and warm to his son's new fiancé and her
daughters before the wedding, so this favoritism was unexpected.
The bride felt protective of her girls, and increasing
resentment at her husband's father. She felt uncomfortable confronting him directly, and nagged her husband to "do something"
(confront his father).
The
husband was caught in the middle of a classic stepfamily
between his wife and stepdaughters on one side, and his father
and a loyal sister on the other. This
(unmarried) sister remained good friends with the husband's former wife, and also
seemed to favor her biological niece over her
stepnieces. Confusing, isn't it?
At
the same time, the new wife was critical of his former wife's vitriolic
parenting, so tension between the two mothers was developing. This trapped the
husband's bio-daughter in the middle of another loyalty conflict.
Both conflicts generated stressful relationship
to compound everyone's confusion.
The
older man maintained an affectionate relationship with his former
daughter-in-law, despite her rejecting his son. The new wife was sensitive to
that, and felt that her new father-in-law was
in
fully accepting her.
This
co-parent couple had come to see me because their escalating fights
about this complex situation "never got anywhere" - i.e. didn't fill
either mate's primary needs.
What
would you do to resolve this tangle?
This
true story illustrates the general elements of favoritism conflicts among typical stepfamily relatives:
Tension
(hurt, resentment, anxieties, confusion) ) between the re/married
couple because someone's relative seems to give more respect,
attention, and priority to genetic kin than to the new spouse, their
child/ren,
and/or their relatives; and...
One
or more
(a) concurrent loyalty
conflicts; where one or both re/married co-parents
feel stymied and frustrated trying to please and support two or more
opposed people they care greatly about; and (b)
associated persecutor - victim - rescuer triangles; and...
Other family members and friends taking
sides with one camp or the other, causing cascades of hurts,
resentments, and antagonisms and more relationship triangles; and...
Most or all of the involved adults and
kids feeling confused about "what's right here?" - partly
because American stepfamily norms haven't emerged yet; and...
Someone may try to sort things out
resolve the several overlapping conflicts - i.e. to "make peace" - usually
with temporary or no success. That leads to...
Dwindling goodwill and tolerances, and
silent or rancorous emotional distancing that grows among some or most
members.
Amplified by wounds and stepfamily
these amplify interactive conflicts over
and
while...
The
couple
struggles to master other normal
stepfamily-adjustment conflicts and
confusions over names, family
and
and child-related
conflicts including visitations,
custody,
and finances.
Overall, stepfamily "favoritism
struggles" are
a web of related concurrent internal and interpersonal conflicts - i.e. unmet
|
These elements form a web of surface problems around step-relative
favoritism conflicts. The challenge for co-parents caught up in this collage is to learn how
to...
|
Identify and
Resolve the Primary Problems
Understanding and sorting out what's really going on here warrants a
whole
book!
What
follows is an outline of key ideas and co-parent options. Follow the links to
increase
your awareness, and adapt the options to fit your
situation.
The most likely and impactful primary problem is...
1) One
or more stepfamily adults
and kids are significantly controlled by a
well-meaning
In my experience with hundreds of stepfamily couples since 1981,
if
one co-parent is often ruled by a false self, the other is too. So are
ex mates, and often adult sibs and senior parents. Usually, none of them knows this - or wants
to!
False-self development seems to occur naturally as a way of adapting
to a painful
childhood.
Here, the new stepfather was dimly aware of
pain from seeing his (mellowed) father giving more loving attention to his
granddaughter than he had given to his son when he was her age. This
wounded man had his own resentments toward his father to resolve!
More old tensions arose because the new bride was subliminally experiencing a
painful replay of her father rejecting her when she was her daughters'
ages. She felt her daughters' pain and confusion, as they tried for
acceptance with their aloof new co-grandfather.
False selves are several
that don't know, or distrust, the resident
(capital "S") to keep the person safe. They often have
narrow visions,
and focus on avoiding or reducing current or likely
False selves aren't famous for
adopting long-term views and goals. They may also often believe irrationally that
the calendar hasn't changed a day since the childhood era of
painful
emotional/spiritual nurturance deprivations.
Co-parents' best option here is to
work at
together (assess for
false-self wounds and recover from them) -
ideally
starting
well before remarriage.
In my
27 clinical years' work with over 1,000
pre-remarriage and troubled co-parents, I have met only a handful who had invested significant time
in true (vs. partial or pseudo) recovery from false-self wounds. I believe
these wounds are probably the most powerful of
causing most U.S. marriages and re/marriages to
psychologically or legally divorce.
If you're a co-parent (or someone) dominated now by a false self, your
probable reactions to what you just read are some mix of...
-
disbelief and skepticism;
-
numbness, sadness, and/or
irritation or anger;
-
vague or sharp anxiety;
-
the urge to blame
someone;
-
blanking out what you just
read, or being "bored" with it;
-
feeling "This is too
complicated / confusing."
-
an inner voice denouncing
these ideas as "psychobabble," "New Age crap,"
"too far out," or similar.
Responses like these are normal protective reactions from
subselves
who see exposing their personality dominance as threatening!
Another common primary problem may be...
2) Some or all genetic and legal
relatives, including "ex in-laws," don't (a) accept their stepfamily
or (b) know what it
Where true, adults and kids make inappropriate family-relationship
judgments and
decisions based on up to ~60 common myths
about average stepfamilies.
In this case, both co-parents were unrealistic in expecting the groom's father
to not favor his bio-granddaughter over his new step-granddaughters at
first. Do you agree?
Accept
that a standard
adjustment task in all newly-formed stepfamilies is
changing and stabilizing relationship alliances and priorities, over several
years after re/wedding. Courtship relationships are usually
artificially cordial and polite, and won't necessarily predict post-re/marriage
attitudes and behaviors. Co-parents can help themselves by expecting
some favoritism conflicts, as their multi-generational biofamilies
Co-parents can prevent or reduce this problem by working at
(clarify and accept your stepfamily identity, and agree on who belongs),
and
(learn stepfamily norms,
and form realistic
and relationship
expectations). The best time to do this is before re/wedding.
|
Once you partners do this, the next step is to invite key relatives, like the
grandfather here, to do their own version of these two projects. The
long-term goal is to have all adults in your multi-home stepfamily form
realistic
expectations of themselves and each other, and then model and teach them to
the kids.
|
Even if they had intellectually accepted that the grandfather's favoritism was
natural, this couple would still react strongly to the hurt the two girls felt
about being treated as "second best." This reaction is usually amplified if...
-
the kids are having a tough
time adjusting to the loss
and trauma of parental
and complex family reorganization; and if...
-
the custodial parent is
burdened with excessive
about events around the divorce
(and/or re/wedding and
cohabiting). If this is true, it often
points to another concurrent primary problem:
3) Co-parents
don't know how to
effectively
together. In my ~17,000 hours consulting with hundreds of troubled adults,
I'd say conservatively that 95% can't name, and don't know to use, some version
of these
Anyone can learn them, to resolve most internal and
interpersonal conflicts.
This struggling couple, and the grandfather, sister, and
former wife, shared this core problem. Some of the symptoms of their communication-skill
ignorance were:
They couldn't focus together
to identify, prioritize, and focus on each of their concurrent (a)
and
(b) interpersonal problems (need-conflicts) one or a few at a time.
They were
of most of these
primary
problems simmering below the surface symptoms above. (sound
familiar?)
These good people couldn't
clearly name the difference between surface needs and underlying
and prioritize them as partners (vs. adversaries);
None of them were aware that
when their false selves took over, their
often rose quickly "above their ears," so they couldn't
hear
each other well - making win-win problem-solving unlikely;
This couple could name only a
few of the
common
and were
unaware of how to use the seven skills to solve them together; and...
They were also unaware of the
"1-up" and "1-down"
they were exchanging with each other. That left them unable
to note and react calmly to feeling disrespected
by their communication partner/s; and finally...
These well-meaning adults
didn't know how to
at (map) their communication sequences and cycles to see what caused their
recurrent lose-lose arguing, and how to change that into
win-win problem
solving.
The good news here is that couples choosing to do a version of
together can eventually correct all these communication
problems -
specially with concurrent work on restoring
to
personality leadership via Project-1
The "bad news" is - doing these projects takes a lot of work, risk,
time, patience, and willingness to change - which most of us (i.e. our false
selves) work diligently to avoid. The eventual benefits awaiting you are
enormous!
Continue
with another common primary problem, and options for resolving all of them.
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The Web address of this
two-page article is http://sfhelp.org/Rx/kin/favoritism.htm