Getting tired of the same issues that plague your relationship? Are you stuck in a pattern over the same fights? Its likely not because you “married the wrong person” but more than likely a cause of expectations based on how you were parented which result in core patterns of relating. These core pattern issues are what therapists call “Attachment issues” as they are based on the attachments you came to expect – or not – as a child. Children can have secure, anxious or avoidant attachment styles.
Growing up in a volatile home and needing to be more independent in handling your emotions on your own because parents were too busy fighting would then cause an individual to maintain that independence into their marriage – mixed with a person that grew up with a lot of attention from both parents and….BAM…the more needy partner ends up with an emotional crisis around needing to feel more securely attached and the partner is unable to respond to the need due to the pre-existing avoidant pattern.
This is just one example among many that can get couples into trouble and having spouses thinking they’ve married the wrong person when the reality is it’s a behavior pattern that needs to adapt to a new relationship. This can take a lot of difficult emotional work for a period of time, but once couples reach the other side there is a deeper intimacy and a more whole-person understanding between the spouses.
There are 5 different love style that can interact: The Avoider, The Pleaser, The Vacillator, The Victim and Controller love styles (also known as the Chaotic love style). These styles can pair-up and initially the opposite qualities attract and then they can attack. Not feeling attached to your partner is one of the most emotionally dis-regulating feelings for a person. You’ll see the dis-regulation in children when they lose their parent at a store, or feel unsure of a parents’ love. These behavior patterns repeat into adulthood though the dis-regulation can show up differently. Some adults to continue to throw tantrums and some hide in their work, or spend their time with the children leaving the marriage to suffer.
The good news is that with professional help the couple can start to recognize their core patterns and in the safety of a therapeutic situation can start to rebuild, the often unknown, broken emotional attachments. The couple then internalizes the therapeutic techniques and are able to “catch” their pattern and stop it before it gets out-of-hand.
Thus, it is not the wrong person you’ve married but just the wrong understanding of how they receive the way you grew up loving your birth family. The patterns of your biological family usually do not work within the structure of your newly created family – with the person you married. This is also works for Blended Families and in the relationship patterns between blended family step-kids to the new stepparent. Figuring out what’s happening for another person emotionally, will allow the patterns to be side-stepped to create a more peaceful home and a new securely attached relationships.
For more in-depth information on this subject or to discover your love style I recommend the book How We Love by Milan & Kay Yerkovich.
Blending Eggs-cellently
Whether you’re stuck at home with a blended family or a first family – times like these can become trials of patience. Tempers can get short and attention can wan. For blended families finding ways to make home feel “normal” is difficult, especially in times of transition when things are anything but normal. One of the easiest ways to bond with your blended family is to share traditions from your own childhood. This accomplishes a few things:
- It fills the uncomfortable silence with non-judgmental information.
- It helps your blended family get to know about a different part of you.
- Fond memories bring a lightness to the heart and can have a calming and positive affect on the autonomic system (making you, one of the adults, better able to model how to tolerate transitional situations).
- Lastly, if you can recreate the tradition, it gives everyone something to do and adds to making a positive new memory. Sharing happy or fun memories bond people together.
A tradition I have shared with my blended family is making hollowed out Easter eggs as Easterly keepsakes.
Items you’ll need:
1 dozen white eggs
1 large safety pin
1 container to catch egg whites/yolks
1 egg dying kit
Crayons to write names on eggs (if desired)
Assorted arts and crafts items: children’s catalogs, magazines with cute animals pictures, gem stones, thin ribbons, stickers or any other desired items for decorating.
- hot glue gun for attaching ribbons,
- regular glue for attaching magazine cut outs to the eggs
- School glue to mix with a bit of water to brush over adornments
- Modge podge to spray on eggs when they’re finished.
Step 1 – Hollowing out eggs
Using the large safety pin, poke a hole in the bottom of the egg (largest end). Keep poking around the edge of the first pin-prick to eventually create a hole.
- flip the egg over
- Using the same technique, poke a hole in the top of the egg that’s a bit smaller than the hole in the bottom.
- Holding the egg over the container, gently blow into the egg and push the whites and yolk out through then bottom.
- Repeat for all 12 eggs.
Step 2 – Dying and decorating
- I use egg dying kits from the store
- Dye eggs according to package instructions
- If you want to put a name on the egg shell use a white crayon to write the name and then place the egg shell in the dye. You can also write the name on afterward in a darker color crayon.
- While eggs are drying sort through magazines, or children’s catalogs for cute animals, flowers, patterns of color: anything will work
- Once eggs are dry begin gluing items to the eggs.
- I used a combination of stick glue on the cutouts before putting them on the egg, and a sponge paintbrush to dab a mix of glue and water onto the egg to seal all the edges down after the cutouts are applied.
- For larger items like ribbon, cord, gemstones or heavier papers, I used a hot glue gun to attach adornments.
Then dye eggs according to the package instructions and let eggs air dry after dying. Once they’re dry, start decorating with your imagination. The sky’s the limit!
Decorated hollowed out eggs.
Being part of a blended family is challenging enough to start with, let alone being regulated to shelter-in-place with kids that may or may not like you or may be grieving the loss of seeing one parent, their friends, and life as we all knew it.
Use the time to try to bond through sharing traditions, asking about music your stepkids are interested in (without judgement) and ask what they like about the music. Or ask about what books they’re reading for school – generally, being interested in someone else’s interests help them to be interested in you and sharing activities that can be fun also helps pass the time and make bonding memories.
Sidestepping blending blunders (or at least trying to)…
Photo by Austin Kehmeier on Unsplash
Blended families are often born out of loss. Loss of attachment. Loss of dreams, loss of stability. The couples’ gain – remarriage – is often the children’s loss. No wonder blended families face three times the difficulties when starting out then first families.
A few simple guidelines to help the blending start are:
– Separate households likely will have separate values. Sit with your spouse and figure out what values you want to develop in your home. (compassion, fun, forgiveness, strict rule-following, etc. Think about how the couple wants to run the home).
– Having different values between homes means different rules should be enforced in different homes to fit the parent values. (Trying to enforce the same rules across multiple homes will be difficult to keep tabs on, and make the rules harder to enforce.)
– There can be different rules for different kids in the same household. This means bio-parents stick to disciplining their own children and let the line for step-kids stop at respectful behavior and logistical “asks.”
– Triangulating isn’t all bad: Stepmom can ask bio-dad to enforce house rules on bio-kids. From keeping backpacks picked up, or a house rule of greeting someone when entering a room vs. ignoring them (as an aside: letting step-kids or bio-kids ignore one parent or the other isn’t appropriate).
– Understand, on average, it takes 6 years for blended families to feel comfortable together. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable, it’s not okay to act on discomfort through disrespectful actions.
– Make room for what was. Maybe bio-dad needs time alone with bio-kids and visa versa. Stepparents may feel tired of being excluded but honoring the relationship that came before you may aid you in your ability to blend. Altruism has a way of paying back in kind.
– Parents, stepparents: remember not to take things personally – even if they’re meant to be personal. Set boundaries for what is hurtful to you or unacceptable and let the rest go, or get professional support.
– Set boundaries. Decide how you’ll respond (or not) to things you find inappropriate. Accidentally rewarding negative behavior because you want to jump at the chance for positive interaction doesn’t help anyone.
– Respectful behavior gets cooperation and favors, disrespect doesn’t. Conditional love is a part of acting disrespectfully. Unconditional love comes from mutual understanding of not trying to hurt the other person.
Understand that progress is slow and attaching to a new stepparent is not first and foremost in a kids mind. It’s hard to do when they may be busy grieving their old life and the loss of family as they knew it, or perhaps the Ex is making plays for alienating the kids and ignoring you. However it’s spun, make sure your actions err on the side of controlling your behavior, boundaries that protect your feelings, and actions that reflect end-goals…to blend-in some way, some day.
Good Enough Step-Parenting
It may seem counter-intuitive, but being less involved as a stepparent is more beneficial to your Blended Family than always trying to be a perfect parent. With that said, it doesn’t mean to disengage from the solid responsibilities of step-parenting and daily logistics that help the family function. What it does mean is trying too hard can actually backfire. Most stepparents start off trying hard to be a great step-parent and that can come with “too close, too soon” feelings and a lack of appreciation from the stepchildren. That pattern will only build resentment on both sides. The Good Enough Parent approach is easier on everyone.
The background on the concept of “good enough” is from Dr. Winnicot (a British psychoanalyst and pediatrician) who coined the term “Good Enough Mother” and linked mothering to a child’s development. The mother starts off at the beck-and-call of the baby’s every whim and whimper. As the child develops, the mother allows the child to experience small amounts of frustration and can back-off a bit to become the “good enough mother” attending to the baby’s needs, but not sacrificing all of her needs.
In step-parenting – it’s more complicated. Step-parenting, in my experience, is linked by the development of the relationships between the different family members. Strong relationships can handle more opinion and more intervention due to an understood amount of trust and mutual respect. Weak relationships, which are usually where the stepparent and step-child relationships start out – can be full of mistrust, resentment and fear. This doesn’t set the tone for easy communication – therefore, less can be more.
Good Enough Parenting in a Blended Family means having to break down family needs and what level to attend to those needs. In my opinion, these are the basic Blended Family parenting needs: physical needs, boundary needs, and building relationships needs.
Physical Needs – Level of attention: high.
These are things like making sure children have what they need: food, correct clothing for school, books, medical appointments, getting to/from school, help with homework, making time for friends and fun activities. These types of things a step-parent just needs to do and be involved in regardless of how the step-child feels about the step-parent or vice-versa. If there is animosity, this is an area that can be free of the negative emotions and where a step-parent can just do their job and do it well. A way to reframe this for a step-child is “I’m not your bio-mom and these are responsibilities I need to help with – it doesn’t mean I am replacing your mom, let’s just cooperate despite how you may feel about me.”
Boundaries Needs – Level of attention: good enough
This is where step-parenting gets complicated. How much do I give my opinion or intervene? Do I sacrifice my needs to keep the peace in the house (in a word, No). Should I comment on what my step-child is wearing if I think it’s inappropriate? Do I question their priorities? Do I lie for them (again, no). This is where Good Enough Step-parenting enters the game. Striking a balance between discussing things with your spouse and having your spouse handle the heavy parenting (discipline, confrontation, questioning of choices, following house rules etc.) and not being seen as a push-over is a difficult balance within a blended family. You need to do good enough and be aware of house rules but leave the enforcing to bio-parent. , Maintain your personal boundaries around respect and kindness toward all household members, but let the little stuff go. Things like: clothing choices, enforcing eating vegetables, laying judgement on their choices, getting mad about curfew (yes, save this one for the bio-parent unless bio-parent is out of town). When kids do (and they will) try to cross the boundaries and areas of respect, try taking out the emotional reactions and using simple statements like “I’m not comfortable with that, let’s check with your dad/mom” and, “your behavior is disrespectful please don’t treat me that way.” Clear statements can help lay the foundation for expectations and maintain a step-parents non-intrusiveness until relationships are stronger.
Building Relationship Needs – level of attention: good enough
Where to start, right? Being a part of a Blended Family is like dating a lot of people at once. At least that’s what it felt like for me. Each family member requires the all the effort of relationship building (like you did with your spouse) while maintaining age appropriate relating and discussions, and parenting judgments, and tolerating the not-so-good feeling of unreciprocated efforts. Good Enough relating will help you here. Make an effort to connect where you can, but don’t force them to spend a lot of time with you right off the bat. Start with talking about music or books your stepchildren are interested in. Add in some simple and fun activities like: taking them for ice cream, taking them and their friends to the movies or allowing their friends over, can help build fond emotions which will help to build mutually respectful relationships. And, as always with being in a blended family, do things without the expectation of getting something back. Kindness has a way of repaying itself.
Can the Good Enough concept be applied elsewhere? You bet! I spent this past school year attending more to the needs listed above than I did blogging, so for this year I am a good enough blogger. Just as I am a good enough stepparent, and a good enough mother, and good enough wife, I have stepped back from the cultural step-family stigma and given myself and our Blended Family a break by being good enough.