General Questions For Partners:
- What is your partner’s relationship with their ex?
- How does each person handle conflict?
- What emotions does he/she show during conflict? (i.e. when he/she feels fear do they show anger, or when he/she feels insecure do they show nonchalance and push their partner away or visa versa?)
- Does each parent understand how their children show emotion?
- Are the parents adept at reading between the emotional lines? Specifically: can a parent tell if the child is hungry and therefore acting out, or has had their feelings hurt or potentially is feeling insecure? Look to understand the emotional root of the acting out (reactions) and address that issue first.
- How does your partner handle stress? What emotions does he/she show?
- Does he or she say mean things under stress that he or she “doesn’t really mean.”
- Does he or she clam up? Attack with intellect and many questions? Hold grudges? Shift the blame back to you?
- Is your partner able to handle negative emotion or does he or she deflect it with excessive positivity, denial or other defense mechanisms? Are they conflict avoidant and always walking the middle line, having a hard time making boundaries?
- Is your partner able to express herself or himself in emotional terms (state when he or she are sad, scared, etc..) or does he or she want to skip talking about emotion and “solve problems?” This could be a problem as many logistical arguments often have an emotional base.
- What are your needs and expectations for affection on a scale of 1 -10? What are your partners’ needs?
- What are your levels of spirituality? How will you handle disagreeing about spirituality?
- What do you like to do in your free time? What does your partner like to do?
- Do you and your partner like to do the same things? Do you care, if you don’t?
- What are the interests of the children? These interests will take center-stage as the interests of the family. Many times personal interests will come second to supporting the children’s interests.
- Is there a willingness to potentially reach out for professional help? Who is most likely to reach out?
- What parenting style does each of you have? Are you lenient or organized? What about your partner? Differing parenting styles often cause the most conflict in blended families as well as first families.
- If your partner doesn’t have children, what were their parents’ parenting styles?
- How do you prefer to run a house?
- Who is responsible for what daily logistics: carpool, groceries, cooking, maintaining the home environment, cleaning? What will be the responsibility of the step-parent? How will partners decide to split chores? Eg: If the parent decides to carpool and the step-parent is doing the actual driving then the step-parent should have a choice in whether carpool continues or whether they prefer to handle the children on their own. (Put together an organized step-parent and an unorganized carpool family and the blended family life gets impacted by the other family’s disorganization and ineffectual time management skills.)
- What are the expectations of the kids’ behaviors? Chores? What are your partner’s expectations toward the kids?
- How will the bio-partner support the other partner in conflict with the kids?
- Will the bio-parent be able to support you in-front of the children or will the conversations supporting the stepparent take place at another time? (When you’re in-front of the children it presents a united front.)
- Do your partner’s words match their actions?
Questions For Widow / Widower
- How do you see your relationship changing with your family of origin after you’re married?
- How do you see your relationships changing with your close friends who “feel” like family insiders having supported the family heavily through the death of a spouse? (a necessary part of re-coupling is drawing new family boundaries around the blended couple, and close, supportive friends may take this as rejection feeling as though they are becoming “outsiders” and deserve to stay as an insiders. For the blended family to develop, the new stepparent needs to the insider, not the family friends.
- How will you handle pressure from friends or family members who push to have an immediate close relationship with your new partner when your partner lacks the common, lengthy, history you and your friends share? The push for an immediate-friendship puts undue pressure on the in-coming partner.
- How will you handle pressure from friends who continue to circumvent the couple-ship and cross boundaries in order to maintain their status as “insiders” in the family? It’s best for your re-marriage that your partnership reorients toward boundaries around the step-couple.
- Will you be able to stand with your partner and create healthy boundaries or will you try to stand in the middle and make everyone happy? This is conflict avoidance and can turn the potential blended family into a Frozen family – stuck in conflict and fighting of the early stages of blending. By avoiding conflict and trying to please everyone you’ll create unintentionally create unhealthy relationship dynamics and confusion for your marriage or partnership.
- How much time do you anticipate spending with in-laws?
- How much time do you anticipate spending with non-mutual friends?
- How much time do you anticipate spending with mutual friends?
- How will you carve out time for the new marriage to blossom with the children around?
- How will you carve out time and opportunities for a relationship to keep moving forward slowly between your partner and children? How do you intend to accomplish the basic goal of helping build respect and kindness between your partner and your children?
- Will you be able to positively think toward the future and match your efforts to your words?
- Who do you go to for counsel and accountability? When you’re single many times your friends and family act as counsel but when you’re building a new blended family (or any couple relationship) it is imperative to go to a neutral person (either faith based or professional therapist) because blended dynamics differ from first family dynamics and friends and family may also have their own agendas and create larger issues.
- What are expectations about your partner working and sharing resources after your marriage?
- What are your partner’s best qualities? How do you compliment these?
- What are your partner’s weaknesses? How do you help these?
Potentially Emotionally Triggering Financial Questions:
- What do you like to spend money on?
- Is the partner that makes the majority of the money generous in sharing resources or more likely to have restraint in financial matters?
- What types of things do you consider frivolous?
- Who will manage the finances? Pay the bills?
- What are expectations about your partner working after marriage?
- What are expectations around how will children be taken care of: day care and both parents work? One partner stays home?
- Pets or not pets?
- How do you envision a perfect Sunday?
- Private or public schools for children?
- Who has the final say – or is it a partnership? How do you decide who “wins?”
Helpful questionnaire:
