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Learning to Cope With Your Partner's Children
Even the love of your grandest dreams isn’t
likely to be 100-percent perfect and may bring challenges to your
life you hadn’t anticipated. And as an adult, there is a chance
that your dream mate has been previously married and that your new
partnership will force you to cope with stepchildren. But a true
commitment to love another means that you honor and accept the whole
person, and that can mean that you will have to cope with your husband’s
or wife’s children. No one says this is easy, but careful
guidance will teach you how to build relationships with children
that aren’t yours and transform your blended families into
a loving and supportive force for you, your partner and each stepchild.
When you succeed, your relationship with your partner will not have
suffered, but instead will be enriched with greater understanding.
You are with the love of your grandest dreams,
but there is a problem: children, and they aren’t yours.
Does this sound familiar? With the number of second marriages on
the rise, blended families are no longer a novelty. Second marriages
often bring the added complexity of integrating children into your
life for the first time, coping with stepchildren, or adding your
partner’s to your own. Are you honestly ready to meet that
challenge? The Attitude Doc can provide solutions you can use today
and in the future to insure your happiness in the relationship and
in all areas of your life.
Let’s assume you don’t have children
of your own. It is a tremendous lifestyle change to suddenly
have to cope with your husband’s or wife’s children
and that you will have to learn to make room for them in your life
and in the relationship. Young children present special challenges,
and we all know what having a teenager around can mean! Whether
it is dealing with spills on the carpet, or meeting with the principal
because your new teenager has just told his math teacher he’s
stupid, you are going to have to make adjustments in order to maintain
joy in the relationship.
Perhaps you are living in the fantasy that a positive
solution would only include your partner without a stepchild. If
you think you are second on the totem pole, chances are it's true.
Your partner's children most likely do come first. Either you accept
the children and honor their presence, or you do not. The latter
will bring more stress, eventual distance from your partner, and
possibly a separation or loss of the relationship. Have you acknowledged
that you are resisting what is? Your partner does have children,
and all the sorcery of Harry Potter is not going to make them disappear.
Whether or not you believe it is true, it is possible
to come to understand and believe that there is no order of love
on the family totem pole. There can just be love. If there is deep
love, trust, understanding, openness, shared goals, and friendship
between you and your partner, there isn't anything that can't be
accomplished with communication as the key.
Is coping stressing you out?
Here is a clue: if you are coping, you are resisting.
You want something to be a way it is not. In other words, you are
resisting the reality of the moment. The opposite of resistance
is acceptance or allowing things to be exactly as they are. Resistance
causes suffering while acceptance brings peace. If you are currently coping with your
partner's children, you may be doing so under stress, which is no
doubt being felt by you, your partner, and his or her children.
To cope means to suffer, contend with, or to endure. In other words,
we're talking about the "S" word STRESS. In no way does
this feeling resemble those tender premarital and blissfully quiet
moments you grew to love about your partnership. Your stress will
show up eventually, in one way or another. It is like a beach ball
being held under water--when released it will pop up someplace else.
Signs of stress can show up in almost all areas of your life. For
example:
- Physical stress is expressed through illness of any kind, such
as a headache, backache, sore throat, torn ligaments, broken bones,
etc.
- Mental stress presents itself when we struggle with
thoughts like: "I wish the kids would go away so we could
just focus on us."; "I shouldn't be thinking thoughts
like this." ; or "I am a bad and selfish person for
wanting to come first in his or her life." When we are working
out all day with mental self-talk, we are increasing our stress
load enormously. Mental stress will wind up having an impact on
us physically in due time.
- Take risks you haven’t taken
before. As the ancient proverb goes, "Go straight to the
heart of the fire, for there you will find safety." This
is true whether you’re working on improving a lifeless marriage,
or if you’ve feared watercolor painting. Jump right in with
both feet and you’ll discover what you feared the most simply
isn’t real. And remember, freedom is the perk hiding behind
menopause.
- Emotional stress appears through our feelings
or demonstrations of impatience, irritation, guilt, regret, boredom,
inadequacy, feeling overworked, hostility, hopelessness or feeling
unfairly hindered, etc. Rather than sharing and expressing our
feelings, we have chosen to deny, resist, or bury them. Emotional
stress is one of the most insidious types of stress because unless
we deal with it as it comes up, it tends to hide out and rally
when we least expect it. Emotional stress lodges in the body and
has the potential to cause long-term physical damage.
- Spiritually,
we may become so depleted we have no time to nurture ourselves,
be creative, or feel enthusiasm in our lives. We may tend to ignore
our intuition, and there is no passion in our day, let alone our
relationship. We can lose touch with our truth and begin to over-identify
with our everyday, worldly "stuff."
Whatever the type of stress we are coping with,
we are living in the problem rather than the solution. It is important
to move beyond coping and discover ways to truly enjoy our new circumstances
in order for the relationship to flourish and the children to enjoy
happiness in the household as well.
Have you discussed your feelings honestly with
your partner, or have you chosen to avoid the issue because it could
cause waves, or even worse, end the relationship? The sooner you
can begin talking about your feelings, and listening to your partner’s,
the more likely you can find a common ground that can serve as a
springboard to restore balance in the partnership and family.
Don’t forget that you and your partner
must have a stable relationship before you can establish smooth
waters within the family. Factor in time for just the two of you.
Step right out and admit your areas of discomfort and fear about
having children that aren’t yours in your life. It’s
okay! Kids are a challenge. Making space in your life for children
requires creative thinking and some compromise.
One positive way to approach this difficult
subject is to openly admit your fears. It would not be rare to feel
a little intimidated in a new parenting role. Admit it! Kids know
when an adult is struggling and that can add to the fuel that
ignites their acting out. Talk with the children, no matter what
their ages, and let them know you are working at learning and adapting
to your new role. It is not a sign of weakness, and once you admit
you are human, it makes it far more difficult for them to view you
as the enemy. Remember, we all really want the same basic things
in life and the first is love with understanding.
Here are the first steps to moving out of resistance
and restoring balance in the relationship:
- Establish the intention to have a happy relationship. As simple
as this might sound, we often get involved in circumstances without
thoroughly thinking them through. Ideally, in advance of a marriage
with children, couples should think about what they are getting
into. If they haven’t and the situation is now upon them,
they need to sit and draw up a game plan of their future intention
for a happy relationship and family.
- Realize that each of us have our own miraculously unique ways.
Allow yourself to embrace not only the similarities, but the differences
in your new family. Look at the diversity of thinking and behaviors
in your own home. What a great learning field for growth!
- Create a time for all of you to come together as a family to
air your thoughts. Establish this as an open time with ground
rules so that it does not turn into a mud-slinging event. Use
this time together to get to know each other and to allow each
person to have a voice, from the youngest to the oldest. Strive
for communication that is not defensive, judgmental or withdrawn.
It takes skill to speak from your heart, and equally as much to
truly listen. You can learn those skills and become balanced physically,
mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
- Keep in mind the home is for every family member. You no longer
have your own home, but you can create a space for an occasional
escape. Each person in a household should be given the opportunity
to get away for reflection and solace. Sharing a family home should
not have to become an endurance contest. Take time for yourself
and allow time for the other family members.
Remember: a positive attitude can accomplish anything!
If there is love between you, make a choice to learn
how to embrace what you have now and allow it to grow from there.
It is better sooner than later for all involved. |
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