Emotional Baggage Delays Your Stepfamily Development
"healthy divorce," starting a new stepfamily is challenging. First of all, whatever unfinished business from your former relationships - including from the family into which you were born - gets in the way of a fresh stepfamily start. Then, new roles, rules, diverse discipline styles, loyalty issues and children moving between two households, all involve changes that are hard to manage at first. When children respond by withdrawing, rebelling, or experiencing serious loyalty conflicts, an added pressure compounds the new couple relationship.
When a remarried couple brings a vast amount of unresolved "emotional baggage" to the newly forming stepfamily, it becomes difficult to move ahead. These leftovers may include unresolved hostility between former partners, unresolved grief, angry and confused children, unrealistic expectations, rauma from families of origin and other unresolved issues.
This is especially true when addictive personalities remarry without having examined their relationship patterns. A remarriage might start before, or while, adults are in recovery. As the recovery process evolves, family dynamics change, and such shifts may affect newly developing stepfamily relationships. Remarried adults need to understand which issues belong to Stepfamily Living, and which reflect the recovery processor that of an unresolved addiction.
None of us ever completely rid ourselves of all our "baggage." That's part of the lifelong growth process but, to get a headstart on creating a successful stepfamily, it's wise to examine relationships and communication patterns with people in our lives. Then, before remarriage, do what it takes to identify and improve them. Clear communication and skill-building is the most effective way to strengthen a stepfamily--especially during those first vulnerable years.
Copyrighted materials. Please attribute to Elizabeth Einstein, MA/LMFT