Building Your Blended Family
Building Your Blended Family
Are you facing the challenges of a blended family?
Listen now: Building Your Blended Family – Series 7, Episode 7
As we near the end of our Managing Your Dysfunctional Family series, we’re going to talk about blended families. If you haven’t done so yet, we encourage you to go back and listen to the first six episodes of this series because each one tackles an important aspect of family life. Bringing all of these concepts together will provide a roadmap to help you navigate all the challenges that close relationships bring.
To prepare for this episode on blended families, John and Lynn used a book from Ron Deal called The Smart Stepfamily: Seven Steps to a Healthy Family. He highlights several important elements of blended families that remarried couples may not be aware of. Having a conscious awareness of these dynamics is going to be the key to building a healthy stepfamily.
We will look at three challenges that blended families face, and three ways to build a healthy blended family.
Challenges to a Healthy Blended Family
Disillusionment: This is also called “idealistic distortion”. Disillusionment is a universal component that must be faced in any marriage, but it can particularly be an issue in a remarriage. If you’ve just ended a conflicted, tumultuous, or unfulfilling relationship, then when you meet someone new who seems very different than your previous partner, you may have an idealistic view of who they are.
Remarriage feels like a relief from loneliness, and a second chance at happiness and companionship. But if you don’t have your idealism in check, this can quickly turn into disappointment, conflict, and regret. The reality is that many remarried couples underestimate the time it will take to merge and blend two families together. The research shows that it takes at least two years to establish a family identity and seven years to settle in to a rhythm.
Double-binds: Children of divorce feel loss on multiple levels. After seeing two people they love - their mom and dad - end their relationship, feelings of anxiety and distress are to be expected. They may feel alone, scared or uncertain about the future. Divorce also presents a child with an impossible dilemma: How do I remain loyal to both of my parents when they no longer love, or even like each other?
This creates a double-bind: no matter which choice the child makes (“Do I please mom? Or dad?”), there is a negative outcome. Someone will be upset. Recognizing and empathizing with the pain of this dilemma in your child’s life will help them feel understood and buffer them from them from the emotional turbulence that divorce and remarriage may bring.
Distrust: A significant fallout of divorce for both adults and children is broken trust. Trust is the fuel that drives energy between two people. So when a marriage ends, and that trust is broken, no matter whose fault it may be, this is very unsettling for children of any age. As the parent, you will be constructing a mental map of what happened, and work to reorient yourself to a new normal. For a child, the security they previously felt is very shaken up, so they will need your guidance and patience as they reorient themselves to the changes taking place in their family life.
The good news is that the research indicates that despite a child’s initial resistance to entering a blended family, a strong stepfamily will have positive benefits for them over time, especially if both parents work on consciously rebuilding a secure family relationship.
Rebuilding a Healthy Blended Family
1. Grieving losses: Loss is not a one-time event. Everyone in the family is experiencing loss on some level and will continue to feel its effects for a long time to come. Learning to grieve will be an essential part of healing for each member of the family. (For a better understanding of how to grieve, go back and listen to: Managing the Weeds of Sadness & Grief).
Parents, you may grieve the loss of friends, financial security, or previously held hopes and dreams. Your child may grieve the loss of ever having a “normal” family, and continue to grieve as they experience holidays or special occasions divided among multiple families.
2. Healthy Communication: Learn to talk to each other. Be empathetic listeners. Cultivate emotional awareness. Encourage family members to share thoughts and feelings. Use constructive conflict resolution. This time of rebuilding may require you to learn skills you didn’t have or never had to use before. So this is a new time of learning and practicing ways to resolve conflicts and negotiate expectations with all members of your blended family.
3. Humility: The process of rebuilding requires humility because a spirit of humility is the best place to receive God’s grace. As you accept God’s grace, you will more readily be able to pass it onto others. Humility means you are willing to learn from your mistakes, admit when you are wrong, seek wise counsel when needed, and create a family that feels safe and secure for everyone.
God cares about you and your family. He can work in and through your remarriage and blended family. He takes broken, fragmented people and relationships, and puts them back together again. He is able to help you move forward after heartache and loss, as he oversees the reconstruction process of your family.
Building your blended family is a marathon, not a sprint, and God will give you the endurance you need to create something beautiful as you trust his sovereign plan.
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