“Remarriage may look a lot like any other marriage—two people, plenty of hope, lots of love and a desire to construct some form of joint life. But it has its own subversive features, mostly invisible to the naked eye, that make it more tenuous than first marriage. It’s not impossible to make remarriage work, but it takes some concerted action to make love better the second time around” (Hara Estroff Marano).

And that’s especially true when stepchildren are a part of the marriage.

This week we’d like to revisit once again the subject of remarriage—this time concentrating mostly on this state of matrimony when stepchildren are involved. We’ll be gleaning from a piece entitled, “Divided Loyalties: The Challenge of Stepfamily Life” written by William Doherty who is a professor and director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Minnesota.

To read the entire article you can find it at www.smartmarriages.com by clicking on “Articles and Information” and then clicking on “Stepfamilies.” The edited version reads:

Stepfamilies enact unique morality plays, with plots involving divided loyalties, betrayal, heroic commitment and Solomon-like discernment. Historically, parental loyalty to children has been seen most often as a “covenantal” commitment as opposed to a “contractual” commitment. The idea of covenant conveys irrevocability: God will always love and do right by his own, no matter how they behave.

Similarly, parents must always love and do right by their children, no matter how they behave. This is as close to a universal moral norm as we have in our world, a norm honored in most cultures. In deed, parental loyalty—the unbreakable, preferential commitment to one’s children—was so taken for granted that it’s not even included in the Ten Commandments.

Loyalty struggles abound in stepfamilies, because of the unbalanced triangles their members encounter. In reasonably healthy families with two original parents, a child’s love for one parent doesn’t compete with the love for the other parent.

And, although new fathers sometimes feel jealous of their wives’ focus on a new baby, generally, both parents are heavily invested in the welfare of their children. If you’re my spouse and caring for our children—you’re indirectly caring for me.

But even in reasonably healthy stepfamilies, claims on loyalty are far from balanced. Tilting emotionally toward one member feels like pulling away from someone else. Children who like their stepparents often feel loyalty binds more acutely than those who don’t. For stepparents as well, commitment to stepchildren isn’t straightforward. Stepparents must accept the reality of children who aren’t theirs and many would admit, if asked for an honest response, that they wish that these children didn’t exist so that they and their spouse could have a completely fresh start.

Time that the original parent commits to the children is frequently a source of conflict, because the stepparent’s personal agenda is less saturated with the needs of the children. And everybody in the family knows that the stepparent’s commitment to the children, at least in the early years, is contingent on the survival of the marriage.

The chief challenge of stepfamily life is these divergent loyalties that manifest themselves in the tension between our responsibility to our children and our commitment to our new spouse; in our courage or cowardice in standing up to our spouse on behalf of our children, or to our children on behalf of our spouse; in our supporting or undermining our ex-spouse’s new partner because that person is important in the lives of our children; and in our trying our best to love and nurture our stepchildren even when their needs conflict with our own.

As a therapist, I’m fascinated with stepfamilies because they illuminate, like no other family form the world of fairness and unfairness, loyalty and betrayal, commitment and abandonment, selfishness and altruism. Stepfamilies inevitably live with dramatic tensions that are never fully resolved.

Original families can have illusions of balance and harmony where moral conflict seems to disappear, but stepfamilies have no such illusions, and they can never relax their vigilance for long.

The challenge of maintaining multiple perspectives adds to the fascination of working with stepfamilies. For instance, I strongly believe that the needs of children who are minors must have priority when it comes to parental loyalty, but original parents and stepparents have claims as well, and as therapists we ignore these at our peril. A case I supervised points this out.

Bob wanted some time alone with his new wife, Alice, who had 3 preteen children who took up most of her time. He was good with the children and supportive of Alice, but felt like a junior parent and not a spouse.

Their therapist described the session in which this issue came to a head. The therapist supported the wife’s obligations to her children and encouraged the husband to understand that as an adult, his needs would have to be secondary at this time in the family’s life cycle, as is true for most families in the busy childrearing years.

Alice wept with relief at being understood and Bob admitted that perhaps he was being selfish. The therapist felt proud of his intervention. A few days later, Bob left the therapist a message saying that they were ending therapy because the previous session had clarified things so well. The therapist was concerned that the plug was being pulled on the therapy, and wondered if he’d missed something.

What he’d missed, in focusing on the mother’s obligation to her children, was the husband’s loyalty claims on his wife. “Children first” is a STARTING POINT for exploring stepfamily responsibilities, not an ending point.

Marital bonds bring their own obligations to love, cherish— and spend time with a partner. In this case, the therapist should have supported Bob’s legitimate loyalty claims even though he was willing to surrender them in the session.

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The article goes on to give several other good examples of the conflicts that can arise in remarriage when children from a previous marriage are in the picture. They may be helpful in giving you greater insight into the different viewpoints of each family member.As we stated previously, you can read the original magazine article in its entirety at the web site we gave at the beginning. It makes some very good points. But we don’t want to close this message without stating why we’ve felt so led to cover this subject.

The point we pray we’re able to convey is, “Marriage is just plain hard work and remarriage — especially with step children in the home — is all the more challenging”. That seems like a simple statement which is only logical but so few couples are really grasping the truth behind these words in today’s world.

It’s not impossible to make your home a healthy, loving, God-honoring home, but it is a monumental task which needs the TOTAL commitment and fortitude of both the husband and the wife who are dedicated to God, led by God, and empowered by God. There are so many “complications” that come into the mix that need to be considered.

We pray that if this is the place you’re in, in your marriage, you’ll open your eyes to the complexity of the situation and become dispensers of God’s grace and forgiveness with each other. There’s a huge learning curve that comes into existence when “step” families are put together under the same roof.

We urge you to become “students” of each other. Learn all you can about how to live together in a peaceable way. Stay on your knees in prayer in your heart continually asking God for wisdom from above to guide you to make the best choices in how to “live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1).

Be “like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider each other better than yourself” (Philippians 2:2-3).

Our love and prayers are with you as together we work to make our marriages the best they can be because of the Love of God!

Steve and Cindy Wright

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