Wednesday Martin

Hi Readers, You know how I love Martin Babits, L.C.S.W., and author of The Middle Ground: A Couple’s Guide to Renewing Your Relationship (http://www.amazon.com/Power-Middle-Ground-Renewing-Relationship/dp/1591026628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256606628&sr=8-1). Marty is a divorced dad, and here’s what he has to say about a recent very important project–building a wall in his apartment once things got serious with his partner. The wall is going up today! Read the piece–and then leave a comment letting Martin know what you think of what he’s doing:

It’s been four years since the divorce that ended my 27 year marriage. How and why it happened is a story I’ll tell you some other time. My son, knowing that it is not even a remote possibility, is rooting for his mom and I to get back together. He has tried to persuade me to limit the length of my dating to six weeks per dating partner. “After that,” he counsels,” you’ve got to find someone else and start again., dad.” So now that I am having a relationship with a woman, a woman I am crazy about, and have been seeing for well beyond the six week stint that he approves, I get considerable bristling and growling in response to mostly everything, mostly everyday. He avoids her at every turn. Before she’s been invited into the picture in any formal sense, he’s invited her out.

You should know that, up to now, I’ve had no privacy in my post-divorce living space. My bed is set down in a combination living and dining room area. It’s large enough to separate into two rooms but I haven’t built a divide. Why didn’t I put a wall up? Probably because I’ve felt guilty about not being able to shield my son from the pain of the divorce. So with no wall, I’m on 24/7 call. I’ve been focused on making him feel how important he is to me. Whenever I think of moving on, the following question dogs me: “How can you bring a new person into your living situation (my son lives with me) against his vehement opposition?” This is where I have been stuck.

Wednesday Martin, like the good friend that she is to all her readers, helped me reason this through. Reason, not as in Archimedes’ principle, I’m talking about heart-reason, emotional logic. Stepmonster helped me understand that by living without a private space for myself, I was sending my son a confusing and essentially untrue message: that time was standing still. Also, he had a room with a door. Was I telling him – by my actions – that his needs trumped mine? That’s not how I want him to understand me; it benefits neither of us. We both have to learn to take care of ourselves.

Children of divorce, probably universally, harbor fantasies of their parents reuniting. Having no wall invites him to misinterpret what I am doing and feeling. It is of form of colluding with him by allowing the fantasy of parental reunification to comfortably flourish. As his dad, I realize that he needs to accept that the ending of my romantic relationship with his mother has already occurred; it is a fact rooted in the past and not to be revisited. The inevitability of my son’s need to grieve the losses he has experienced as a result of the divorce – and the fact that the divorce marked the finale of his childhood – amount to a double assault on his sense of security; two tough blows, two rough psychological truths that he must learn to come to terms with. Maturation is dotted with traumatic interludes. Failure to grieve brings on failure to thrive.

So the wall that marks my readiness to move forward in my life, to re-establish my need for privacy and the prospect of a life – or at least a significant portion of a life that is uninterrupted by my son and intentionally kept separate from his experience – is now appropriate. Maybe the wall is a way of walling out the past from the present; or at least walling out the predominance of the past in the present. Stalling on the wall registers as a vote of no-confidence in his (and my) learning to handle the changes in our lives. Seeing it from this vantage, I am tempted to erect a series of walls, one for each developmental juncture – in my son’s and my own past – that needs resolving. But, of course, I know the bulk of this work gets done internally. So, it’s one wall to represent them all.

Different Rules, Different Homes It can drive a woman with stepkids crazy!

My friend and colleague Martin Babits, L.C.S.W., is someone I turn to often for advice and insight. After all, he is the author of The Power of the Middle Ground: A Couple’s Guide to Renewing Your Relationship, a book that taught me a great deal about how to seek out common ground with my husband, even on the issues about which it often feels we have none–including the issue of his kids.

That’s why I turned to Marty when a reader asked for advice about how to handle a common but frustrating situation. She lives with her husband and his two children from a previous marriage. At mom’s house the rules in that house are extremely lax, and no chores are required of them. In my reader’s home she has tried to institute some basic rules – the children are expected to put dishes in the dishwasher, make their bed, speak respectfully to adults. Violations of the rules are met with a five or ten minute time-out as a consequence. The kids are 6 and 10. Dad says he is “fine with having rules in the house but does not want to give consequences.” She writes, “Can you give me some insight into this?”

Martin Babits answers:

It may be cold comfort but you are far from alone in the thankless position of trying to impose a code of conduct that the stepchildren – because it is not supported by either of their original parents – have implicit permission to disregard entirely! It’s a classic step-mom bind, a textbook example of the “step-mom as outsider” scenario, a set-up. But it’s also an opportunity for some important family structural work to get done between you and your husband.

Here is what I recommend: You need to begin the kind of dialogue with your husband in which you nudge him far enough out of his comfort zone that he can begin to understand your perspective. If he does understand it, he is living in denial; either way, you must approach him to establish a new way to approach the issue. I envision this strategy as an attempt, by you, to give him the best kind of heads up possible about the help you need from him along with some hints about how he can deliver that help to you – for the sake of your stepfamily, without involving the ex-wife directly. You want to frame this –think tone of voice – gently but firmly.

Although being frustrated in this situation is understandable and perfectly normal, keep the reason behind your frustration – which is also the purpose of the house rules – in mind: you are frustrated at not being allowed to play a more central (and appropriate) role in your family; your place should not be on the margins of the family structure. You want this reality – that you are sticking your neck out in order to give yourself, you husband and his kids something they need! – to be appreciated by your husband.

If he grasps this, at the least, the children’s behavior will no longer threaten to put a wedge between you and your husband. And since your relationship with your husband is the core of the stepfamily now, this will be a meaningful outcome! The girls ability to feel secure in the stepfamily is proportional to your sense of emotional safety in your relationship with your husband; this is a basic tenet of step-family life.

Your mission is to help everyone achieve a better feeling about themselves (yourself included) – not to restrict anyone’s self-esteem but to develop it; and, along the way, to enlist your husband’s help in supporting your resolve to do this. Dad needs to understand that he is being asked to make a change for the sake of his daughter’s development, and to strengthen his relationship with you; these two variables, in the step-family, are closely intertwined.

It’s important that he not misinterpret what you are doing as a bid for control of him and the kids so it would probably help if you bring this possible misunderstanding up directly and, should he have any thoughts or feelings along these lines, attempt to neutralize them with the logic stated above – about how following reasonable rules of accountability are important to the children’s core development.

NB readers: Marty’s book is chock full of exercises and suggestions that will support you going forward in fortifying your relationship with your husband, creating a family culture where you feel like and are an insider, and giving your stepkids the care and attention they deserve, not to mention giving them the reassuring sense that in your household, the grownups are in charge.