To discover the vital knowledge these adults lacked,
try "passing" these
after you finish this article.
I
suspect that like most of their peers and relatives, no one had ever
encouraged or helped these six co-parents learn how to communicate
effectively.
This doomed them to fight, argue, defer, and ignore con-flicts, rather than
effectively as teammates
with a common goal. That blocked
them from really resolving their mix of these ex-mate
and common
Their unresolved
conflicts were accumulating over time like garbage in the living room. Jack
and Sarah’s remarital bond, first forged from deep needs, hopes,
attractions, and dreams, was slowly dying a "death of a thousand cuts" from
their wounds + ignorance + compounding conflicts. One result was Sarah,
Jack, and Ted weren’t able to model or coach their kids on effective
communication – a major unintended
nurturance deprivation with life-long implications.
Along with their psychological wounds and unawarenesses,
another factor was
corroding the McLean-Tilmon stepfamily relationships...
3) Incomplete Grief
Healthy people form weak to strong emotional attachments
(bonds) with special living
things, ritu-als,
places, freedoms, ideas, and objects
throughout their lives. Because of fate, aging, and forced choi-ces, we all
must eventually adjust to most of these bonds breaking. Ideally, we accept these breaks
(losses) by grieving well.
Kids raised in high-nurturance
homes and families are encouraged
to help each other to mourn effectively, over time.
Typical stepfamily members experience at least two or three
sets of major losses.
The
first losses may occur from unintended childhood neglect - e.g. the losses of growing up feeling lovable,
safe, com-petent, valued, and respected.
More losses occur from their
family reorganizing because of divorce, death, or adult desertion.
A
third group of major losses comes from remarriage and/or
cohabiting, and the complex multi-year
of their several biofamilies.
Most psychologically-wounded adults like Jack, Sarah, and
Ted have no stable inner and social
to grieve their respective losses well. Sarah seemed to have never mourned the profound losses
from her childhood neglect and molestation. I believe Jack had
never grieved his searing losses of childhood safety and securities, and his identity as a
special son prized and loved by his father and pro-tected by his mother.
My impression was that neither Ted, Sarah, Jack, nor Patty had been able to
mourn their complex sets of
and
physical losses from their
biofamily reorganizations into complex two-home
systems They were vaguely
aware that Jack and Sarah’s wedding and their living together as a "family"
caused each of them to break strong attachments to valued rituals,
privacies, relationships, prior identities, and some emotional securities.
As with most re/marrying partners, these needy adults focused on their wel-come gains, like securities, companionship, social
normalcy, love, intimacy, and hope…
Patty McLean’s three wounded,
co-parents were
repressing their subselves' intense anger and deep sadness
from their respective sets of broken bonds and betrayals. Their subselves'
terror of be-ing overwhelmed by the intensity of these emotions caused major
protective denials - including denying
their denial.
I believe Ted, Sarah, and Jack each
unconsciously
used
addictions [alcohol
and carbohydrates (sugar),
prescription medications, and work, respectively] to help medicate (numb) their
repressed pain and distract their unhappy
subselves.
I
suspect that Sarah’s
"depression" was really her being stuck in the sadness phase of deep
com-pound grief.
Defending against being overwhelmed by their own grief,
Sarah and Jack weren’t able to make
a
home for Patty,
Roger, and Annie.
Jack couldn’t tolerate Patty’s or Sarah’s
anger – an essential
good-grief phase.
He sternly punished Patty for showing anger, and
Sarah's shamed, scared
false self couldn’t protect her
daughter. So Patty was
surviving (vs. thriving) by unconsciously developing
her own false
self, and her repressed anger was fermenting. Jack and Sarah seemed
oblivious to this.
Underneath Patty's buried rage was the deep sadness that had brought
tears
to her eyes when we first met. My sense was that part of Patty’s
pain and sadness was for her wounded
parents. Some pro-fessionals feel that each current
generation bears the legacy of pain (specially excessive shame, guilts,
fears, and anger) of all their DNA ancestors until
(a) their
denials
break, (b) personal
inner healing begins, and (c) the
unconscious
of low-nurturance parenting and
wounding are intentionally
Incomplete grief seemed to be amplifying and adding to the stresses in the McLean and Tilmon homes. It had
probably done the same in their respective ancestors'
childhood families too. No one saw this.
Until Jack and
Sarah found the courage to acknowledge their psychological wounds, I believe they would never be able
to really bond as a couple or nuclear
stepfamily.
| That
meant Patty was being wounded
every day, despite both adults' best intentions. Without their
this also meant that she and her adults would probably
die prematurely, and that she will probably
reproduce this ancient toxic cycle with one or more
wounded men. |
In contrast, Karen and Rick Cohen seemed to be helping each other and their
three kids to do grieve well. They steadily
encouraged feeling and respectfully expressing their angers
and sadnesses, and talking honestly about their losses and what they meant. This was
freeing the adults and kids to risk forming new
stepfamily bonds over time. They blessed their little "ours"
daughter Sharon by providing her with a nurturing
pro-grief home.
Given their combined psychological wounds, unawarenesses,
and incomplete grief, how did Sarah and Jack choose each other in the first
place? Driven by normal
and romantic love, they had fallen into
the fourth epidemic marital trap...
4) Unwise
Courtship Choices
From 31 years’ clinical
observation, I believe that significantly
wounded
co-parents like these six adults unconsciously choose
wounded partners repeatedly until they're well along in true (vs. pseudo)
personal
This may be
because
people are covertly
uncomfortable with partners who genuinely think well of themselves. Perhaps the latter sense the danger in
committing themselves and their kids to people ruled by a short-sighted
false self. Maybe both.
The current American divorce epidemic suggests that most Americans are
(GWCs) in denial - so most potential new mates are also GWCs. Few of them
are in true recovery. I suspect
that Ted McLean’s divorced partner Tanya was ruled by an unseen false
self, and that the lethal [wounds + unawareness]
was
stressing their lives too.
After learning about psychological
in our co-parenting class, Rick and Karen
Cohen had courageously identified themselves as "recovering GWCs."
They told the other students that they each had been in extensive personal
and joint therapy, "and were probably going back for more."
This
allowed them find the mental, psychological, and
spiritual
resources to
help each other reduce their wounds and protect their
three fortunate kids from inheriting them. I didn't know whether Rick's ex wife was
wounded or recovering. Their
divorce suggests (vs. proves) that she was a GWC, which puts
their son Nicholas at some risk of inheriting the toxic [wounds +
unawareness] cycle.
Our primal courtship
ritual is about
filling complex sets of surface and underlying
Couples'
subselves seek to attain companionship, security, stimulation, sensuality, intimacies,
exchan-ging love, personal and social acceptance, and belonging. Some need to
conceive and raise children.
Long-term needs (stability, harmony, security,
healing, growth, mature
love) take a back seat to intense
short-term needs like legitimized sex;
help with needy kids; social "normalcy;" and ending to boredom,
aloneness, and the stressful dating game.
I suspected that Sarah’s
commitment to Jack was made primarily by her needy
(plural), and their devoted
subselves. The most powerful of her inner kids
were Scared Sarah, Lonely Sarah,
Unlovable
(shamed) Sarah, and
Fairy-tale Sarah. They
were each excited for various reasons by Jack’s (perceived) inner family.
Sensuous Sarah (probably an inner teen) delighted in Jack’s desiring her
and his enthusiastic lovemaking.
Good-Mom Sarah, the
struggling, responsible single parent, was relieved by, and pleased with, her
perception of Jack’s Good Dad subself nurturing his own kids.
Patterned after her Mother, Sarah’s Peo-ple-pleaser
subself
urged her constantly to "be nice!" and not confront or disappoint
Jack as they cour-ted.
"Self-doubting Sarah" appealed to Jack’s "White
Knight" subself, whose job was to (a) bolster Jack’s weak senses
of personal importance and male competence, and to (b) supply missing life-mean-ing by finding someone agreeing to be "rescued." Sarah and Patty were
perfect! Jack’s Abandoned Boy was thrilled that here at last might be a nurturing, loving Mom-person
(Sarah’s devoted Good
Mom sub-self). His (subselves') unconscious terror of growing old alone was
intense.
Young Shamed Jack needed relief from the endless guilt and shame of being divorced
and unmar-ried in his 40s. Lusty
Jack needed sexual conquest and
periodic release. Righteous, Moral
Jack needed their sexual behavior
to be religiously and socially acceptable.
Distracting Jack needed a
set of new re-sponsibilities, complex relationships, and activities to help
avoid the great pain that young Abandoned Jack and
Shamed
Jack endured.
Enraged Jack seethed hidden in the internal shadows, kept at bay by the other subselves.
He for-ced his way out soon after the honeymoon ended. The inner din from all
these subselves
drowned out the still, small voice of
Spiritual Jack.
As with many co-parents, Jack and Sarah’s decision to remarry was probably a
chaotic, impulsive decision between two clamoring inner groups, each largely
dominated by needy inner children and their Guardians.
They remarried complementary
illusions, not real people.
Each had an inner
subself who
validated their protective distortions and made them
rea-sonable and OK. Sarah and Jack’s courtship process was well-behaved,
superficial, and
fun, delighting the group of inner kids
in each adult. Neither of them were aware of this - or wanted to be.
Each courting partner showed their best "face" (most attractive subselves), to fill their false-self's
immediate needs. The calm, wise inner counsel of their
subselves, specially of their wide-angle, long-visioned
was
repeatedly discounted and ignored.
Their courtship decisions
were like two mini-vans of minor kids trying to decide
where to go on a Saturday while their adult caregivers were tied and gagged
in the back.
Externally the vans appeared
"normal." Internally, there were frequent gusts of rioting,
laughter, an-xiety, and
conflict. To add to the drama, Patty and her biodad Ted also had
groups of needy, active subselves. They were often misunderstood,
distorted, or mute as Sarah and Jack's needy inner crews did their magical courtship-fantasy
dance.
|
All three other hazards combined to promote
Jack and Sarah's false selves
choosing the wrong
(adults and kids)
to commit to, for the wrong
at the
wrong
One result they consulted me was because their
unmet
were increasingly beyond denial.
Another was that Patty was surviving a low-nurturance home by developing her
own
inner wounds. |
Overarching these four invisible stressors, Jack, Sarah, and Patty were also hindered by…
5) No Informed
Stepfamily Support
Jack consulted with me to "support Sarah" as a good Christian husband
should, not to relieve his own well-denied discomforts. Because he didn’t
see himself as a
stepfather, he didn’t see any value in using me as a
stepfamily specialist compared with other
therapists closer to home.
Sarah felt that their problems had a
"stepfamily flavor" and had looked diligently for
"stepparenting" classes and clinicians near their home. She wanted
to be a "good" stepmother to Roger and Annie Til-mon, and covertly hoped
that Jack would get interested in learning about stepfathering her needy
daugh-ter Patty.
Like
most of my hundreds of clients, students, and callers, Sarah could find no credible
stepfamily-informed
counsel or
support in their Chicago suburb (population: ~ 85,000). That justified their driving 30 miles to see me and
back on
busy weekday evenings.
The
information Sarah found in their library dealt (superficially, I’d guess)
with stepfamily weddings, stepmothering, and
stepfamily anecdotes. Jack had read nothing about stepfamilies,
and glanced super-ficially at the handouts that I gave them in our first
meetings.
From what these typical
co-parents told me, the (unmarried) Christian
minister
who sanctified their remarriage had no knowledge of the [wounds +
unawareness] cycle, these five hazards, or stepfamily
realities and
He
apparently had been unable to offer any informed suggestions or
realistic
to this needy, wounded couple. Neither could
the couple's relatives or close friends. If others had offered
cautions, this love-struck couple (or at least Jack's false self) would probably
have pooh-poohed them.
This lack of informed counsel left
Sarah and Jack with no idea of the stepfamily
they
and their kids would experience. Once
the problems began to surface, Sarah could find no informed local help. She
was "amazed" that she
couldn’t find a single support group or
program for remarried co-parents anywhere in
greater Chicago. "We can’t be the only remarried parents having
problems," she said in an early session. She was more right than she
knew.
Perspective - in my work as a stepfamily therapist and consultant since
1981, I have talked with the providers and facilitators of dozens of lay and
church-based support groups and programs for stepfami-lies. Most of them were for "stepparents"
- specially "stepmothers." The theme I consistently heard
from the providers was "few people showed interest, despite our extensive ad campaign."
I've had the
same experience in the scores of classes and seminars I've given around
greater Chi-cago, across the years. Probable reasons for this "lack of
interest" are...
-
widespread minimizing and denial of stepfamily
and...
-
the pervasive myth that "stepfamilies are pretty much like "regular"
(bio)families, so we don't need education.",
-
people sense they'll realize some uncomfortable things
(like these five hazards), so they
ration-alize not getting education; and...
-
little informed media attention to
stepfamily stressors and re/divorce.
Patty, Sarah, and Jack and the others in their four-home,
six-co-parent
are real people. Their story does
not have a satisfying Brady-Bunch ending. The unique McLean-Tilmon-Cohen relationship tapestry is
typical of
most stepfamilies I’ve met. Their story is far different from co-parents
like Rick and Karen who follow a high-nurturance developmental path together.
When I last talked to Sarah, she was going to night school for tutoring in
life-skills like budgeting, vocabulary-building, and checkbook management.
She sounded more self-respectful and confident, and described being more
assertive with
Jack. He didn’t like it. She said sadly that she didn’t want to be
mar-ried to him any more, and was working toward being able to
financially support herself and Patty. Count-less millions of average
stepfamilies experience psychological divorce like the Tilmons.
Sarah said that
Patty did try to run away twice, involving the police. This enraged Jack
(i.e. his false self), rather than alerting him. His rage widened the
disrespect, distrust, and distance between Jack and his wife and
stepdaughter. Despite my best efforts, neither co-parent in this true story
was ready to ac-cept their own deep childhood wounds and their unawareness.
Their fiercely protective, short-sighted false-selves blocked this.
This typical couple couldn’t accept (yet) that
five combined hazards were inexorably corroding their remarriage and
dreams, and wounding Patty and to a lesser extent, her stepsiblings
Annie and Roger. After unconsciously
making three unwise commitment
Jack and Patty never
had a chance to bond and grow the high-nurturance stepfamily they both
longed for.
Middle-age re/divorce trauma causes some psychologically-wounded
adults to
hit bottom (break old denials and accept their agonizing reality), and begin true
personal
Others fall into
depression (often incomplete grief) and weary, wary social isolation. Before
or after
re/divorce, some GWCs start or escalate one or more
addictions to medicate their
agonizing inner pain.
Still other
wounded, needy co-parents compulsively repeat the toxic [wounds +
unawareness]
Their ruling false selves
earnestly vow "This time, I’ll get it right!"
Until in true (vs. pseudo) personal recovery and acquiring informed
I fear their and
their kids’ odds for long-term suc-cess, contentment, and health are low.
The themes you’ve glimpsed
in this McLean-Tilmon-Cohen tale are common to the high majority of the
~1,000 troubled and new-stepfamily couples I’ve met in classrooms,
phone calls, Web chat, and my consulting office. Though
the details always differ, some mix of these five re/marital
is usually active. These usually cause
up to 11 common
surface
And typical coparents and supporters aren't aware
of this
that can protect them and
their kids from passing on the lethal[ wounds + unawareness] cycle and it's
If they are aware, they ignore or discount it.
Pause, breathe well, and notice how you feel and think now. Recall why you read this article. Has
anything changed for you? If you're considering creating or
joining a stepfamily, review these
while Sarah, Jack, and
Patty's story is still with you.
Then consider investing time and energy in this Break the Cycle!
self-improvement course with your partner. Your living and unborn kids depend on
you to do this for them!
Recap
This
article describes a real
family and marriage suffering from five stressors that result from
mates inheriting the lethal [wounds +
unawareness] cycle:
-
unseen psychological wounds from traumatic
childhoods, plus...
-
unawareness of the seven major topics in
this self-improvement course, plus...
-
incomplete grieving of major losses (broken
bonds).
These combined to cause these typical needy mates to each...
-
commit to the wrong people, for the wrong
reasons, at the wrong time. This ensured the gradual erosion of their
relationship, and increasing the psychological wounds of the woman's
custodial teen daughter.
-
When these mates finally acknowledged their
marital and parenting problems, they had to drive 30 miles to get
informed remarital and stepfamily support. Similar couples can often find no such
support locally or in the media.
The article also shows a related stepfamily couple who
courageously admitted their wounds and unawareness, sought informed
help, and were
patiently forging a high-nurturance stepfamily for themselves and their
kids.
| As
a veteran stepfamily therapist, I have seen many hundreds of versions of
this true story. Details differ, but these five stressors and the lethal [wounds + unawareness] cycle causing them are always the same.
The moral of this example is -
love alone will not avoid a version of this tragic situation,
so study and apply these
and
against inheriting the
lethal [wounds + unawareness]
cycle! |
Pause, breathe, and reflect - why did you read this article? Did you get
what you needed? If not, what
you need? Who's
these questions - your
or
Previous page
/
Lesson-7 links
