Emotional issues: Anger, grief, pseudo-mutuality, loyalty conflicts, conflict and cutoff
Predictable feelings that come up in the process of remarriage are likely to include intense conflict, guilt, ambivalence, and anger about the previous spouse and children, denial of such feelings, and the wish to resolve the ambiguity. Remarried families are formed against a background of loss, hurt, and a sense of failure. Their "battle fatigue" often leads to a desire not to "rock the boat" this time, which leads partners to suppress doubt, conflict, and differ- ences that need to be dealt with, resulting in "pseudo- mutuality" that pretends total mutuality, covering over disagreements, and making current relation- ships all the more fragile in the long run.
Cutoffs are more common with the paternal extended family, and connections are more often strong with maternal relatives, but extended family relationships are often difficult. While children are quite prepared to have multiple sets of grandparents, uncles, and aunts, the middle generation can get caught up in conflicts, and managing relationships with such a large network of kin is complicated. Remarriage of either spouse tends to decrease contact between fathers and their non-custodial children. Divorced fathers tend to have more contact with their children if they have not remarried and even more if the mother has not remarried either. Once both parents have remar- ried, children are much less likely to have weekly con- tact with their non-custodial fathers. Remarriage of a former spouse tends to reactivate feelings of depres- sion, helplessness, anger, and anxiety, particularly for women. Men tend to be less upset by the remarriage of an ex-wife, possibly because it may release them from financial responsibility and because they are usually less central to the emotional system.
One of the hardest requirements for parents is to let their children express the full range of nega- tive and positive feelings toward all of their parents, stepparents, and half- and stepsiblings. Often par- ents want the child's whole allegiance. Children feel caught, afraid that if they do not love a new steppar- ent, they will hurt and anger one parent, but if they do love the stepparent, they are disloyal and will hurt or lose the love of the other. Another loyalty con- flict is the expectation for the new spouse to love the other's children as much as his or her own, which would be highly unlikely.
Remarriage at Various Phases of the Family Life Cycle
In general, the wider the discrepancy in family life cycle experience between the new spouses, the greater the difficulty of the transition and the longer it will take to integrate a workable new family. especially if the partners come from very different cultural backgrounds, which always increases the bridge-building necessary for a couple. A father of late adolescent and/or young adult children with a new, young wife who was never previously married should expect a rather strenuous and lengthy period of adjustment, during which he will have to juggle his emotional and financial responsibilities toward the new marriage and toward his (probably upset) children. His wife, looking forward to the roman- tic aspects of a first marriage, is likely to encounter instead the many stresses of dealing with adolescents who probably resent her, whether the children live with the couple or not.
If either spouse tries to pull the other into a life-style or attitude that denies or restricts the other spouse's family life cycle tasks or relationships with children from previous relationships, difficulties are likely to expand into serious problems. If the husband expects his new wife to undertake immediately a major role in his children's lives or to be the one who always backs down gracefully when her interests and prefer- ences clash with those of the children, serious trouble is predictable in the new marriage, as the formation of the new couple bond is continuously given second priority.
On the other hand, if the new wife tries, overtly or covertly, to cut off or loosen the tie between father and children or to take on the role of mother to them, or if she insists that her claims always get his prior attention, forcing him to choose between them, seri- ous trouble is also predictable. Variations in which the new wife claims to support her husband but embarks on a battle with his ex-wife as the source of the difficulties are equally dysfunctional.
Often the stepparent feels he or she knows what the other parent is doing wrong with his or her children and forcefully pushes these parenting ideas. Such efforts are very likely to jam the circuits for everyone the new couple, the stepparent/stepchild relationships, and extended family relationships, where people get called upon to choose up sides.
Since it is not possible either to erase or to acquire emotional experience overnight, it is useful to conceptualize the joining of partners at two dif- ferent life cycle phases as a process in which both spouses have to learn to function in several different life cycle phases simultaneously and out of their usual sequence. The new wife will have to struggle with the role of stepmother to teenagers before becoming an experienced wife or mother herself. Her husband will have to retraverse with her several phases that he has passed through before: the honeymoon, the new mar- riage with its emphasis on romance and social activities, and the birth and rearing of any new children of their own. Both need to be aware that a second passage through these phases automatically reactivates some of the intensity over issues that were problematic the first time. Attempts to "make up for" past mistakes or grievances may overload the new relationship. The focus needs to be on having the experiences again, not on undoing, redoing, or denying the past. With open discussion, mutual support, understanding, and a lot of thoughtful planning, this straddling of sev- eral phases simultaneously can provide rejuvenation for the older spouse and experience for the younger spouse that can enrich their lives. If the difficulties are not understood and dealt with, they will surface as conflict or emotional distance at each life cycle tran- sition and for each subsystem of the remarried family.
Spouses at the same life cycle phase
