3. Adolescents may attempt to resolve their divided loyalties by taking sides or actively playing one side against the other.
4. Sexual attraction may develop between step- siblings or stepparent and stepchild, along with adolescent difficulty in accepting the biological parent's sexuality.
The impact of remarriage in later life cycle phases
Although there is not the daily strain of having to live together with stepchildren and stepparents, remarriage at a post-childrearing phase of the life cycle requires significant readjustment of relationships throughout both family systems, which may now include in-laws and grandchildren. It is probable that grown children and grandchildren will accept a remarriage after a death of a parent more easily than after a late divorce. There is often great relief throughout the family if an older widowed parent finds a new partner and a new lease on life, whereas a later-life divorce usually arouses concern and dismay throughout the family, in part, perhaps, related to anxieties about who will care for the now single parents. But grown children may also surprise themselves and others with the intensity of their reactivity to an older parent's remarriage.
The strength of children's reactivity to a par- ent's remarriage, even after they believe that they have long ago resolved the loss or divorce of the parent(s), may overwhelm them. They may need coaching to find a way to incorporate a parent's new partner into their lives.
Adult children may fear the loss of inheritance when a parent (especially a father) remarries. They may also feel the new relationship is a betrayal of their own dead or divorced parent. Clinically, it helps to facilitate conversation about fears and expecta- tions to avoid shut down and cutoffs between adult children and their parents. The major factor in three- generational adjustment to remarriage in late middle or older age tends to be the amount of acrimony or cooperation between the ex-spouses and the adult child's degree of resolution of the death of the other parent. When the relationship is cooperative enough to permit joint attendance at important family func- tions of children and grandchildren and when holi- day arrangements can be jointly agreed upon, family acceptance of a new marriage tends to follow.
Clinical Intervention with Remarried Families
Whatever the presenting problem in a remarried family. it is essential to look laterally as well as back to previ- ous generations and to evaluate past relationships with previous spouses to determine the degree to which the family needs help to work out the patterns required by the new structure. Ongoing conflict or cutoffs with exspouses, children, parents, and grandparents will tend to overload the relationships in the remarried family and make them problematic. We consider genograms particularly essential in work with remarried families, because the structural complexity so influences the predictable triangles of these situations (McGoldrick, 2011; McGoldrick, Gerson, & Petry, 2008).
We next describe several predictable triangles in remarried families. In first-marriage families, the major problematic triangles involve the parents with any or all of the children and each parent with his or her own parents and in-laws. In the more complex structures of remarried families, we have identified six of the most common triangles and interlocking triangles presenting in multi-nuclear families. In no way do we mean to suggest by this focus that the triangles with the extended family and grandparen- tal generation are unimportant to the understanding and the therapy of remarried families. In our clinical work with remarried families, coaching of the adults on further differentiation in relation to their families of origin proceeds in tandem with work on current family problems (McGoldrick & Carter, 2001). Our experience indicates that families that are willing to work on relationships with their families of origin do better than those that are not.
Triangle between the new spouses and an ex-spouse
When a triangle focuses on conflict between new spouse and the old spouse with the partner in the middle, the usual issues are finances or sexual jeal- ousy. Underneath, it is likely that the ex-spouses have not accomplished an emotional divorce. The first step in the tricky clinical work around this triangle is for the therapist to establish a working alli- ance with the new spouse, who will otherwise sabo- tage efforts to focus on the first marriage. Efforts to work on the resolution of the divorce by seeing either the ex-spouses alone or all three in sessions together will probably create more anxiety than the system can handle. We have found that such work goes most smoothly when a spouse is coached in the presence of the new spouse to undertake steps out- side of the therapy sessions that will change his or her relationship with the ex-spouse. Along the way. the new spouse will have to learn to acknowledge the importance of that past bond to his or her spouse and to accept the fact that some degree of caring will probably always remain in the relationship, depend- ing on the length of time the first marriage lasted and whether there were children.
