A two-year period when home was not a happy environment

2009 journal entries are like a world away from the present day.  In those days, my eldest daughter (17 at the time) was living with Sarah and I, and it would be fair to say that all three of us had seriously unmet needs.

There are many reasons why there were unhappy dynamics in the home, and especially for wife and daughter there were seemingly insurmountable challenges to be worked through.

Three-way disputes erupted often, there was much aggressive and withdrawing behaviour, the slamming of doors, drive-offs, that sort of thing.  Regularly, all three of us would be exasperated.

Now, Sarah and I were doing a lot of work with our counsellor to help make our marriage the happy place we desperately wanted it to be.  Seriously, it took two years to navigate.

Yet for my daughter, her entire future was up in the air, and she was finding her way with school and a difficult part-time job and negotiating other momentous relational and logistical challenges.

When I look back now, I see both their situations with an enormous amount of pride.

Within the space of a year from May 2009, these two had both overcome the challenges they were both presented with.  From mid-2010 onwards, there has been a deep respect nurtured between my wife and my daughter.

When my daughter moved in with us in February 2008 there was such a clear values divide between my new wife and her, a stereotyped (not stereotypical!) 16-year-old.  Again, both had such pressing needs, and they both had very defined needs of me, and the fact that these needs were often presented in opposition, it’s little wonder my solace was work during these two years of my life.

But in the couples counselling process, I was still just discovering how to be an effective husband—how to put my wife first when my children had become my ‘number one’ when I’d been a solo dad for three years.

Seriously, it took nearly two years for two things to happen that would transform our marriage.

The first was that I needed to make practical changes to ensure Sarah really was my number one, and that our marriage unit really was the centrepiece of my life.  The second thing was a subtle though significant change in Sarah—she resigned herself to the fact she couldn’t change what she’d been so desperate to institute.  Both of these things coincided with my daughter’s moving off in any event, contented, into adult life.  Yet it was also as if my daughter had resolved to accept things she couldn’t change as well in this season.

I know there was a shift for all three of us.  All three of us grew up a little as a result.

And seriously, Sarah’s and my first decent year of married life was year four because of these adjustments that were necessary to be made—our persistence paid off.  It would be grossly unfair to say my daughter contributed to these issues, because in many ways she was vulnerable to growing pains in our marriage, plus there was a significant change in my relationship with her she had to adjust to.  My mother became pivotal in filling the gap.

~

Step parenting is hard because it’s never natural, and there are ‘love’ challenges to be overcome—both ways.  Love does not come naturally, even if that’s our desperate desire.  This is so hard to say and admit because our love wants to overcome these challenges.

Bonds of love that are nurtured over a decade and more are not procured overnight.  And step parents and step children need to acknowledge they’re a threat to each other.

For the parent who has children in the marriage to their step parenting spouse, there’s the constant need to balance the needs of all, and yet the marriage must come first, otherwise that which is the very foundation of the family becomes brittle.  This assumes that both adults in the marriage are genuinely seeking the best for the marriage AND family, including individuals, and that that balance is being struck, with no selfish desires present—and we need to be really honest in assessing this.

Our experience pastorally is that couples who are conflicted DO NOT SEE their selfishness.  And then there’s the situation where both partners have real needs, but conflict begins when they individually DEMAND their needs be met a certain way.

Even good desires can birth conflict through a source of selfishness.  The ‘what’ might be appropriate, but that doesn’t mean the ‘how’ is.

Within the marriage of partners who are genuinely seeking the best of all, the children must be loved, but children aren’t entitled to shake the foundations of the marriage, and yet neither is either partner.  The common good must be sought by all, because only in this do individuals thrive.  If individuals don’t thrive, the common good isn’t served.

Children as well as the parent and stepparent all prosper with effective counselling support.  It’s best if all parties (both partners and the child/ren) genuinely seek contentment for all.

NOTE – my wife helped me write portions of this article.