(Re)married with Children

By Dr. Dave Currie, with Glen Hoos

Statistics show that up to 40% of weddings today are for couples who are entering a second or subsequent marriage. With the additional challenges that these couples face on top of the regular difficulties that are a natural part of every marriage, I get many questions from couples struggling to make this thing called remarriage work.

Below are some real life situations that I have counseled people through. If you or someone you know is in a second marriage, some of them may sound familiar.

I'm in my second marriage and my kids are out of the house, but my husband's aren’t. It’s only been two months and I already feel like I’m in second place on his priority list.

Whenever you enter a marriage with kids already in the picture, one of the realities you face is that you have to share your spouse. You can't say, "He's all mine," because the kids have some claim to his time and attention as well.

In a first marriage, you usually have a period of a few years where it's just the two of you - the honeymoon phase. Eventually kids come along, and both partners have to adjust to not being the other person's sole focus. When a couple has kids together, they can usually make this transition relatively easily, assuming that the amount of attention being shifted to the kids isn't totally out of whack. But in a second marriage situation where the kids aren't your own, it's very easy for resentment to build.

On the one hand, both husband and wife need to realize that a healthy home is one in which the marriage is the primary relationship, with the couple prioritizing one another first and foremost. On the other hand, you’ve got to leave lots of room for the kids' relationship with their father. They need their dad, and with the upheaval that comes with divorce and blending families, they likely need even more of him right now than they normally would.

Keep in mind too that the children are probably feeling even more threatened by you than you are by them. Be patient, give them some space, and remember that you are building a family that's going to be together for the long haul. It's going to take some time to get all the kinks worked out.

We were so worried about our five kids not adjusting to this new marriage, but as it turns out, we’re the ones who aren’t doing so well.

This is sort of the flip side to the previous question. While it's important to allow space for the kids' relationships with their parent, it's also critical that you take time to build your marriage. Divorce and remarriage is naturally a messy, unstable situation, but as your marriage grows in strength it will bring stability to the whole family.

Without ceasing to be available to help your kids through the adjustment, you've got to intentionally carve out time to be together and just enjoy being married. Try to get out once a week just the two of you to keep the lines of communication open and to inject some fun into your relationship. Don't feel like you're shortchanging your children by stepping out once in awhile. It really is in their best interest for you and your spouse to build something solid together.

Patience is key. Your divorce depleted your emotional reserves; getting married and joining your families likely drained most of what was left. Take it one day at a time and stay committed to making it work.

I’m crazy about two of my step-children but my 14-year-old step-daughter is hard to like, let alone love.

It's a hard lesson to hear, but an important one to learn: you’ve got to love your mate by loving their kids.

When you marry someone who's got children, it's a packaged deal. You're not just taking a spouse, you're joining a family, and there's no greater great gift you can give to your partner than to love their kids as your own. It will immediately put your marriage on much more solid ground than it would be if you're not embracing the kids.

Granted, sometimes it's easier said than done. But I'll say to you the same thing I say to husbands and wives who tell me they no longer like one another: it's much easier to act your way into loving feelings than it is to feel your way into loving actions. In other words, if you wait until you start feeling love for this child before you start loving them in action, you could be waiting a long time… maybe even forever. However, if you make a decision to intentionally treat her with love, patience, respect and kindness, it will bring the best out of her in the long run, and you'll find her easier to love.

I thought the second time around would fix everything: fix me, fix the kids… but let me be the first to say it doesn’t!

You're not the first person to enter marriage (second marriage or otherwise) with the thought that it will make all your problems disappear. Sadly, as you've discovered for yourself, that's not the way it works. Instead of solving the problems, marriage almost always magnifies them.

In my experience working with remarried couples, the greatest threat is not the kids or the difficulty of blending two families into one. The greatest enemy is the baggage you bring into the marriage from your past - baggage that is both plentiful and complicated.

It takes many forms. It could be the pain of betrayal or rejection by the former spouse. It could be regret that you didn't work harder to save the first marriage. It could be guilt that your children don't get to grow up with their family intact. It could be ongoing conflict with your former partner. It could be emotional damage from abuse you received. I could go on.

Until these issues are worked through, they will choke the life out of your marriage. You can't just hide them away in the closet somewhere and hope they won't come out. You've got to face it and put it to rest once and for all, and you've got to do it together. Be totally open and honest with one another. What are the issues you're facing? What are your fears? How is your past continuing to hold you back from the intimacy you want to experience as a couple, and what is it going to take to move on from it? You've got to be willing to go there.

I want you to know that there is real hope for you and your blended family. Building a successful second marriage is a tough thing to do, no doubt about it. That's why so many struggle and fail. But like anything else that's difficult to achieve, when you finally get there it's all the sweeter for the work that you put into making it happen.

Dr. Dave Currie is the National Director of FamilyLife Canada. He and his wife Donalyn live in Abbotsford, BC and are regular speakers at FamilyLife Marriage Conferences. Dave is also the host of Marriage Uncensored with Dave and Christie, a television program across Canada on the Canwest Global network.