CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Blending Families

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

In this episode of The Calling Home podcast, host Whitney Goodman discusses the challenges of blending families, particularly when the children are adults. Common issues in these situations include changes in family dynamics, financial disputes, and the addition of new family members. She’ll talk about the importance of patience, understanding, and clear communication during the blending process. Plus, why it is important to avoid putting adult children in the middle of disagreements or forcing them to choose sides.  Have a question for Whitney? Call Home at 866-225-5466.  Join Whitney’s Family Cycle Breakers Club for further support and discussion on family dynamics at CallingHome.co. Follow the Calling Home community on Instagram or TikTok.  Follow Whitney Goodman on Instagram or TikTok.  The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice or other medical advice or services, is not a substitute for advice from a qualified healthcare provider, and does not create any therapist-patient or other treatment relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home’s Terms of Service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome back to another solo episode of the Calling Home podcast. I am your host, Whitney Goodman. And today we're going to talk about a topic that has been requested many times by our members of the Family Cycle Breakers Club inside the Calling Home community. And that is blending families. So I asked you. all some questions. I got a lot of feedback from my Instagram community at Sit With Wit. And I have honed in on a couple of things that you guys are struggling with when it comes to families being divided, blended, moved around, especially in adulthood. So we're going to be talking about

people who are dealing with step-parents, parents getting divorced or separated in adulthood. and even parents who are starting, like, completely new families are having younger children and how that can impact you. I know that there can be a lot of tension around adding another step-siblings, you know, step-parent, step-grandparent, all of these people to a family in adulthood. And I feel like we spend so much time focusing on how to blend families with young children that we forget that there's like this whole other group of adults who are also dealing with things like this. So let's go ahead and dive into today's topic. So the first thing I want to do is introduce you to some different scenarios that might happen when you are blending

families in adulthood. So let's talk about someone named Chris. Chris worked very hard his entire life and his dad also worked very hard. He told Chris that he would pay for his college when he turned 18. So Chris was under the impression that if he worked hard, he got good grades and he applied to schools, that his father would pay for any college he was admitted to. And his father told him this regularly. It was a big part of his childhood and it was something that was instilled in him and motivated him. Chris never made any decisions to try to learn about how else he would pay for school. These were not conversations that he was having with his dad. He was under the impression that there was a college fund that was set aside for him and would be given to him to pay for his

education. And they even had detailed conversations about how this would be paid for, how much money was in the account, things like that. This was an ongoing conversation, not just like an off-the-cuff thing. But when Chris was 18 in applying to college, his father remarried. And now his stepmother isn't allowing his father to pay for his college. so let's think about this for a second and i want to know what your like initial reaction is to this so check in with that you know is the stepmother entitled to now make decisions about the married couple's finances should chris have never felt entitled to the money that his dad was putting away should chris's dad set a boundary with his stepmother should he have not made promises to his son that

he maybe couldn't keep. And what do they do from here? So this is a really common dynamic when we're talking about families that are blended in adulthood. You often have adult children who have a lifetime of memories with their parent, possibly decisions, conversations that have been had that are now being changed or influenced by a new person coming into the picture. And when I asked all of you online, you know, how your relationships with your parents were impacted if they were now in a blended family or remarried or repartnered in adulthood, the majority of you said that there have been challenges. There was a small percentage of people who said that their life improved with the addition

of this third person. this, of course, depends on the personality and the desires of that new partner that has been brought in. In Chris's case, we have a new stepmother here who is really trying to assert control over how Chris's father manages their finances, and she may feel that she is entitled to do that as his partner, and that she gets to now make choices about how their money is spent as a marital unit. Now let's talk about another scenario. I want to talk about someone named Jennifer.

Jennifer's parents got divorced when she was 15. And after her college graduation, her father got married to a new woman. She was only eight years older than Jennifer. Jennifer's father and his new wife decided to start a new family and now they have three young children. So take a moment to think about what reactions that brings up. in you. What do you think that Jennifer might be feeling in this situation? If I had to guess, Jennifer could be feeling some resentment, some grief over the loss of the presence of her father that

she expected to have in adulthood. She may be struggling to watch her father be possibly a different type of parent to these young children. And she may be struggling with her relationship with the stepmother because the stepmother has certain expectations for how involved her father will be the father of these new young children in their life and how much time that allows for Jennifer's father to be involved in Jennifer's life. So in both of these situations, we can see that there is a monumental shift in the family dynamics when there is the addition of a new partner or new children or both to the family and some of the issues that that can brain up. So as we walk through some of the different challenges that you might see when you're blending families in adulthood, remember these

examples of Chris and Jennifer and think about how these challenges might come up in either one of those situations. So one of the major challenges that we saw here in both Chris and Jennifer situation is the adding of a step-parent. And one of the biggest, challenges that's going to happen here is that the step-parent may want to make changes to how the family operates. We know that all families have their own unique culture. And when we're talking about a family that has adult children, it is very likely that this culture has been established for a significant amount of time. And someone messaged me this that I think is an important caveat is that you have to consider the circumstances of the new marriage when this new step-parent or person is

brought into the family. And they pointed out that getting married after being widowed is very different than getting married after being divorced. The age of the person that they marry, like when we looked at Jennifer's story of like her father marrying someone that was only eight years older than her and starting a new family, that is going to have an impact. If there was an affair that happened, that potentially broke up the marriage, and also if the other parent is in a relationship or not married. All of these things can impact how that process of adding a step-parent goes. But I do think that for adult children and for parents who are in this situation and

for step-parents, we have to keep in mind the context of the family, the culture of the family, what the family typically does and not try to make these huge overhauls or changes overnight just because we are adding someone new, particularly if that change is happening very, very rapidly. So there are situations where, you know, someone gets divorced and they quickly get remarried potentially to the affair partner or something like that. And the family is going through a lot of whiplash trying to adjust to the new circumstances. And while the parent may be on board with all these changes, you know, they're excited. They're with their new partners. they're happy, they're enjoying their life, the other people who are brought along for this ride

may really be struggling. And so that's something to keep in mind that often when a parent of an adult child decides to make these choices, the adult child is expected to just roll with it and be happy with it and embrace this person. And sometimes that's not always possible or healthy or feasible in these situations. The other challenge that can come up when you're blending adult families is that you're adding other children. And so we talked about this in the case of Jennifer, right? Her father had three more children with his new wife,

and now they are young children. So we're talking about, you know, like an 18 to 20 year age gap between Jennifer and her younger siblings. And there's also this idea that she is very clear, close in age to her stepmother. And so that can create some tension. And there's a couple of things that you all pointed out that you're dealing with if other children have been added to the family. And one of those big challenges is the new children, when there have been young biological children born between this new marriage, being treated differently. And some of this

can come down to more financial resources being available at the age which your parent had these children. Sometimes the parent can see this as like a do-over for them, especially if they feel like their first attempt didn't work out because they got divorced or your adults now and your relationship is kind of tense. They may double down even more on trying to be a better parent, quote unquote, to these new younger children. There's also the, you know, difference in the marriage, that there are different expectations maybe with this partner. If this person had got married a significant period of time later, cultural and social norms may have changed around what is expected of this person within a marriage.

And so they are acting very differently with these children and maybe providing or doing different things as a result of that than they were when they were married to your other parent and they got married 30 years ago. And that could be really, really disorienting to, like, watch your parent be a very different parent to these children and to be like, why weren't you doing that with me? And, you know, what happened? Where did you get this capability to be able to do that with them, but not with me? And it can also really, like, result in these children getting to live a totally different childhood than you did and getting a totally different experience of what it's,

like to have your parent as a parent. The other thing that can happen is that the parent's attention is significantly diverted away from, you know, what they would be expected to be doing with that adult child at this time as a function of them having young children. So someone said, you know, my parents have been divorced for the majority of my life and they both remarried when I was young, my siblings from these second marriages are 17, 14, 11. I often feel that I am missing out on parents involved in my life and milestones because they are busy with the time commitment of raising these younger children. And I heard other stories like this from people saying that, you know, my parents are not as involved in my wedding as I thought they would be

or my parent is not able to show up to certain things because they are dealing with the task of raising very young children. And as a parent of young children right now, I know how time consuming that is and it is a totally different role than the role you would take when all of your children are adults.

And so when someone is trying to manage the reality of being involved in an adult... When you're a forward thinker, you don't just bring your A game, you bring your AI game. Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people, money, and agents, so you can transform tomorrow. Workday, moving business forever forward.

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going through two separate things at the same time, it can be very, very difficult to juggle. And the parent has to be really skilled at juggling that and managing that time. And some are not. And so this can result in a lot of resentment. The next thing that comes up that can become an issue when blending families, and I think that this goes back to the situation that we talked about with Chris, you know, where the stepmom doesn't want Chris's dad to pay for his college, is that this question comes up of who gets to come first, the partner or the kids. And I think normally it's very common to say now that when you

are in a marriage, you should put your partner first so that your marriage is solid and you can be there for your kids. But how do you think this works when we're talking about a second marriage to a new spouse being put in front of the original children? I haven't figured out where I land on that because I think that's really complicated, you know, especially when the children came first. I think it's important that the new spouse be included and respected and that relationship be prioritized. But I don't know that that necessarily means that that relationship always gets prioritized in front of the children's needs. And I can see how that would create a lot of disagreement and a lot of frustration within the family unit. And I think this is why

becoming a step-parent is very challenging because you have to be able to walk that line with a child or children that already have an established relationship with this parent and are living through the experience of you being added to their family. So let me know what you think about that. Like when there is a second marriage, who comes first, the partner or the kids, and how have you seen that play out in your own families? The other thing that comes up a lot, and I mentioned this earlier, is dealing with the other parent asking questions and wanting to know about the relationship. So when we talked about the circumstances of the new relationship, there may be a situation where you have a mother that's remarried and a

father or partner who has not repartnered or remarried since they split. And when this happens, you might have that single partner become very, very threatened by the other parents' relationship. And in those cases, you might be playing middleman between your parents' new relationship and your single parent and their curiosity, their jealousy, they're wanting to tear down that relationship. And that can become really, really challenging because you may feel this urge as an adult to support your parent to make sure that they are happy and comfortable, if they did not want the divorce or if they were the partner that their trust was violated, you might really feel this urge to comfort them and to make them feel more at peace.

But it's also not your role as a child. And you cannot control who your other parent partners with and how that feels for the other parent. And so I think when you get put in these situations if you ever have been, it's very important for you to have boundaries with that parent and to make sure with both of them actually that they know that you do not want to be put between them and that you want to make sure that you can remain like a neutral third party in all of this and you're not going to be the one to like relay information back to that parent or vice versa. You're not going to participate in like disparaging your parents' new partner and that you're going to do your best to try to manage this. I do think that when there has been like a

violation of trust in the form of possibly an affair, something like that, there can be even more nuance here when one parent feels like you absolutely should not have an alliance with that affair partner and absolutely should prioritize your quote unquote innocent parents' needs. And so that can become very, very tricky. And there are some adult children who choose not to have relationships with the one parent that hurt the other parent because they just can't wrap their heads around it. They can't excuse the behavior. And they can't accept this new relationship that was possibly born out of a situation where

their other parent was hurt. And so this is a really difficult thing of like seeing your parent as a human being versus seeing them as your parent or your other parents' partner that hurt them. And these can just be a lot of things to juggle. And it's very normal as an adult child to take time to work through this and potentially need to hear some type of remorse or apology, you know, from the parent who had the affair and to feel like they are repairing things with you and that they understand the impact that their actions had on your experience of

your family. Another big issue is money and inheritance. And so this goes back again to the situation that we talked about with Chris at the beginning of the episode where the stepmom has come in and she's saying, no, we're not going to use our money in that way. I've also been watching this girl on TikTok lately who talks about how one of her parents, I can't remember which one got remarried and then her parent passed away and the step-parent inherited all of the life insurance and like death benefit and did not dispense any of it to the adult children. And so they felt like they lost their parent and then were not entitled to anything that their parent had, you know, always promised them throughout their life.

And I think that's not really about money. It's interesting because I see a lot of comments on these videos like, you're not entitled to your parents' money, whatever. But there is something to be said about having a lifelong relationship with your parent, them getting remarried, having a potentially short relationship with this person, and then getting to take ownership of everything that was theirs, that can feel like you are powerless and your relationship was not as important. And like you're being taken advantage of and you don't have something from your parent

to remember them by or that belongs to you. And so I don't think this is about like greed and wanting everything that's yours every time. A lot of the time it can be that, you know, I feel like my relationship to my parent should trump, you know, what you had with them or we should at least all be able to benefit from this. And this can change people's entire lives, you know, who your parent decides to partner with in adulthood and to, to leave all of their money or assets or whatever to can impact your trajectory for the rest of your life. And so I think adult children are often worried that their parent may be influenced to give

away to someone else what they feel is their own birthright. And whoever inherits what, who loses out on what can be a bone of, like, contention or an issue among like these families with adult children that are blended. And we've seen a lot of examples like this. Like I remember the Anna Nicole Smith story where, you know, she married this significantly older man who passed away and there was a huge, you know, lawsuit and court case fighting over this man's money and assets that his children or his child, I can't remember how many children he had, felt that they were entitled to and that she felt like she was

entitled to. And it really becomes this battle of like who has more power and who had more of a relationship with this person. And I think that can be really hard for adult children when this random, you know, what they feel is random person has just been brought into their life at such a late stage and is now being given so much access and so much power. Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. This fall get double points on every qualified stay. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions. Summer's here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost? Well, you can't get a

well-groom lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered. A cabana? That's a no. But a banana? That's a yes. A nice tan. Sorry, nope. But a box fan? Happily yes. A day of sunshine? No. A box of fine wines? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. The other thing that can happen is that you may feel like the new step-parent or the new

partner is enforcing a lot of expectations on the family or trying to parent you. I think this happens much more when there is a person who comes into a family where there are children between the ages of like 18 and 25, and these adult children are still very much involved in their parents' life and maybe needing direction or assistance, and the step-parent kind of comes in and takes over and tries to assert themselves over some of that decision-making or implement their own norms and expectations. And so if you are an adult child in this situation, I think it's very important to try to keep that dialogue and that dynamic between you and your parent and try to make it something that the two of you are discussing the majority of

the time rather than this being a three-person situation unless it needs to be, which I think is something that a lot of people brought up is that they started to feel like their parent was consistently siding with and prioritizing the new parent, especially around decisions that had to do with them. And so instead of maybe doing what was best for the adult child or getting to know what they were going through, they would consistently kind of just side with the step-parent to try to appease them or make that relationship feel more copacetic. And that can be very, very challenging for the adult child, especially if that's not how you and your parent are used to interacting with one another. So I want to speak to any parents or adult children that are in this situation and kind of

give you some tips for integrating or blending families at this life stage. I think it's very important for parents and adult children and step parents to recognize that it can be very challenging to integrate a new adult family. Sometimes it's even harder than integrating and blending families with young children because there are a lot of really firmly entrenched patterns and beliefs simply as a result of time. And so everyone needs to give one another a beat to like figure this out. And that means that this process could take years. It is not feasible to expect that you're going to spend every holiday together. Everyone's going to get along. It's going to go perfectly and that you're going to get this shot at like this dream family that you're trying

to create this next time around. It's probably going to be difficult. When you have a lot of different adults and a lot of personalities, there is going to be friction. There are going to be periods of getting to know one another and there's going to be tension around certain roles in the family and who is responsible for what and who is allowed to make what decision. And so I think taking this hard line stance of like everyone just needs to get along and we need to blend the family is not wise. And it will end up just isolating and ostracizing certain members of the family. The other thing here is that if you have adult children or you are an adult child that is part of a family that is blending at this stage, you have to remember that adults are not required to have a relationship with these people. And I know that that can be hard for a lot of parents who are starting another family and they want their children to be involved. But the reality is that your adult child

is not choosing who their parents remarry. And I think expecting them to be completely on board with every single person that they interact with is really not fair and it's really not feasible. It would be ideal. It would be wonderful if everyone could get along. But it's also not likely. and we have to kind of come to peace with the fact that like we may be choosing a new partner

but our adult child did not choose this. And so it's okay if they, you know, have some conflicting feelings about certain members of the family or they don't want to like participate at the level that we are expecting from them. And I think that also comes down to like how much time this takes to blend a family. If you are talking about you've got an adult child who has two sets of parents who are now remarried and now there are additional sets of grandparents and potentially more children and step siblings, it is going to be very hard to coordinate holidays where everyone is seen and everyone interacts, especially if your adult child is married and they also have in-laws. We might be talking about having four to six sets of people.

that you are expected to visit on a holiday or you're expected to interact with on a weekly, monthly basis. And sometimes that can just be too much for certain people to manage, especially if those adults are starting their own families, they're married, they're raising their own children, that it might be very challenging to ask some of this of them.

And so I think allowing your adult children to show up when they can, when they want to and on their terms can be very helpful. And for any adult children listening to this, you're allowed to set boundaries around your time and what you can participate in. And you're allowed to say, you know what, my parent has made this choice at this stage in their life

to start this new family, to partner with this person. I am going to be as accommodating and, you know, welcoming as I can be within my own personal limits in this situation. And beyond that, my parent is going to have to establish the life that they want to with this person, and it may not look exactly how they want it to look, you know, with my level of involvement. Another thing that's very important for parents to remember when they're blending families with adult children is that you cannot 100% side with your new partner or

allow them to treat your adult children in a less than respectful way and expect your adult children to stick around, especially because they have independence and they have the ability to distance themselves at this point, which they wouldn't have had if you blended your family when they were young children, that they might not be willing to tolerate the behavior in a step-parent that you are willing to tolerate in a partner. And I think when we see parents consistently put their new spouse over their children and allow their children to be treated in harmful ways, we are going to see distance between the parent and the adult child. And that's typically not because they hate your partner or they don't want you to be happy.

It's really because they feel like they are being subjected to conditions that are unfair and they are not being protected by their parent. And that doesn't feel good for anyone of any age to experience with their own parent. I also think that it's important that we acknowledge that your adult children, or if you are an adult child, you are likely going to grieve the loss of what you expected for your family as you adjust to this new reality. So that might mean grieving that your parent is not able to be as present for their grandchildren or for your adult milestones because they have started another family with young children. It might mean grieving the loss of what you thought holidays would look like. You know, with having your parents still married or at least being able to be in the same room, your parent might move away because they have a new partner or you might not be able to be around their new partner.

They might be prioritizing them. We're not setting boundaries around certain behavior. And all of that is going to involve grieving the loss of what you expected your life to look like as an adult. with your parent or parents in your life. And I do think as parents of adult children, we also have to allow those adult children to grieve that. And that might mean that there's times where they pull away where they're not able to be as excited or present.

And usually that doesn't mean that they don't love or care about you. It's just an adjustment phase. And so try to give everyone who is being brought into this process the ability to feel those feelings and to get to a point of peace on their own timeline. The last thing I want to bring up is that if you are blending a family of adults as a parent, I think it's really important that you not ask your adult child to choose sides when it comes to the new step-parent or the new partner and their other parent. and this goes both ways.

And so putting your adult child in the middle, asking them to disparage the step-parent or the other parent to speak negatively about them, to take sides or taking it personally when they decide to spend time with that person is only going to put a huge burden on them. And that burden will likely cause a lot of distance between you and your adult child.

The best thing that you can do is really try to have a relationship that does not include that part of their life unless you can be supportive and understanding of what they're going through. And same for the adult children. I think you really have to set boundaries with the parent who is trying to disparage the step parent or disparage the other parent or create discord between all of you in an attempt to mess up the family dynamic or change the situation that they may. be justified in their complaints. The things they're saying might be true, but it is going to be extremely difficult for you to balance relationships in good faith with all of these people

if you are constantly being pulled in these different directions by each of the parties involved. And so for parents, step parents, adult children, it's really good to have clear boundaries around not communicating about each of these people in a negative light and putting the adult child in the middle. Because even though they are an adult, most adult children have a fantasy and a desire for their parents or their current family makeup to all get along with one another and to have a good relationship. And so if you want that to happen, that starts with really being aware that putting them in the middle of any disagreement or bad feelings there is just going to create more tension and more distance. If you are currently in the process of blending a family

with adult children or you an adult child where your family is being blended, I hope that this episode was helpful for you and left you with some good tips and resources to make that easier. This is also a topic that if you all are interested and please let me know after hearing this episode. I will cover inside the calling home community. Calling home is our membership community for anyone that would like to take this next step to work on their adult family relationships. We have two levels of membership. You can join and just get weekly articles. It's usually five to six articles a month for only $5 a month. And those come straight to your inbox from me. And you'll also never miss out on one of these podcast episodes. We'll always send them

to you. And then our other level of membership is the Family Cycle Breakers Club. And that's where you can join groups with other Family Cycle Breakers, just like you that are actually working on these relationships and making a lot of change in their life with the things that they learn on this podcast and in our community. You'll also find worksheets, articles, videos, scripts, therapist recommendations, book recommendations, Q&As with me and other special guests, all inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home, and you can join at www.callinghome.com. Thank you all again for being here with me today.

Don't forget that we now have a new episode every Thursday where I answer questions from callers. I appreciate all of you. Thank you so much for being here, and don't forget to subscribe or leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening to this podcast. Have a great rest of your day. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services.

It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Calling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below. Thank you.