The Couples Tool Kit
Working together as a team of three — by Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., Specialist in Couples TherapyArchive for children of divorce
Holiday Toolkit 2011: Divorced: Now What To Do With The Ex-Laws?
While this post isn’t specifically about the holidays, it is all about family relationships and dealing with the “ex-laws” after a divorce – which always shows up as a major factor during holiday season. So we are adding it to the Holiday Toolkit in the hopes that it may just help you survive the most wonderful time of the year.
Today’s post from the Holiday Toolkit:
Excerpt:
Former Mother/Father in Law: Step Children and Step Grand Children: Ex Brothers and Sisters In Law, Ex Nieces and Nephews: Divorce is the highest stress factor in our culture. Breaking up The Coupledom, the family and the household, is excruciating. And then there is the mess it leaves behind in the hearts, minds and pocket books of all involved. One of the groups of people for whom no protocol exists, as they stand outside of legal documentation, is the relational world of The Coupledom; the relatives.
You can read the full post here: Divorced: Now What To Do With The Ex-Laws?
And you can check out the other posts in the Holiday Toolkit here.
Like this:
The Narcissist’s Stocking Stuffer: A Coupledom Alert
Holidays Coming: How many days to Thanksgiving? To Hanukkah? To Christmas? To Kwanzaa? To New Year’s Eve? Enough to create a big fat Coupledom mess. What are the holidays known for in my profession? Opportunity for families to become combustible, leaving memories scorched with flames. Why? Holidays provide fertile ground for narcissistic orgies rich in ultimatums, perceived rejections and ample distorted projections.
Tradition Or Narcissism? The hallmark of unhealthy narcissism is the characteristic inability to walk in someone else’s moccasins, i.e. stuck like cement in your own experience, unable to imagine another’s and bewildered, hurt or enraged at the suggestion that you do so. A good mistletoe example of this occurs when a newly created family is formed of someone’s grown up child, their spouse, perhaps a newborn or two and some in-laws. For twenty-five years, give or take a decade, “everyone” has gone to Mom’s and Dad’s to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve. This is what is termed a family tradition. When that tradition needs to morph a bit to accommodate the needs of new members, geography, expanded parameters of all kinds, the response of family members reveals whether this is a precious tradition, mortal and malleable, or a rigid demand that tests “loyalty and love?”
Two Thanksgivings? Impossible: The divorced or blended family can add its own mix of narcissistic spice to the holiday brew when offspring are rebuked or guilted into feeling that where they hang their stocking shows the truth of their devotion! Really? And as Thanksgiving occurs only on the last Thursday in November, there is even a greater opportunity for betrayal as your options are narrowed down. Who ever heard of celebrating two Thanksgivings, one on Thursday and one on Friday or Saturday? I have. Can you eat that much turkey and sweet potato casserole? Not well, but you can serve a prime rib and potato au gratin, can’t you? Yes you can. Two Thanksgivings? Impossible? Not really. It’s not as if you were asking for two moons to fill our planet’s celestial sky. It is just two meals on two different days. NO!
The “How Could You?” Highway: Despite my irreverent tone (I admit to harboring mixed feelings about a “tradition” that functions as a ball and chain) I take this topic quite seriously. As a clinician I bear witness to the havoc that holidays have bestowed on decent folk who view the upcoming festivities with dread, knowing that one side of the family or another is going to be bent out of shape by whatever decision doesn’t conform to their expectation. The narcissistic mandate to gratify what might be a rigid and subjective notion of holiday loyalty comes disguised as love, bonding, or respect for tradition, one’s elders or family ties. There are all kinds of garbs put on to pose as a caring family. But the telltale sign of defective empathy and imagination is rigidity. My way. Our way. Or the How Could You? Highway. “How could you want to do anything that displeases us or doesn’t match our vision?”
Seasonal Deja Vu: There are many variations on the holiday family drama. Children of divorce, no matter their age, often approach the season with a form of post traumatic stress disorder, reliving the agonies of tense drop-offs and pick-ups, experiencing a sense of sadness or apprehension, grief, loneliness or anxiety. And often, the antagonisms that made their childhood holidays fraught with displeasure still exist. For the Coupledom that they have formed, attention needs to be paid to sorting out past pains from present joys and possible continuing obstacles. (Please see my previous post “ Holiday Mayhem For The Coupledom”.) Are the parents still alienated enough that the adult children are trapped with concerns of appearing to choose sides? Is the pressure of pleasing families in far-flung geographic locales, one set of in-laws here, another elsewhere, difficulties compounded by transporting infants in pouches, squirmy toddlers and diaper bags through crowded airports, putting a strain on your relationship? Who can we satisfy? Who will we hurt or anger? (See also Triangle Traps.) “Are we turning on each other because we feel helpless and afraid?”
Boundaries, The Stocking Stuffer of Choice: The Coupledom that faces these challenges has an opportunity to develop two critical life skills that will enhance their Coupledom enormously: boundary creation and unification of their Coupledom identity. Boundaries and Coupledom identity (not fusion, rather two independent but deeply linked individuals) form a solid and secure place to go when forces outside the marriage threaten to weaken it. Couples can find themselves at odds with each other about how to approach the holidays because of confusion of loyalty, fears of rejection and an incomplete or partially formed image of their relationship, never truly examined, or fleshed out with sufficient consensus to provide a reliable template. Now is the time. And with a more complete portrait of who we are as a couple, boundaries will naturally emerge out of that newly formulated identity. Those boundaries represent a map for how we as a couple approach the rest of our families and friends. We are the team that, most important of all, listens to each other, and then together decides the game plan and consequently stuffs the stockings of our beloved or not so beloved extended family members with the gift of our boundaries, knowing who we are, what we are, and what we can offer to them.
Words Words Words, Only Words? I know, this sounds like a lot of therapy jargon and abstraction. But how do we actually do this? Any way you want. Draw pictures of the optimal image of your Coupledom. Send each other emails, write letters, dream apart and together, look for models around you. But most of all, have the conversation face to face over time. And…
Beliefs That Are Relics Of The Past: …check into your “beliefs.” This is a key element in understanding yourself. What we believe is expected of us or is “right” is often an archaic relic of a child’s mind or messages received very young. Haul those beliefs out, “Am I good or bad if I do this or that?” “If I do comply or don’t comply?” “If I or we do it differently?” “Is it unloving to not gratify?” What are your shoulds and are they really appropriate for the grown-up you now are and the adult life you are forming? Both members of the Coupledom need to do this work, together and apart, and bring it into the conversation.
A Couples’ Discovery: And if you stumble or just can’t find a road map here, please call in an expert, one of those therapists who know how to facilitate a couples’ discovery of self, partner, the worlds you come from and the world that you are attempting to create today. From this exploration emerges a new entity with dignity intact, boundaries agreed upon and directions in place. Most of all, keep it pliable, not grounded in cement with updated versions of equally rigid traditions, demands and visions, a system that can morph as the times require, responsive to question and modification. Keep it pliable, and guess what, wherever the narcissistic challenge in your Coupledom life, you will be ready for it. Happy Holidays.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2011
What Are The Daughters Thinking? DSK, Schwarzenegger, Clinton
Imagine: Can anyone imagine DSK’s lunch with his daughter 17 minutes after he left the Sofitel Hotel and his encounter with a hotel housekeeper? Whatever that moment was in the Sofitel, DSK shifted to dad mode within minutes of being “someone else.” His daughter Camille is a 25-year-old Columbia University graduate student. After her dad’s arrest and media coverage, what was Camille thinking? What are the Schwarzenegger daughters thinking? What did Chelsea think? The media cover all kinds of minutiae about the alleged perpetrators, their wives and the political and financial ramifications of the Dads’ misbehavior. But what are their daughters thinking, does anyone care?
SNL: My first imaginings of the DSK father-daughter luncheon devolved into a Saturday Night Live sketch, with lines like “Dad, you’re looking unusually disheveled, what are the toothpaste traces around your mouth (actually seen on a hotel security camera), and how was your suite at the Sofitel?” I do have a bent for satirizing some of life’s more challenging moments but this is no joke.
Budding Young Women: My concern is with these young women: Chelsea Clinton, Camille Strauss-Kahn, the two Schwarzenegger daughters, Katherine (21) and Christina (19) all who are or were (Chelsea was 18 when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke) on the brink of female adulthood during the exposure of their fathers’ adulterous and in some cases ludicrous and sloppy behavior. For Camille Strauss-Kahn, there is the added alleged criminality. For the Schwarzenegger sisters the outrage of sharing their home and possibly affection with their mom’s betrayer. For Clinton, impeachment proceedings.
What Are The Fathers Doing To Their Daughters? The media are like that street cleaner, it rolls through the dirty streets, picking up all matter of debris, but always leaving something significant and unclean behind. And this for me is the something unclean, never acknowledged; what are these fathers of daughters thinking when they are about to embark on their mischief? Might it behoove them to remember that they have daughters?
Papa Bear: Throughout the centuries in all corners of our planet, men have seen fit to warn their daughters that their fellow man has only one thing on his mind: sex. There is probably an equivalent expression for that sentence in almost every language. It is common to hear teenage girls rail against their dads’ distrust of the young fellows lurking about or how their dads lose it when seeing them dressed for school or a party, demanding a change in attire, cover up or stay home. Where is this same dad when he is ogling someone else’s daughter or chasing the housemaid around the laundry room? Doesn’t he know about trust?
Dad’s Role As the Trust Builder: Bill Clinton named his daughter Chelsea after the song “Chelsea Morning”, which was associated with visits to the Chelsea section of London with mom Hillary. In protective mode, the Clintons sought the advice of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on raising Chelsea in the White House whirlwind, aiming ironically to keep her safe from intrusive eyes and media scrutiny. Yet at age 18, one could say that Chelsea was tossed to the wolves, eaten up alive by a relentless media and political arch rivals of her dad. At that point it was too late; short of locking her in a closet for the next two years or perhaps forever, Daddy was sure not protecting his girl. You can say the same for DSK and Arnold. Thrown to the wolves, under the bus and worst of all, destroying their trust, perhaps forever, trust of their dads, trust of men in their future, trust that someone who loves them, or claims to, will never forget them because of an urge or a needed high.
Human Nature Is Contradictory: We are complex creatures, and can be pulled in opposite directions, act on one need and forget all the others. Because of our flaws, we must try harder to care for others. Would it have been unthinkable for any of these men to factor in how their daughters would feel, the scars, the imprint on their psyche of males as uncontrollable lunatics who besmirch their wedding vows and humiliate their daughters? Consider this: about to leave in the morning for work, Arnold sees the housekeeper move sensuously through the kitchen with a laundry basket in her arms. Something about her sway, her sweetness and the silence of an empty house, swept over him. She glances back over her shoulder, perhaps with a come hither look in her eyes. What could Arnold have done besides follow her? A lot. Acknowledge his weakness, his addiction, his inability to refuse an offer, and think about the daughters who will be home from school at the end of the day, whose laundry this lady was about to wash. Get help! Grow up. You are a dad of daughters. You are their model for men. Don’t F it up.
Why Don’t We Expect More? Whose job is it to educate men of the psychological damage they do to their daughters when they walk on the wild side? Whose job is it to shake them out of their denial that “no one will find out,” or rationalization, “since the marriage was bad, I needed that.” While the media is busy pontificating about all sorts of things, Maria’s betrayal, Hillary’s denial, DSK’s Tribeca hideout, no one is saying, “What about the daughters?”
Where Does The Coupledom Fit in Here? Awareness. Wives and mothers, husbands and fathers: have the conversation. There is plenty of material out there for all to speculate upon and use as a stepping-off point for a grown-up look at responsibility, addiction, ownership of flaws, and the virtues of remembering the daughters before you pull the panties off of someone other than their moms.
Daddy’s Role in Healing Broken Hearts: If it is too late, and the girls’ hearts are broken, daddy needs to be part of the healing, through joint therapy, through hours spent listening and understanding their daughters’ pain, and striving to earn their respect and trust once again. It won’t be easy but denying that they need to actively take on a role in helping their daughters in any way they can, is not allowed. Nope, they broke it, now at least try to fix it. And better yet, keep the image of that kid in your mind at all times, actively so. That’s parenting and prevention.
©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2011
Oldies but goodies: The Divorcing Coupledom: The Art of Uncoupling
Jill is taking a break from the blog this week. Here is one of her most popular posts from the past year or so.
Excerpt:
In The Beginning There Was A Bond: When the Coupledom, the domicile of the couples’ relationship, splinters, what can be preserved and what must be discarded? These are daunting questions that deserve deep search and time. Here are a few guidelines for both spouses to use as they engage in the art of uncoupling…
You can read the full post here:
The Divorcing Coupledom: The Art of Uncoupling
In The Beginning There Was A Bond: When the Coupledom, the domicile of the couples’ relationship, splinters, what can be preserved and what must be discarded? These are daunting questions that deserve deep search and time. Here are a few guidelines for both spouses to use as they engage in the art of uncoupling.
Respecting The Process: Thirty five years as a psychotherapist have shown me that couples fight hard to stay together. To the best of their ability. Few treat divorce lightly. The reasons for a “failed marriage’ are complex, personal and unique. No two couples are the same. Similarities lie in the hard choices and the deep divisions leading to the demise of a marriage. Divorcing carries a taint, a sense of personal failure and a great need to blame another. But there is something important that each spouse should remember: There is an integrity to the effort that went into staying together, even if it ultimately failed.
Integrity to The Effort: Though each partner may be encumbered by “psychological baggage”, defenses that impair attempts at intimacy, or even fidelity, unrealistic expectations, unarticulated needs, triangles with in-laws, and careers, or challenges of raising children, most people work in their own way to keep the marriage going for a significant time. Couples who stagger into therapy after decades of trying to reach across the emotional chasm that has grown between them, carry layers of scar tissue from hurts. Despite all that, they are still trying, for the children and for the notion of family, to heal the marriage. It is rare in my experience that giving up “the family unit” comes easily to anyone. Each partner, in an attempt to handle their hurt and rage, may point to the other as not caring about the “family”, the marital bond or even the children, but my experience tells me differently. In the often bitter and excruciating throes of divorcing, the defense against the pain through unrelenting blame is a very costly one.
Bashing the Coupledom: Couples sign the marriage contract often with unspoken and unconscious motivations: the yin and the yang of opposites attracting; getting out of an unhappy home; lust, fun and chemistry; cultural, societal and economic pressures; a real friendship; similar traumatic histories. There are endless and numerous incentives to tie the knot. And many seem to come back to “bite you”.
The Allure of Difference: The common attraction to someone different from oneself often can reverse itself into hating those very differences. The extrovert and the introvert, the pairing of the scatterbrain but easy going partner with the obsessive detailed oriented “control freak”; the one who allows space becomes the one who is cold and indifferent. The one who is passionate and touchy feely seems too needy or too embracing of others. The ambitious partner becomes the one who abandons you for “career”. The domestic earthy partner is “no fun”, wants to stay home and cook. The shared traumatic histories that led to immediate empathy, and identification, ultimately became hobbling. The irony is that couples over time can grow further apart for the very reasons they initially chose to be together. Coupledom Bashing ignores these variables, demeans both partners and frankly their children as well. Though it might seem healing and necessary for “separation”, coupledom bashing carries a heavy toll and amputates a part of the self that chose this person years ago. There are good reasons why two people find themselves together, as good as the reasons that ultimately may led them to choose to live their lives apart. Both sets of reasons deserve life, expression and respect.
Mourning the Bond: “What We Had” or “What We Thought We Had” is worthy of mourning. Whether it makes sense in the context of one’s history, or a shared illusion, the bond served a purpose. Mourning the demise of the bond rather than cutting it off as one would a gangrenous limb, eases the bitterness, the bilious need to blame or excoriate the other in one’s memory or to friends. Most importantly it prevents the passing down of an ugly legacy to the children, the legacy that the only way to end a relationship is to “hate and denigrate the bond”, and often the partner as well. Understanding and modeling for children that the termination of a partnership though painful and unwanted, is actually a normal though undesired human experience, reduces the shame and the taint. Look at the statistics, divorce is common now and with variations, throughout history. Death is in nature and in relationships. Mortality is not just in the flesh but in feelings as well.
Forgiving The Failure of The Coupledom: Calibrating who tried harder is a normal though fruitless and bitter preoccupation for divorcing couples. Letting go of the illusion that one can measure effort in human relationships as one measures poundage of fruit on a supermarket scale is liberating. We Tried. Each in our own way. Forgive the failure, forgive oneself most of all, and forgive the other. Over time, wisdom will settle in next to the healing heart, and those two words, We Tried, can say it all.
©jill edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W.
Divorced: Now What To Do With The Ex-Laws?
Former Mother/Father in Law: Step Children and Step Grand Children: Ex Brothers and Sisters In Law, Ex Nieces and Nephews: Divorce is the highest stress factor in our culture. Breaking up The Coupledom, the family and the household, is excruciating. And then there is the mess it leaves behind in the hearts, minds and pocket books of all involved. One of the groups of people for whom no protocol exists, as they stand outside of legal documentation, is the relational world of The Coupledom; the relatives.
Emotional Detritus: All too often, a dissolved marriage leaves a wake of loss and confusion. An uncle who was dear to his nieces and nephews has vanished and young children are missing him. Older kids don’t know whether it is appropriate or “safe” to contact their aunt, a treasured confidant, now renamed their uncle’s “ex” wife; does that make her an “ex aunt”? A grandfather of step grand kids is finding it uncomfortable connecting with his former step son. Unable to solve this conundrum of familial fractures, he abandons contact with the youngsters who consider him grandpa, and have no notion of what “step” means anyway.
Cousins of Divorced Families are restricted to joint play dates when the parent from their “side” has them for the weekend …until they can drive. And even then, if the residue from the divorce is continuing to belch forth toxic fumes, driving over to pick up a cousin may be tricky, an irresistible opportunity to excrete further poisons, and even unleash clan warfare that leaves teens puzzled, guilt ridden or furious.
Folks Who Were Once Called Mom and Dad: These questions don’t get any more bizarre than when the folks who were once “mom and dad” become at best, “acquaintances” and worst, enemies. What do we call them, “my ex/former mother in law, father in law”. Then there is the ever complex “blended family divorce”, where step parents now have “ex kids”, former step kids? What is that? The Bizarro world? Yes.
Divorce Is Fertile Ground For Triangles: The inspiration for this article came from a client who was anguished about her relationship with a “step daughter” after the break up with her dad. Though a grown up “step” the young woman is triangulated by loyalties to her dad and “ex step mom”. When they meet for coffee, the air is choked by the invisible but omnipresent “he”; whose version of the break up to believe, whose reality to trust? Spontaneity is replaced by watchfulness; something will be said to cause further animosity, more pain and guilt. The ex-step mom is in limbo, finding some of the content of their conversation provocative and irritating, some hurtful and sad. Can this relationship survive? How to recalibrate its components to make going forward possible.
Behind My Back: The Cornerstone Of Triangles Is A Secret: Deepest of betrayals in the new frontier of ex laws is secretiveness and its twin “lying”. Lying can be both by omission and commission. The second biggest wallop to post divorce ex relationships is “Taking Sides”. These two components: behind my back, and taking sides, carve out the emotional insides of the participants and sow seeds for lifelong animosity and some pretty rotten teaching to children of any age.
What Are The Necessary Tools To Navigate The Terrain of Ex Laws? Dyads Not Triangles. Never should communications concerning two individuals be delivered by a third party. With young children this is difficult but what it means is that the ex law aunts and uncles meet one to one, and lay out a relational plan for the cousins that is in the “best interest” of the children. Never should the message be, you and I are done with that family because they sided with your dad during the divorce. That is a giant NO NO! TABOO! What you deliver with that message is “distrust and uncertainty; don’t risk loving because next will be loss” and powerlessness. Kids feel powerless enough. Subtracting important people from their lives because you are hurt or pissed is wrong. Uncles and Aunts remain forever Uncles and Aunts, whether their sibling remains your spouse or not.
GROWN UPS GROW UP! Let time play a part in the process. And even though there is a powerful temptation to feel the victim, and spice it up with anecdotes of rejection and humiliation, no one but you can craft the next years of relationship with ex in laws, brothers in law, sisters in law: folks who may have been ”like best friends” before the deluge.
Contact In Steps: Chafed skin is raw and red. Only when the new skin grows over it, does the flesh feel ready for contact. So too the heart. The first months after an acrimonious divorce may best respond to “indirect contact” with the ex laws, while the new skin is laying down its cover. Emails; letters; phone calls that don’t demand a response. Requests to meet over coffee at some point may follow. Or “perhaps we can bring the kids by sometime: they miss you.”
If You Are The Sibling Of A Bitter Divorce: Approach your sib as a dyad, one and one. “I am fond of Henry and miss him. I would like to see him sometime and bring the kids. I don’t want to hurt you but I think this can be done without taking sides. I will not get into any “stuff”. You are not asking permission. You are respectful by “not lying” or sneaking behind their backs: no omission here. And if the reaction is intense or attacking, give it time. Perhaps postpone the visit and let your sibling “think about this”. But ultimately this is a grown up thing…making judgements about what went wrong in someone else’s marriage, and taking sides, is a bad idea. It is like the telephone game: by the time you get the message, the original communication is lost with each iteration.
Courage: Facing ex laws can’t be easy. If they want to get into your “stuff”, just abstain with the caveat, “this is not useful”. Highlight the importance of ”respecting those boundaries so we can get on with our relationship going forward”. If they don’t get it, or perhaps want to pick on your ex for their own purposes, again boundaries. Otherwise, quicksand. Watch Out!
The Experts: As always, if you do step in some quicksand, before you sink down too far, seek out the experts. The third eye, third ear, someone who helps you to hear and see options that are hard to see alone.
© Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2010
