David Murphy hasn't started shopping for his two boys yet, and he knows he had better get started. The divorced father of two boys, ages 11 and 14, has custody for a full week around Christmas Day this year and needs to get a tree and start buying presents. Every other year, Murphy (who didn't want his real name used to protect his children's privacy) doesn't have Christmas custody. So, he tries to do something completely different. Divorced for four years, he has traveled with his mother to visit England, where she was born. He has joined his father and stepmother on a trip to Carmel, California. He hasn't crashed his ex-wife's Christmas Day plans, even though she lives only three miles away from his home in suburban Virginia. "We try not to mess with the schedule when we don't have to because it's easier on both parties," said Murphy. "As each party has moved on, it happened to work that way. We try not to interfere with each other." With the U.S. Census Bureau counting nearly 4 million divorced parents in this country, many parents are facing the challenges of negotiating holiday custody schedules, battles over presents, new significant others and simply the pain of being apart. Whether you have the children for Christmas or not this year, going through a separation or divorce means giving up the dream of a perfect Hanukkah, Christmas or Kwanzaa. With the fantasy of the perfect nuclear family obviously over, it can be lonely even with the kids -- but much worse without them. Facing the first holiday since the split, how do people ever survive this holiday season? And eventually even thrive? Many like Murphy -- who credits his ex-wife with keeping the focus on their sons' well-being during the divorce -- have found a new way of parenting beyond divorce. Here are some things that work:
Keep it focused on the kids
You may not expect to have a happy holiday but wouldn't you like your kids to have a reasonably nice time? Even if you're right, do you want them remembering you put them in the middle of your battles? And no child wants to feel pressure to choose you over the other parent, whom she loves as much as she loves you. Parents learn about the payoff later, when their grown children make their own choices about where they spend their holidays. In her book "We're Still Family," about adult children of divorce, psychologist Constance Ahrons learned that some adult children refused to visit either parent if the bickering continued. "The children were happiest where parents at least communicated," said Ahrons, also the author of "The Good Divorce." "They didn't want to get caught in the middle, and they wanted to be with both parents."
Sort out details in advance
Nail down the specifics about who gets which days around the winter holidays, including pickup times and locations. Sometimes the details are in your custody agreement, sometimes not. Put it all on e-mail or in writing and stick to the deal -- at least until it becomes routine. If you're a more casual, less detail-oriented parent, know that you'll score points with your more time-obsessed ex if you're on time at drop-off and pick-up. If you're the detail-oriented parent, plan for your always-late ex to be late as usual and you'll be less stressed. Do not fight about time or anything else with the children present. "Put aside the warfare that so often accompanies divorce," said Steven Grissom, president of DivorceCare, a Christian-based divorce ministry with chapters around the world. "If that carries into a special time in the eyes of child, it makes the holiday experience excruciating."
Don't out-Santa each other
If you can speak civilly with your ex, talk about a general budget for presents, the number of presents and what Santa is getting your children. Santa knows which address to deliver the bike or the castle or the Wii, so don't screw up his planning by having one at each house (unless you both want one at each house). Don't outdo each other. Remember the spirit of the holidays and avoid trying to buy the children off with fabulous presents. And don't buy that violent video game for the specific purpose of angering your ex. The same goes for grandparents and new significant others. If they're interfering in your co-parenting plan, remind them they are not helping your child. At the same time, accept that parents may have different standards about what are acceptable gifts. If you are opposed to electronic games, you may need to accept they will exist at your ex's house.
Keep some traditions, within reason
Children love routine and ritual, so keep a few family traditions if you can. If you baked dozens of different types of cookies for everyone in your life, reduce the number and type of cookies during your annual baking party but keep your daughter's favorite snickerdoodles. If your family liked to take a trip into the woods in your ex's truck to cut down a tree, you may have to explain that your smaller car can't haul such a tree. "To the extent you can, talk with your children ahead of time and find out what is really important to them," Grissom said. "If that won't be possible, maybe you can create a new tradition."
Don't push too much togetherness
While some ex-spouses can sing carols around the Christmas tree or light the Hanukkah candles together with the kids and both sets of grandparents, that's not the reality for everyone. Some do not want to spend time with people who left them or whom they chose to leave. Some people fight every time they see each other. Do not force more togetherness than either of you can handle, and don't feel guilty about it. (That said, if you haven't broken up yet, wait until January. Don't be the Divorcing Grinch Who Stole Christmas.)
Don't lobby for your sweetheart
Bringing a new significant other to the family festivities can really throw the holidays off-balance for the family, Ahrons said. "One parent will say, 'Are you really going to bring her to this table?' or 'You can come without her.' Avoid if it's going to cause trouble, even if the new girlfriend is serious." Remember, it's about your kids, not you.
The exception to the rule
If your ex is currently a danger to himself or herself -- and/or others -- the safety of your children is more important than cooperating during the holidays. In fact, you're probably trying to break the pattern of your ex ruining holiday celebrations. Elizabeth Jones, who didn't want her real name used to protect her child, isn't letting her ex spend the holidays with their daughter for the first time in years. He only recently contacted Jones a couple of weeks ago after disappearing for months. Whenever he sobers up, she first lets him have supervised phone calls for a few weeks, eventually visits with her and their daughter at a neutral location such as a park, followed by visits at her California home. "If my kid weren't so thrilled every time she got to see him, I would be handling this differently," said Jones, who has sole custody. "It's a lot of emotional work for me to put aside my own feelings."
He's a jerk
If you're a saint and your ex is a sinner and won't take any of your thoughtful recommendations to heart, consider this notion: Safety aside, it's better for your child for you to let your ex "win" sometimes, even if you're right. Christmas can sometimes fall on December 27 or even January 6 (the Feast of the Three Kings). Hanukkah is eight nights of fun, so you don't need to control alleight nights. That doesn't mean you're a doormat. It means you're a good parent. Your adult child will know you tried to make her life better by trying to compromise with your difficult ex (and yes, children know who was difficult). "How you react to your ex-spouse is how you are teaching your child to handle conflict, stress and anger," said Alan Kazdin, a Yale University psychology professor and director of Yale's Parenting Center. "Giving up a Christmas here or there means you'll have your child long-term. You want your child to have an ally in you later in life. It's not only more rewarding; it's more worthwhile long term." Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/21/living/holiday-survival-divorced-darents/index.html
I've been trying to work out how any process of personal growth and improvement, or recovery from times of adversity can be mapped out into phases. When we're on a personal journey it's often discouraging to feel overwhelmed and not know where you are and how far you have yet to go. That's how I've felt lately. In this video I've outlined the phases that I believe I've been passing through from Ignorance, through to Enlightenment and everywhere in-between.My thinking on this has also been prompted by reading the amazing book '12 Rules for Life' by Jordan B. Peterson. If you feel inclined I can't recommend it highly enough.You can find a copy at https://amzn.to/2u6QHUUIf you'd like to receive the occasional message from me containing thoughts, information or inspiration related to living a better life after divorce, you can join my mailing list at the following link:http://bit.ly/Choosing-to-ThriveThanks and have a great day!
I married a guy with the most arresting blue eyes I’ve ever seen. To be clear, that’s not the only reason I married him. I also married him because he was smart and decent. And I liked his sense of humor, which is so dry as to be nearly undetectable. But five years after the “I dos,” we were miserable—unable to agree on so much as a grocery list, much less on where or how to live a life as loving and mutually supportive partners.
Our single successful joint venture was making babies: two in fairly rapid succession. And even then, success had its limitations. Coming up with a name for our second child proved nearly impossible. It was only at 2:30 a.m., nearly seven hours after I went into labor, that we grudgingly reached a compromise. That time.
More often, there was no compromise to be found, not for a thousand miles. On March 24, 2015, a judge signed our no-contest divorce papers.
The fact that we couldn’t make our marriage work, especially given the stakes, is one of the hardest and most painful truths I’ve ever had to face. But our divorce has worked out much better than I thought it would. That is not to say I have the qualifications to give advice—I don’t. All I tell you is what helped me.
Boggle. There’s always a point about halfway through Boggle when the only words you can see are the same ones you have already written down, over and over and over again. It’s maddening. But if you turn the Boggle board 90 degrees, you see the same letters from your opponent’s perspective, and an amazing thing happens. You find new words—and often, they are your opponent’s. It’s the same thing with divorce. Turn the board around, and suddenly, there are your ex’s words, spelling out a different story. You will never come to a mutual narrative embrace about who is most at fault and for what. But you will find new words—and with them, an entirely different way of understanding and loving your ex.
Discretion. Don’t tell a lot of people about the breakup until you can summarize it in an anodyne elevator speech that feels true and is likely to remain true. For months, my ex and I told only our immediate family. We continued to wear our wedding rings. We monitored the kids. We got used to living apart. And then, slowly, we told concentric circles of friends and acquaintances, at which point there was nothing new or murky about our situation—it was just reality.
Dignity. You are a human being. You need an outlet for your true, unmitigated, and sometimes nasty feelings about what is happening. Feelings that are not printable even in Slate. Rely on a close circle of confidants to whom you can say these things with full confidence that you are screaming down a well. Refrain from confiding in your kid’s teacher, your co-worker, or a playdate mom. Your feelings about your ex may be short-lived. People’s memories of what you said about your ex will not be.
Perspective. At first, everything seems like a federal case. Almost nothing is. In fact, your divorce should not be a case at all. If you litigate your divorce in a courtroom, it will end in disaster, both financial and psychological. Use an attorney only to help you negotiate and divvy things up. On custody, most courts will default to a 50-50 split—fighting over particular weeks or holidays is not worth it. You will make other plans and start new traditions. Fighting over money is not worth it, either. You will spend three times that amount in the process.
Rules. When you get a provocative text or email, it’s all too easy to respond with your own rapid-fire missile. Don’t do it. Picture every one of your self-righteous tirades printed out, put in an exhibit binder, and given to a family court judge. Or forwarded to your former mother-in-law, confirming everything she always thought—and told your ex—about you.
Ex Sex. When two people decide to get married, they forsake all others for the benefits of monogamy. I call this the Oatmeal Exchange. Before your marriage (theoretically at least), you could have anything you wanted for breakfast. After your marriage, you could have oatmeal for breakfast. Period. Sure, sometimes you got sick of oatmeal or just didn’t feel like it, but usually, it was satisfying and reliable. When children are involved, a good divorce should have bright-line boundaries designed not to instill false hope. By that I mean no more oatmeal. While it may feel awesome to have all of your breakfast choices back—pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream! Bagels and lox! The Hangtown fry!—you should also prepare yourself for a time when you crave only one thing, and it’s the only thing that isn’t on the menu. You should also prepare yourself for what to do if you see someone else eating your oatmeal. Quite possibly, you may be seized by an urge to rush over and snatch the oatmeal away. But you have to accept that it isn’t your oatmeal anymore and that you may need to skip breakfast for a while.
Jedi Mind Tricks. Divorce is not a linear process. There are dark days. I have developed a coping mechanism for those days. Find a picture of your children that reflects their beauty and spirit. Stare at that picture until it is burned into your brain. The next time your ex infuriates you, squint until his face blurs out of focus. Replace that image with the picture of your children. Finally, remember what my beloved mentor—the judge I clerked for straight out of law school—has so often told me. “You are a jewel.” I am a jewel, I often tell myself, even when I don’t believe it. But I keep saying it, and so should you. Like the stone in your engagement ring, you can be salvaged. Reset. Saved. Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/family/2016/02/getting_through_divorce_with_small_children.html?via=gdpr-consent
Born of grief and tinged with failure, blended families are messy, and complicated, and exhausting.
Last night, as we settled into bed with a glass of wine, my husband shared that my son Caden had recently hurt his feelings. He’d planned an outing he thought my son would like, and Caden’s response was lukewarm.
We’re not new to this experience. Married for the second time later in life, with six children between us, we are often navigating tricky stepfamily terrain. Divided loyalties and missed connections and hurt feelings are standard stuff around here.
Still, my husband was particularly discouraged.
“It feels like nobody wants this blended family we’re working so hard to build,” Gabe said. I have often felt the same way.
We stayed up until the wee hours of the morning working through the problem and identifying ways we could each better connect with the other’s children. We talked about parenting style and discipline and expectations. We talked about stepfamily dynamics and coparenting and child development. We finally fell asleep sometime after 4 a.m.
This morning I woke up knowing my husband was right. No one wants to be in this blended family.
The truth is no one wants to be in a blended family. Born of grief and tinged with failure, blended families are messy, and complicated, and exhausting. The children didn’t choose this family.
Our household is louder and noisier than it ever would be with three children. Our blended family reduces the attention each child gets. Attention that used to be theirs alone is now divided between them, new stepsiblings and a new adult love.
A stepparent brings new expectations and unfamiliar traditions and habits. A stepparent is a living, breathing grief trigger; an adult whose very presence reminds the child that their biological parents are no longer together. How children feel about the stepparent themselves is a catch-22 of overwhelming proportions: loving them presents loyalty issues with one parent, hating them loyalty issues with the other. The child is trapped in a loyalty bind at seemingly every turn.
A blended family also includes a host of extended family. Extended family that try to include the new partner and children or include the exes or all of the above. Extended family that rushes in with love and attention or stays away for fear of scaring children off. All of it well-intentioned and born of love, and all of it can sometimes feel wrong.
Imagine a child has been given a puzzle to assemble, with a pretty picture on the box. Then, we give the child a handful of extra pieces. Make it work, we tell them. The picture on the box is different from what you have now. Figure it out, it can still be fun.
What child would choose that? Adults are often wildly unprepared for stepfamily life.
First-family examples surround us, but first-family strategies don’t work in blended families. Studies continually show that stepfamilies who begin their life together with a romantic, first-family approach fail.
The trouble is, adults in blended families typically have only first-family experience. Their friends and extended family have first-family expectations. Movies and books and magazines overwhelmingly tell first-family stories and give first-family advice. We want the first-family fairytale. Resources for blended families are scarce and the stakes are high.
Adults in stepfamilies are instantly parenting unfamiliar, uncomfortable children ― uncomfortable children related to a person they love deeply. The children have divided loyalties, and the stepparent’s role is nuanced and complex. Intimacy between people takes a long time, and is built over repeated interactions, and develops at its own pace. It can be incredibly frustrating even in healthy relationships between two adults. It can feel impossible between an adult and an unrelated child.
Adults in blended families are given a puzzle too. Their puzzle is missing pieces and has extra pieces from a different set and if you try to assemble it to fit the pretty picture on the cover you are likely to fail. The challenge is to make a new picture with what you’ve been given, smoothing out the bumps and forced pieces as you go. What adult would choose that? Marrying with children is “a feat of brazen, unadulterated hope.” Hope. Hope is what kept Gabe and I talking until 4 a.m. Hope that we can keep working together and build a family that is a safe space for our children and for each other. Hope that our love and partnership will be an example for them as they grow. Hope that the children we love wildly will one day be able to freely accept that love, feeling it deep in their bones. Hope that this difficult journey we’re on together will eventually be just the start of our story. Hope that our puzzle, as messy and complicated as it seems now with the frame barely constructed, will one day be a picture we all appreciate. Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-ugly-truth-about-blended-families_us_589363b6e4b0b4d609210569
