• Griefwork: Coping with Loss and stopping the "train of negative emotions. Grief = psycholgical distress due to a personal loss.
• Intensity of feeling: comes and goes and is proportional to the degree of identity devoted to spouse role. Those who really want out of a marriage will suffer less tha than those who want the marriage to continue.
• Duration: some say it takes about as long to get over a lost love as it does to endure one in the first place. Depends on a person's frame of mind - three months to couple of years.
• Avoiding Self Pity: The difference between Understanding what's happened and Wallowing in remorse or sadness.

Dealing with Depression, Anger and Guilt

• Depression = sadness, self-blame, hopelessness. This is not Clinical Depression, but is Event Precipitated and gradually lessens over time
• Anger must be resolved in order to be dispatched. Directed toward the person one is angry with - this means further communication with the Ex.
• Guilt - over having hurt someone - reasonable amounts of guilt are signs of a healthy conscience. Unreasonable amounts of guilt only prolong the rebuilding process.
• Rational measures are appropriate: - write down the pros and cons of the marriage - try to understand what has happened.
• Such Questions As: Anxiety about the future? Will I ever find love again? Did I find it the first time and lose it? Why do people hate me so much. I will never have sex again.

In order for a successful remarriage to begin, the divorced person must come to grips with the issues surrounding the divorce. Write it all down. Keep a journal!

1. Combating Loneliness = a feeling of unconnectedness with others.
2. The Situationally Lonely = being lonely was precipitated by an event - a death, a divorce, or other.
3. The Chronically Lonely = lack social or interpersonal skills necessary to make others feel comfortable.
4. Loners = those who are at home with themselves, comfortable with their own company.
5. Loneliness Traps: -viewing loneliness as a weakness -clinging and hanging on -meaningless sexual episodes -love and marriage on the rebound
6. Coping with reality demands - life goes on - walk it off! The nice thing about life is it continues with you or without you.

Establishing a New Identity - People suggest that events sometimes change them - "The War Changed Him" or "My divorce imbittered me."Perhaps people are simply unaware of some of their capabilities or deficiencies in the skills area prior to these "life changing events"

A "New Identity" may really mean completing the old one that was never finished in high school.
B. Repairing damaged self-esteem. One thing marriage can to, especially to women, but to both genders is gradually - insidiously - wear away at their self-esteem. If divorce devastates one's self-esteem:
C. Get Out into the mainstream and Meet People. = Aerobics class, college courses, community centers, singles meetings, environmental protection groups.
D. Overcome any Fear of Dating (when the time is right).
E. Come to grips with Sexual Feelings - Look! You know what you know and what you want. Figure out a way to deal with your sexuality until ->
F. You learn how to Love Again - > By resolving old problems, one comes closer to being able to love - maybe for the first time. What were the consequence s of the breakup? Write it all down - Keep a Journal!

• Realistic self analysis - know yourself better Know your good points and the stuff you need to work on.
• Go through the whole selection process again - Remember? Stimulus - Value - Role Fit ????
• Evaluate Potential relationships on your new information.
• Make Sure You are Ready and Jump Right IN - No reservations.
• Know that remarriage is at least as unstable as 1st Marriages - maybe more - Remarriages account for about 40%.But, as Butch Hancock says, "Statistics don't make much difference as long as one person changes their mind!"

Remarriage Factors in need of attention:

1. Emotions and Committment
   
2. Parental Responsibilities
3. Psychic (feeling) Remarried
4. Community Ties
5. Economic Responsibilities
6. Legalities

Money - sometimes stem from the left over responsibilities of the 1st Marriage.
Sex - be good to yourself and good to your sweetie pie Emotions - 2nd guessing a spouse based on your 1st experience
Stepparenting = automatic families are not easy.
Complex Kin Relations and Ambiguous Roles Step parent - child relationships can make or break a remarriage.
Relating to the ex-spouse
1. Complexity of relationships
2. Ambiguous Family Boundaries
3. Normative Ambiguity Guidelines for a happy remarriage and stepfamily
• clear up as much unfinished business and emotional garbase as possible from your previous marriage and divorce
• don't make comparisons between your present partner and your ex-spouse
• avoid guerilla warfare with your ex-spouse
• don't try to forget to allow time for things to develop
• make effective use of what you have learned from your previous marriage and divorce

A stepfamily is built upon loss–the loss of the earlier family with its unique identity, history, and shared expectations.  There are many challenges posed by the stepfamily life cycle, by the structure of the stepfamily, and by the troublesome stepparent-stepchild relationship. The first phase of the stepfamily life cycle involves the “turbulent first two years.” An important source of trouble in this phase is the unrealistic expectations that     people bring to the stepfamily.  In the second phase, from the third to the fifth     year, stepfamilies are in the “golden period,” or a kind of tranquil phase.  From     about the sixth year on, the stepfamily enters the phase of “singing in the rain.” Some things get better, while others get worse. 

Stepfamilies function somewhat differently than other families because of certain structural differences.   

•  Stepfamilies are more complex because of the increased number of relationships.   
• Family boundaries - rules about who is a member of the family and how much each member participates in family life - are likely to be ambiguous in the stepfamily. 
• There are different ways of defining family: in terms of retention, substitution, reduction, and augmentation.   
• Fewer cultural norms exist to deal with life in the stepfamily than in the intact family, so there is more normative ambiguity.
• About 20% of U.S. kids live in stepfamilies. Another 20% (roughly) shuttle between divorced bioparents, many of whom will re/marry.
  
• Around 2 of 3 stepfamily re/marriages eventually split up now, vs. about half of first unions. Most of these re/marriages followed a prior divorce for at least one partner.

Where 1st marriages have family trees, blended families have family forests. 
For example, typical 3-generational stepfamilies have: from 3 to 6+ co-parents managing 2 to 3+ linked homes, co-raising 3 to 6+ minor children with 40 to 100+ extended kin. Full stepfamilies have up to 30 roles (like "step-grandmothers" and "step-cousins"), compared to 15 roles in normal 3-generational biological families. There are now few informed social norms to guide all these adults and kids in figuring out to conduct normal, daily life. They have to invent viable new family rules to go with the roles. While their goals are similar, the personal, family, and social environments for average stepparents often lead to transitional confusion, stress, mistrust, and strife in and between linked co-parenting homes, at the very least.

Typical minor stepkids have special developmental tasks to master that their peers in intact, 1st families don't have. There is typically little informed community help available to guide co-parents and others in helping stepkids with these vital emotional tasks. Uninformed co-parents often expect their multihome stepfamily to act, feel, and be like a 1-home biological family. This expectation often comes from one or all co-parents wanting to avoid identifying themselves as a stepfamily, because of the negative associations ("evil stepmothers", etc.). Actually it was our children who began using the prefix "step" in front of brother, sister, dad and mom.

1. -Stepfamily members have experienced important losses.
2. -They have no shared family histories or shared ways of doing things.
3. -They may have very different beliefs.
4. -Children may have "loyalty conflicts" between the parents he or she lives with, and the "divorced" parent who lives somewhere else.
5. -Newly remarried couples may not have enough time alone to adjust to their new relationship.

While facing these issues may be difficult, stepfamilies should attend to an array of feelings of: Loneliness in dealing with the losses; Loyalty conflicts between two parents or two households; Exclusion and isolated by feelings of guilt and anger; Confusion about right and wrong; Awkwardness with any member of the original family or stepfamily.

Some very serious indications of a need for intervention: A child vents his or her anger upon a particular family member. A stepparent or parent openly favors one of the children. A child resents a stepparent or parent. Any member of the family gets no enjoyment from normally pleasurable activities such as learning, going to school, working, playing, or being with friends or family.

Stepfamily and Child Discipline?

• A fundamental difference is that discipline with stepchildren involves "your child" or "my child" (or grandchild), rather than "OUR child". This inevitably breeds stressful loyalty conflicts;
• Normally, bioparents discipline their children without fear of being lastingly rejected by them.
• Remarrying adults choose each other, primarily - especially if the remarrying bioparent is non-custodial. Normally, the childrens' opinions about bringing a new adult into their family aren't given equal weight ("unfairly", from their point of view). The reality is that a stepparent may not like their stepchild - or vice versa.
• Remarriage often requires an "instant" merger of CD rules from adults' prior families (including single-parent families), vs. the gradual evolution of rules in biofamilies. This can be particularly stressful if one of the adults has never parented before;
• The act of remarriage often causes significant changes in adults' and childrens' expectations. For example: "Yesterday, I was your Mom's boyfriend, but today, I'm your stepfather. Now I have both the responsibility and right to discipline you - but I didn't, yesterday."
• If child visitations are involved, kids and adults may experience 3 conflicting sets of disciplinary rules: prior family, custodial family, and non-custcldial family or household. This gets even more complex, considering the added CD rules in grandparents', stepgrandparents', and step/relatives' homes;
• If relations between divorced parents remain hostile, arguments or behaviors may become a vehicle for them to continue their pre-divorce fighting.

Increasing numbers of people experience stepparenting so attitudes may be improving.  But students generally tend to react negatively to the very terms stepparent and stepchild.  These negative perceptions may be rooted in experience.  Older children may pose more problems for a stepparent than do younger children.   

• Because of custody arrangements over the past few decades, stepfathering with custody of the child has been more common than stepmothering with custody.  Stepchildren themselves report less support, control, and     punishment from stepfathers than do children from biological fathers.  The     difficulties notwithstanding, many stepfathers are satisfied with their roles and experience a positive parenting experience.  Discipline of stepchildren     is a particularly problematic area.   
• Mothers reported themselves responding as positively to their stepchildren as to their biological children.  Despite the “wicked stepmother” stereotype, stepmothering isn’t necessarily a painful experience.   
• Stepparents are more likely than biological parents to perceive strains on their marriage from the parenting experience.  Wives are more likely to see     their marital relationship affected by their husbands’ relationships with the children than vice versa.  There are a variety of reasons stepchildren can adversely affect the marital relationship.   
• In spite of the problems that can arise, the majority of children in stepfamilies are satisfied with their stepparents and are well-adjusted.  Children in stepfamilies do exhibit more behavior problems of various kinds, but these children are not lower in self-esteem, psychological functioning, or academic achievement than those in intact families.

Stepfamilies tend to have less closeness between members and less ability to change when confronted with stress than do intact families.  This does not mean     that all stepfamilies are in trouble; they also have a number of strengths.  In stepfamilies, new people with new ideas and skills are encountered, which are sources of new opportunities for children.  In sum, stepfamily life has both advantages and disadvantages.

Second marriages, including those involving stepfamilies, can work out well and be stable and satisfying.  The same factors that make a first marriage work well also apply to a second marriage.  Stepfamilies work well to the extent that they confront and adequately respond to a number of challenges and tasks.  In sum, remarriage and the stepfamily represent another effort to create meaningful intimate relationships after the first effort has failed. 

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