CHAPTER 3

BOUNDARIES: DEFINE AND RESPECT

“It is easy to be a father but very hard to be a dad.”

This old adage speaks to the fact that all children have two biological parents, a fact that should be acknowledged in any serious “second-time-around” relationship. When the time comes, introduce the new person to your children as your friend and allow them to call him or her by first name. This is much better than using Mr. or Mrs., and is surely more appropriate than encouraging them to use Dad or Mom, even in cases where your child may have never met their other biological parent.

The person you introduce into their life may become the one to raise them and assume normal parental functions, but the child will be upset if they later discover that they have a different biological parent. At some time in the future, your child may decide to call the person Dad or Mom, but that choice should rest with your child. Trying to instantaneously create a new family or make your new friend feel accepted should never trump your child’s wishes and comfort level.

“Adam never knew his real father, who left before he was born,” a patient once told me, describing how she involved her new boyfriend with her son. “He was five years old, so I told him this is your new father. From now on we will call him ‘Daddy.’”

Hopefully, Adam’s response will not be, “You’re not my father and I’m not going to call you ‘Dad.’ I already have a dad, and I’ll find him one day.”

Keep everyone’s identities clear from the start and you will be served best later on when it comes to figuring out everyone’s role in the new family dynamic. That means involving a new person slowly, keeping in mind the overriding concept that neither you nor your children should initially depend on or view this person as your surrogate. While in the short run, having someone there to help you with chores related to your kids may help out, it can add to their insecurity that you will abandon them, and if the relationship does not work out, you will be back doing your own chores again. In the beginning of a relationship, whether or not someone can take care of your children is not a good test of your compatibility together. When and if it doesn’t work out, everyone may be hurt.

Keep things casual. Call people by their normal names and take your time.

HOW MANY PARENTS DOES ONE CHILD NEED?

Divorce may change a lot of things but it can never undo one central fact: the children you and your ex-spouse created will always be yours, in spite of their age and whether the courts determine them to be independent at age eighteen or twenty-one. No matter what, they will always be your responsibility—yours and your ex’s—and no one else will ever quite assume that role, in spite of any involvement with your child.

This is a simple fact you must accept. But if for some reason you cannot care for, manage, or appropriately discipline your children, seek professional help to learn how you can. This may involve attending parenting classes, attempting counseling or getting help from your place of worship. If you need assistance getting your child to school or other activities, or someone to stay with them when you go out of town, find someone other than your new significant other to help you. Consider asking a neighbor, a friend, someone in a parents’ cooperative group or another parent who has a child in your child’s daycare. Don’t use the man or woman you are beginning to get involved with as a babysitter, even if he or she offers to help.

In the early stages of a relationship, particularly as you are beginning to include your new friend within your family activities, it is not the time to have this person begin fulfilling parental tasks. While it may help you out in the short run, or appear to be a way to foster the new relationship, it is not fair to any of the parties: you, your friend or your children.

From your children’s point of view, it conveys the message that this new adult may be more important to you than they are, making it seem as though you are delegating child-raising functions to a relative stranger. For your new friend, it may also be hurtful if he or she becomes attached to your child and the relationship—for whatever reason—ends. This often leads to unnecessary confusion, bad feelings and a sense of being used.

While it should seem obvious not to use your new significant other to care for your child, it can be an easy trap to fall into, as I ultimately found out myself once upon a time. It’s a pattern of behavior I also hear repeatedly from my patients and colleagues. This is not to say that your children cannot spend any time at all with one of your friends, or even with his or her children. It is in fact often fun to share activities as you are getting to know each other.

For example, you pick up your friend’s child after school, or drive him or her to an activity and then buy him or her dinner afterwards—all as a favor to your friend. The roles may be reversed at a later date. But that scenario is very different than coupling your child with the person you are currently dating. When you do things with a friend and his or her children, it tends to be child-centered and shows your child that you socialize, have friends, and have gone on with your life after divorce. It’s also an effective way to break the pressure and tedium of single parenting your children.

My own story may be instructive. After my divorce, I made a real mistake in how I dealt with my first long-term girlfriend. My eight-year-old son, Frank, would come for the summer and as a single parent I was never quite sure what to do with him. I wasn’t certain I could entertain him enough to guarantee that he had a great summer and would want to come back the next year. In addition, I had just gone into private practice and was working long hours. I thought it wasn’t a bad thing to have my girlfriend help me out with my son. She could pick him up at camp occasionally or get a meal ready if I wasn’t home. Keeping him company like that seemed harmless. She didn’t have kids and was eager to jump in and help.

It was great in the beginning. But when the relationship ended, she tried to keep in contact with Frank, which I thought was a way to stay involved with me. I considered that to be manipulative, and it became upsetting for both my son and me. Besides, Frank had really liked her, which made the break-up hard for him to understand and even harder for me to explain why we were no longer doing things together. In retrospect, it would have been much easier and more comfortable for everyone if I had managed the issues of his care by myself and kept her at a distance until I was really sure where we were going, if anywhere. An important lesson learned the hard way.

REDEFINING PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS

The person you ask to join you and share your life is really your friend. Someday, your children and this new person can become friends, but in the beginning he or she is there because of you, not your children. No matter how much your new love and your children seem to like each other, or how nice he or she may be, it is really not your child’s responsibility to do things for this relative stranger.

This is different than the normal parent-child relationship where your children may help you out at times or help out their other biological parent with household chores. Housework, for example, is a central theme in many families because living responsibly together is a basic part of being a family. But that does not include asking your child to do things for your new significant other or having that person do things for your child. In the beginning, it’s just not appropriate or reasonable.

Merging two families means getting to know and respect each other as people, and this can only happen a little bit at a time. Having your new friend be the nanny, teacher, or chauffeur, or treating a child as if he or she is the maid, butler, or babysitter does not move this process along and can easily make everyone resentful. Your child will continue to question why that person is there, why he or she has to do things for said person, and why you would require your own children to do things for a relative newcomer. If you or your new partner want something done, one of you should do it—not the children.

If your new friend has children that are younger than yours, don’t ask your children to take care of these children, particularly if you want them to do that so you can go out. If you want them to help out, offer to pay them for their services. Otherwise, it will be seen as an imposition, implying that their life and activities are unimportant and that they are just an extension of you—all in all another unnecessary source of resentment.

A patient shared a problem she was having with a new friend and her son: “Why should I go upstairs and get his book?” she reported her son complaining. “He can go get it himself. He is your friend, not mine, and I didn’t ask him to come here and stay with us, or to leave his book upstairs.”

When children are still recovering from their parents splitting up, which means possibly for a long, long time, they certainly don’t need any more reason to feel resentment or a sense of being manipulated. It’s up to the adults to act like adults, and not use their kids for the wrong reasons.

LIFE AND SEX BEFORE TYING THE KNOT—AGAIN

Because life is not perfect all of the time for anyone, the person you are getting involved with probably has some issues, too, including his or her own children, family of origin, finances, ex-spouse, just to name a few! Enhancing each other’s lives is a hope, not a given. Even if that does happen, it is a process that occurs over time as a result of small changes and minor adaptations. Wish as you might, it is exceedingly rare for a white knight or fairy godmother to instantly appear and make everything perfect.

When a new person enters into your life, he or she may jump in aggressively to try and fix everything or save everyone, particularly if you allow it to happen or do not establish firm boundaries.

Or maybe it’s you, attempting to right what you perceive to be a sinking ship. The friend you were trying to save and even his or her children may not have thought things were so bad or that they needed to be rescued. They may resent you as an outsider jumping in with a plan to make everything better—immediately.

If at some time the person you have become involved with asks for help then you can try to give it objectively up to a point that fits within your own comfort zone. But it’s important to remember that whatever your friend’s issues may be, they are not your issues. They belong to someone else who got into an unhappy situation. While your help may make things better, your efforts can also make things worse. It is someone else’s life, someone else’s family, someone else’s children, and someone else’s problem. If you are around long enough in the new relationship, your ideas, presence, style and role modeling may have a positive impact and everyone, including you, may benefit. But little will be gained by jumping in and telling anyone, particularly the children, what to do, or picking a fight with your new significant other’s ex, who you may think is still causing problems. The reality is you may not be in a relationship with this person and his or her children long enough to make a significant difference, while they will be involved with each other forever. So despite pleas for help, some people really do not want to change or make things better. Their verbal or non-verbal requests to be rescued may be just how they try to get attention, which effectively undoes whatever you may try to do.

Most parents think they are doing a reasonably good job and know how they want to raise their children. Even when they have a sense that things are not going well, it is difficult for them to admit that they are doing a bad job, or need help. So if your new significant other doesn’t ask for help, take a deep breath and don’t offer any. That may be difficult; especially if you are an outsider observing a family situation that looks dysfunctional, troubled, or even chaotic and think that the parent you are involved with doesn’t have a clue what to do or how to fix it. While you may be right in your assessment of the issues, your effort to jump in, take over, rescue, or redirect everyone may actually make everything worse. Resist your first impulse to provide unsolicited advice or interfere with the hope of saving someone you care about. Instead, ask for the biological parent’s opinion of how the situation should be handled. He or she will probably have an idea, even if it cannot be expressed properly at the time, particularly in the middle of a crisis. More likely than not, this is not the first catastrophe that parent and child have faced, and your interference may only make things worse.

An adolescent patient who was brought to me for depression and drug use described what happened in his family. “I really liked my dad’s girlfriend at first. She would do things with me like pick me up after school, cook, and sometimes get him to take me places that he wouldn’t have done before. Then she started telling me what to do, and telling my dad what he should and shouldn’t do with me. She even called me spoiled. I probably was, but I didn’t need to hear that from her, and I got really upset about it. Ultimately I resented her. She really shouldn’t have jumped in so quickly, even if we both needed it. She started putting down rules and punishments on me when my dad wasn’t around, and when I finally told him, he didn’t do anything. That is when things really got bad for me.”

We should learn from our children—the ones we bring directly into the world and those we care for professionally, as teachers, clergy and therapists. Their struggles can inform our personal lives and make theirs better as a result.

So no matter what the problems may be, take things slowly, observe what has been going on, and give your advice or input in a thoughtful, non-intrusive manner—if and when you are asked. In that case, ask the biological parent: how were things handled in the past, why were they handled that way, how should things be handled this time around and what can you do to help? The parent and the children will both be appreciative if you follow this path. And, if the situation doesn’t work out, you won’t be the scapegoat that everyone jumps on to blame.

As the two of you become more involved and begin thinking about marriage, you may consider living together. This usually means that the divorce has been finalized and you can take your relationship to another level—when the children are not around. But living together may affect your legal situation. Will your ex-spouse be upset if his or her children are with you when you are cohabiting with someone else? You may think that no one should care who you sleep with or live with if you are a consenting adult. That may be true when you are single, but it is very different when you have children. Your living with someone else affects everyone, but particularly your children. To a child, the fact that a parent is living with someone further pushes the realization that his or her original family unit exists no more. That’s a tough pill for many children to swallow. It also makes them aware, at least by a certain age, that there is a sexual aspect to their parent’s life. In the early stages of living with your new love, your children may resent it. If they are aware of you sleeping together, which they usually are, it can even cause them to see sex as a bad thing, or consider it to be the reason that their original family broke down. That could make it harder in the future when they try to have their own relationships.

In general, until your plans for the new marriage are well underway, it is probably a good idea to not move in together, or at least to stay apart or live separately when the children are with you. Whether they are younger or in their adolescent years should not make a difference. The children may know that you stay at your friend’s house when they are not with you, but that is very different than the two of you being together in their face, all the time. Adolescents may even get the message that sex and living together is permissible for everyone, including them, which clearly is not the message most parents prefer sending.

“We did not think that living together was a big deal after we started dating,” a patient told me recently. “The children did not seem to care and things were pretty good for a while. Ultimately, we got married, which seemed to legitimize it and it really wasn’t an issue until my daughter turned sixteen and wanted to have her boyfriend live with us. He was having problems with his parents and was a pretty nice kid, but that just didn’t seem reasonable to me. Everyone went ballistic and my daughter kept pointing out that we had done it so why couldn’t she? We finally resolved it, but in retrospect it would have been a lot easier if we had just postponed living together a little longer.”

Children seem to have radar for when their parent’s new relationship becomes sexual. Even when your sexuality is not flaunted or displayed in front of them, the energy surrounding it changes how your children perceive the interplay between this new person and you, their parent. At some level, they may recognize that your life has an intense dimension that is threatening for them and they may also recognize that your new friend has more importance to you than your other friends.

“Whenever this one guy came over,” a young patient reports, “Mom would do this funny thing with her lip. I thought it was really weird, but I couldn’t tell her because she thought she was being cool.”

Children may sense that a new person is replacing their own parent, even when this is not the case, which may certainly cause them to dislike your new friend. They note when their parent begins to focus on the appearance and sexual aspects of the new person. Later in life, they may view being sexual or attractive as a negative, in part as a response to feeling that these qualities were important to their parent, and feel as though the added sexual tension may cause the new person to replace them in your life. This all points out again how important it is to try and keep that person, if not that aspect of the relationship, separate until you are sure that you want him or her involved in your child’s life.

No matter what, no matter how anxious you are to begin a complete life with your new love, you must love your children before you can love anyone else.